So happy we could all time it right, here under the mango tree at Tai Tai's backyard where we have some of our best childhood memories.
A family reunion to celebrate lucy's 70th birthday.
At Sunday brunch Mia, 7, and Lucy, 70, blew out their candles!
everydaytaichi lucy's family were all in Honolulu during the Martin Luther King weekend to help celebrate lucy's belated 70th birthday (Dec. 30) along with her granddaughter, Mia's 7th birthday on January 17. This was the very first time that all 19 family members who range in age from 3-99 years old were together. Needless to say it was a weekend full of special bonding and great memories. Because everyone could only be together for a short space of time of 3-4 days, everyday was devoted to a specific event designed to meet with more relatives, spend time with Tai Tai, picnics at the beach, barbques, and a Sunday brunch. Last, but not least, cooking some of our family favorites, fishing out at Lucy's stomping grounds at Kuliouou Beach park, taking family portraits with Tai Tai in her backyard and having our own family dance and song fest after ice cream birthday cake for Stu's daughter, Mia. Incidentally, Rita, Stuart's wife, also celebrated her 40th on Jan. 13 as did Lucy's brother, David, who turned 69. The photos below try to capture our fun activities that also included lei sewing for the 8 cousins, all of who haven't ever sewn a lei before, yet they range in age from 3-18.
A mother's dream: to have the whole family together for a family reunion. It's never too late, even if I had to wait 'til my 70th!
At Sunday brunch, Lucy received a birthday card that she will treasure for many years to come. Her 4 children presented her with a list of the many things they feel is special about her. This list is as long as her she is old.
70 Things We Love About Mom
- Amazing baker of chiffon pies, whole wheat yeast rolls, cookies, lavosh and more
- Makes the yummiest Chinese cold ginger chicken + Chinese roast chicken
- Constant cheerleader- we can hear her woo-hoos from miles away
- Exercise queen (Apple Store employees call her “exercise aunty”)
- Apple Store regular
- Mad blogger
- Encourages you to stretch and carry out your ambitions- makes you believe in yourself
- Always up for some family craziness
- Makes cool videos with her grandchildren
- Bargain shopper
- Grand negotiator
- Early adopter of new technology
- Thinks green
- Caregiver to young and old family members
- Email coordinator of her children
- Makes great costumes and posters for kids’ projects, campaigns, and birthday parties. Remember you made pin the tail on Pikachu for Aaron’s 5th birthday?
- Cheese Cake Queen (strawberry,pumpkin, guava, chocolate, lilikoi)
- Used to bake family 7 dozen cookies a week in Guam. One dozen per kid and the remaining 3 dozen were free for all.
- Cream Of Mushroom Meatball maker. One point of time it became cream of Mushroom Mush (Lazy way of making Cream of Mushroom Meatballs)
- Making daily lunches for everyone for years
- Buying hundreds of turkeys to make lunches and feed the family.
- Drawing “Vote For Me” cartoon character posters For Annie and Leslie.
- Buying cases of hamburger in Guam after Typhoon Pamela
- Giving back massages with her feet
- Selling thousand pairs of underwear, socks and bras online, then successfully selling cars, appliances and electronics
- Going to Ross to buy clothes for everyone at super deals
- Getting the recipes from a former cafeteria manager for Grandmother's Cookies, Baked Chicken, Potato Munchkins
- Teaching ESL and being the Lunch Lady at Aina Haina School
- Allowing me to raise 100’s of guppies using all the ham containers
- Taking me to library and telling me not to waste time with the card index and ask the librarian to help as they can find the best books quickly
- Doing tai chi poses throughout the world
- Master of returns and getting discounts and great deals
- Master of caring for children and making them believe what you want them to believe
- Designing creative Halloween costumes (iridescent paper glued to black shirt to make a skeleton, bird mask)
- Pleading with ocean spray staff that she made a trip all the way to Boston to see cranberry bogs and joining a private tour with Sapporo execs in Massachusetts after Harvard graduation
- Famous speed walks through Niu Valley that your kids couldn't keep up with you
- Enjoys drive bys to check on neighbors
- Packs us chicken rice or won ton for the plane ride back to the mainland
- Booking our mainland trips pre Internet exactly one year in advance when the fares would open for mileage plus tickets (at Midnight Eastern time when the previous day’s booking holds would turn over)
- Saving breakfast extras for meals for later in the day
- Her familiar question in Europe to our tour guide: What's that smell Yani?
- Asking “Ken do we eat that?” when faced with an ethnic food she's never seen before
- Master movie maker
- Kept Les’ and Stu’s cars for her grandkids to play with. Ethan loves the car box!
- Buttery shortbread cookies that the grandkids just can't keep their paws off of!
