Adam's Graduation

On Saturday, April 10th, Adam finally graduated from college. He still has 5 pretty easy credits left to officially graduate, but he will have that done by the beginning of June. He will be receiving a Bachelor's of Science in University Studies with an emphasis in Biology and Chemistry. Elder Quentin L. Cook was the speaker at his graduation. Even though he is not completely done with school yet, it was a very exciting day for him.



Since the campus was pretty full of people taking pictures, we decided to wait until the next day to do a photo shoot around campus and at other locations in La'ie. Here are some of my favorites:

In front of the La'ie Temple


Our front door - G125

Our front yard

Temple Beach

Where Adam had many of his science classes

BYU-H Security Office

Biology Lab

Library

David O. McKay Building

Our Stake Center

Front enterance to campus

Congratulations Adam!

Zoo, Castle and Conservation

March has been a kind of hectic week. We have been spending quite a bit of time with our friend Amy and her daughter Avery. We started off the month by going to the Honolulu Zoo, which Adam and I have never been to before. It was nothing like the San Diego Zoo, but it was decent. It was fun to go with a couple of our friends' kids who got excited about everything.

Amy's daughter, Avery, turned 3 on March 25th, so we had a birthday party for her. She wanted a princess party, so I suggested we make a castle out of cardboard boxes. I was thinking 1 or 2 refrigerator boxes, something small. This is what it turned out to be.

It was A LOT of work, especially since a lot of the time it was just Amy and I working on it, but it was way fun. We ended up not being able to do everything we planned with it, but the kids loved it anyway.

Adam is taking a Conservation Biology class in which they do quite a few field trips. They have worked a few times with different branches of the military to clean out invasive species of plants on various sites in Hawaii. On one trip, which ended up being only Adam, 2 girls from the class, and their professor, they camped overnight on the ridge of a nearby mountain range, and the Army helicoptered their stuff up and down the mountain.

Then, a week or two later, they went to Kaua'i to work with the Navy on removing invasive species there. I wanted to go, but there wouldn't have been room for me in the vehicles they rented. So, Adam had a day of fun and a day of work without me. They explored caves, went hiking, jumped off waterfalls and ropes into a pool of water, and a few of Adam's classmates almost drown because they didn't listen to their professor about not swimming in a dangerous area. Fortunately, Adam wasn't one of them.

Since I missed out and Adam didn't get to do as much as he would have liked, we are going as part of his graduation trip during Spring Break next week. There will definitely be pictures of that and of Adam's graduation (April 10th) in next month's blog.

The last thing that happened this month is that Adam decided that he is for sure going to be done with school in the beginning of June. We are still trying to figure out our plans for sure, but he is still planning on joining the Air Force, and we will be talking to a recruiter in about a week when we return from Kaua'i.

Febrero con los Denney

Adam wanted to post the first picture for his brother, Nathan.

February was kind of a busy month. Adam and I just had quite a bit of work along with school, softball, and keeping ourselves busy anyway we can. Adam has been wanting to go hiking all the time, but since I can't go on the kind of hikes he likes (because the arthritis in my knees has been getting worse) he has been going alone, with friends, or with his classes and enjoying it a lot. He wanted to go at least every Saturday, but things always come up. Here are pictures from a couple of his hikes:



For Valentine's Day, we went the day before and took some studio pictures at the Army base. They were having a really good deal, and we haven't had any professional pictures since our wedding. Unfortunately, we couldn't afford to buy very many, but it's still nice to have them and I think they turned out great. I don't have a functioning scanner, so these are pictures of pictures. The quality is the better on the real pictures.



As many of you know, my 30th birthday was on the 26th. We started the day by going out to lunch at Todai; it's a Japanese buffet. I've been wanting to go there for years, but it's pretty expensive. Fortunately, you get a free meal on your birthday, lunch is half the price of dinner, and you get a discount if you have a Hawaii ID (the Kama'aina rate). We went with some of our friends and had a good time eating plenty of sushi.



