Kaiser Anniversary Party

On Saturday, July 31, the company I work for - Hawaii Permanente Medical Group, which is part of the Kaiser Permanente family - had a party on Maui to celebrate it's 50th Anniversary. I didn't have huge expectations for the party. Don't get me wrong - Kaiser is an AMAZING company to work for and they treat their employees extremely well. But I've been there for 6 years now and in all that time they've never had a company party. Wait, I think they had a Holiday Party my first year, but they haven't had one since. I don't think Kaiser is big on spending money on extravagant employee parties (which is as it should be in my opinion).

But I was pleasantly surprised by the Anniversary Celebration. It was actually pretty awesome! I took Joel, Dean and my Mom. They had it at the Maui Ocean Center, after the place had closed to the public - so it was only Kaiser employees there. They had a really nice buffet dinner in the restaurant with super yummy food, and seated us outside right above Maalaea boat harbor at sunset. We had free admission to the Ocean Center (which normally costs about $20 per adult admission) and there were fun games and crafts set up throughout the center for kids. There was a live band playing really good music in the central courtyard area and they even gave us scrips to use at the Cafe to get coffee or snacks or ice cream later in the night. They had some special stuff set up too - like a couple of the green sea turtles were out of the exhibit with one of the "Turtle Keepers" and they let us actually touch the turtles!! (something you are not supposed to do in the wild) so that was really cool!! And they gave all of us a 20% off coupon to the gift shop, which I actually think is one of the nicer gift shops on Maui. It was a really fun night! I think they had a pretty good turnout - Most of the PT staff were there and I saw several of the physicians and nurses and lots of administrative staff. It was nice to see everyone's families and kids too.

We hadn't been to the Ocean Center in awhile - the last several times we've taken Dean he hasn't really shown much interest in any of it, just running through the buildings and not really paying much attention to anything. But this time he was really into it - looking in every single fish tank and reading all the signs and pointing out all the fish and anemone and sea urchins that he knows the names of. We don't go very often because it's so expensive and not worth it if Dean's not going to be interested in looking at things. But now I'm thinking we may need to get a family pass for Christmas this year.

They also had a photographer there to take a family photo, which turned out OK. This is a scanned copy of the photo, so it's a little grainy looking, but you get the idea.