- Walking Aaron and Ethan to and from school every day and then some on their visits to San Mateo
- Webmaster of her very own website, updated daily
- Award-winning local TV celebrity
- Bought Ala Moana gift certificates with her United Mileage Plus credit card so she could rack up miles for trips. She would then spend the certificates on purchases much less than their face value so she’d get change in cash.
- Knew the best way to use your Costco Amex rebate was to deposit it in your bank account, not use it on your next Costco purchase.
- Gave BB and JJ their nicknames on the flight home from UCLA Med School graduation.
- Sat with Justine at age 2 to read Mr. Brown can Moo, Can You? and discovered she could read some of the words herself.
- Made chiffon pies galore when no one had even heard of salmonella and raw eggs
- Stretched a can of frozen juice by adding extra water
- Teaching JJ and BB how to ride bikes in Roseville.
- Chili and baked potatoes for Brennan to enjoy, then teaching BB and JJ how to make warm German potato salad
- Doing “Yolanda” to get rid of mildew. The name made the chore silly and fun.
- Letting us nap (“stretch out”) on her bed
- Taking an interest in the OJ Simpson white bronco car chase when it came on while we were folding clothes when you usually never watch much TV
- Buying us a ton of board games and long playing records
- Letting Annie and Leslie jump on the beds in the boys’ room to play rodeo cowboy
- Making gift tags for us using cookie cutter tracings on construction paper so we knew what Xmas gifts were ours under the tree before we could read our names
- Timing the purchase of our Xmas trees to catch the fresh shipment
- Master freebie collector. If it's free, she is there!
- Master planner and tour guide for international trips for her tai chi students
- Birthday twins with Ethan. Telling me on Ethan’s day of birth, “Annie, you didn't have to call so early to wish me happy birthday!”
- Avid lap swimmer, 1/2 mile 5x / week on Guam in the 70s “Save my baby!”
- Recreational ceramicist in the 80s
- Source of all kinds of school supplies and drug company pens
- Lets everyone use the Villemont house for storage and sleeping.
Don't peek... Stu is behind us just incase Popo loses strength in carrying Ami, our Christmas baby, now 4 YO.
Here are the birthday twins. Ethan aka ET just turned 11, the same day as Popo, Dec.30.
Sophia Lucille who just turned 3 on 12-13-15, calls her dad, Les, " Uncle Susan." You can imagine her personality, Ms. Mischief.
Brennan with Joel, taking a break from picture taking, and getting ready to climb up the mango tree.
Grandsons always dream of ships and boats, now they are right up close to the Waikiki yacht harbor.
Mia and Andrew were inseparable! Like always, they had a blast together!!
The original 4 cousins who spent some time together in California. They are our daughters children. Justine and Brennan moved to Hawaii, while Aaron and Ethan live in San Mateo, CA.
Cousins, Mia and Sophia all decked out with their leis they've sewn for the first time! Aunty Cc taught them well!
AB and BB are "glued" together just like their joint effort in stringing a lei.
Fishing was fun even without any bites...we learned about sea cucumbers and found some treasures, but most of all it was a time for enjoying the beautiful day on our family outing to Kuliouou beach.
Ami, making Popo use her head to think!
JJ orchestrated this "cousins" photo. Lesson to be learned: kids will listen to kids more than they do to us adults.
Stats about our 8 grandchildren:
JJ: talented, sweet leader of the pack.
BB: creative, almost 6 footer sz 13 shoe like Unc Stu.
AA: gifted diplomat
ET: Popo's birthday twin.
Mia: Dance Queen USA.
Andrew: age 5 but thinks like 10 year old.
Ami: quiet, sweet, knows what she wants because she's a Christmas babe!
Sophia: silly and determined because she's the year of dragon babe
No one can keep a secret from me, but this time my kids did! They compiled a list of 70 things about me!
Tai Tai's mango tree that everyone loves to climb up, even the near by ducks from the Paiko wild life sanctuary love to roost on her mango tree of 70 years!
Ami and Sophia pretending they are movie stars accompanied by our ukulele musician, Mia.
Gungie's best move: to revive Uncle Stu's boogey board of the 80's! It provided the cousins with great fun and lasting memories!
Carrying their own leis they sewed, our LA girls say ALOHA with their souvenirs in hand!
Mia loves music and dance so she'll be back for hula and ukulele, I'm sure!
Hula girl, Ami, waiting for Mia to strum the ukulele.
All those in the peanut gallery had a big job of getting those taking their picture to focus and smile. They look like they were having more fun than those taking pictures!
Below is a slideshow, click on the photo and advance the play arrow.
P.S. If I had known turning 70 would be this much fun, I wouldn’t have any reservation about moving into a new age bracket. Thanks to each of you who helped to make this all possible. Everything we did was very special as we remember and reflect upon the many photos and videos shown here.
My new FitBit to monitor my daily fitness levels...just what I always wanted!
...listen to what I want..
Ken always dreamed of becoming famous like the couple in the American Gothic painting!
...and a good time was had by ALL!