After Todai, we went to the mall and went clothing shopping with some birthday money I received. I ended up getting a couple of shirts and talked him into getting a much needed new pair of pants, tie, and belt as part of my gift. We found a Banana Republic Outlet here that I love! We got him some really nice BR slacks in the clearance section for like $16.



The day after my birthday, I got a phone call at 4:30am. It was somebody on the mainland trying to get a hold of their family here to warn them of what they saw on the news. As some of you may have heard, there was an earthquake in Chile. The earthquake caused a tsunami that looked like it was headed straight toward Hawaii. At about 5am, we heard the Elder's Quorum Presidency coming around knocking on everybody's doors telling them about it and making sure they had somewhere safe to go. We ended up hanging out at a friend's upstairs apartment. Apparently, BYUH is the evacuation site for this area anyway, so we were told to either go to the Stake Center or go upstairs somewhere. After watching the news for a couple of hours, it turned out that the brunt of the wave passed just south of us. Many people were annoyed at the fact that their lives were disrupted for the day, but since the tsunami could have very well taken out much of our community like the one in the 60's, it's better to be safe. It was exciting to go through that anyway, and it let us know what we were lacking in emergency preparedness.

Other than that, we may have another change of plans for our lives after we finish up here. For the last week or so, Adam has been considering joining the Air Force. It is something he has talked about on and off for about a year, but it has never felt right. Over the last couple of months, I have been feeling like our lives were not headed in the direction we are supposed to be going. Ever since he brought up the Air Force again, we have both felt really good about it and everything seems to be falling into place. We are obviously going to ponder and pray about it more, but as of now, he is planning on talking to a recruiter next month when the semester is over. We'll keep you all posted on how that goes.

Baby, Christmas, New Years, Work and 3D

Adam and I have been kind of busy since we last wrote, so this is probably going to be kind of long. We have also taken quite a few pictures in the last month, so I'll post some of those. First of all, two of our best friends, Matt and Sunshine, had a baby on December 18th. They invited us to be in the room with them for that, so we ended up taking pictures and video for them. It was cool to be able to experience that for the first time. They had a baby girl and named her Eliana Kalei Johnson.

On Christmas Eve, we made tamales that turned out pretty good for not being able to buy some good masa. I had to make it myself with Maseca. We ended up spending part of our Christmas with Matt, Sunshine and Eliana, but we also went up to Waimea Bay to check out the big waves. They were supposed to have got up to 40 feet, but by the time we got there they had died down to about 20 feet. On the way home, we stopped by the Temple Visitor's Center to check out the Christmas trees. Each stake on Oahu decorated one according to the scripture they were given. Ours was something about angels, so it had a ton of angels on it.

We also spent New Years Eve with Matt and Sunshine (pretty much everybody else was gone, and they are our best friends). It was pretty low key. We just hung out at their house and played games. On New Years Day, Adam and I went to a free lunch and concert on campus. The food was good, and the concert featured a bunch of local bands, most of which we enjoyed. There was also a locally famous standup comedian who was hilarious. After that, we went to the Polynesian Cultural Center. We have Kama'aina passes (significantly discounted passes for locals), so we get in free whenever we want. It is such a big place that we still haven't visited all the villages, so it's fun to be able to see it all little by little.

After Christmas Break, Adam started school and a new job. He is taking Advanced Molecular Biology, Conservation Biology, Old Testament, Bowling, and an online Music class. His new job is as a security guard on campus working 4 nights a week from 10pm to 3am. I decided that, since I can't sleep well when he's at work anyway, I would get a job working for security as well. I am an on-call security dispatcher as well as continuing to substitute teach and coach softball, and I'm going to begin tutoring on top of all that. We are both pretty busy with everything we have going on now.

Amid our busy schedules, we did find some time to watch a movie last weekend. We saw Avatar in 3D, and I would highly recommend it. The 3D aspect really brought you into the story, which was pretty good on its own. The colors and scenery were pretty cool. I especially liked the fact that there were a bunch of marine animals that were featured as terrestrial ones for the movie. That's about it for the last 2 months.