4th of July Boat Trip with Pacific Whale Foundation

We had a pretty chill 4th of July weekend. Actually, the only major excitement was in the form of a seriously stressful day Sunday when we discovered Sunday morning that Dean's kitty Hoku was missing and must have escaped the night before when Dean was going in and out of the backyard to look at the stars. Dean didn't seem too terribly upset, only crying a few times throughout the day, but repeatedly saying "I really miss Hoku. When will he be home?". We searched EVERYWHERE for him - in every single nook and cranny inside and outside our house and asked every neighbor within a 2-block radius of our house if they had seen him (including the neighbors behind us). But nobody had seen him. I was extremely worried and upset because our cats do not EVER go outside and I was imagining the cat being really scared and freaked out and not really knowing how to fend for himself. I made up some flyers in Photoshop with a couple of recent photos and we put about 20 of them up on every lightpost on every corner in our subdivision while waiting for the Humane Society to open at noon. You may remember that we got Hoku as a kitten from the Humane Society so he has a tattoo in his ear that they would use to identify him if he were found. I put a couple of ads on Craigslist and had my ad ready for the Maui News. I went outside and {loudly} called for him in both the front and back yards every half hour all. day. long. with no luck. The cat was nowhere to be found. I felt slightly sick to my stomach all day and was very worried. I couldn't imagine him not coming home when I called him if he was OK. Then once it was getting dark I decided to put some food and water out on both the front and back lanai as well as a folded towel in case he did come up in the night. I also decided to put out a can of tuna, hoping the smell would lure him home. Literally 5 seconds after putting the tuna out, there was Hoku at the back door!!! Damn cat. He just came waltzing inside and acted like absolutely nothing was out of the ordinary, then ran straight for the kitty litter and took a huge crap. Really? You're outside for over 24 hours and you couldn't do that out there!? {sigh}. But we were so relieved. Dean nearly cried he was so happy to see him. But the ordeal ended up costing us a day of our long weekend, which kind of sucked. Oh well. I do think Dean will be very careful about closing the back door behind him from now on!!

On Monday, the 4th of July, the 3 of us went with my Mom on a sunset boat ride from Maalaea Harbor around the west side of Maui to Lahaina aboard one of the Pacific Whale Foundation's boats to watch the fireworks in Lahaina. But we started off the day by making some Patriotic Toast for breakfast, which Dean LOVED.
Do you see the resemblance to the US Flag? After our breakfast of flag toast, we had planned to make homemade sidewalk chalk out of Tempera Paint and Plaster of Paris using toilet paper tubes for molds (I had found a recipe for this online). I sent Joel to Ben Franklin with explicit instructions to buy KID-FRIENDLY Plaster of Paris and of course he came back with the carcinogenic DAP brand that I refused to use. Cynical Joel claims that the "Kid-Friendly" Plaster of Paris is the exact same stuff that some 6-yr-old child in a factory in China just pours from a DAP container into a new container labeled "Kid-Friendly" and then puts a price tag on it making it cost 4 times as much. I'm not nearly as cynical as Joel and I refused to let my 4-yr-old handle a product with a gigantic warning label on the container that says it is known to cause eye, lung and throat irritation, can cause respiratory illness, should avoid contact with the skin, and that the dust can cause cancer if inhaled. Ummm, no thanks because you have to mix the dust with paint in the chalk recipe. And then what do you think becomes of chalk when a kid uses it?? First it's ALL OVER their skin and it just turns back into dust that you know they are inhaling!! So, unfortunately no homemade chalk production at the Tapler house until we've done a little more research into this Kid-Friendly plaster. (and now I'm a little curious about how Crayola makes their chalk and if they use Plaster of Paris?? Anyone know?) It was quite the disappointment and Dean was very dramatic and said more than once that "this is the baddest day ever" as he dropped his head into his hands on the table like he just couldn't go on anymore in these conditions. ha!

So anyway, back to the boat trip - The fireworks were shot off of a barge in the ocean and were an awesome show! It was fun to see them from a boat. I was really nervous about the boat trip as I get EXTREMELY seasick - I haven't been on a boat in I don't know how many years for this reason. I sometimes even feel seasick kayaking or paddleboarding and when I used to surf I would even feel seasick sometimes sitting on my board waiting for waves. So yeah, it's pretty bad. But one of the doctors I work closely with at Kaiser was kind enough to write me a prescription for some Scopolamine patches, which I've found in the past have worked better than anything else for me. None of the homeopathic stuff does anything (the wrist bands, ginger candy, etc) and dramamine even doesn't seem to work very well. But those scopolamine patches do pretty good I think. So I put one of those on behind my ear a few hours before we got on the boat. But when we got to Maalaea it was SUPER windy and that water did not look good - it was majorly choppy and I didn't have a good feeling about the trip. But I came prepared with a purse full of barf bags just in case. And ya know what? I did great!! There were only a couple of times for a few minutes - mostly when they turned the engines off and we were just sitting "still", but being rocked by the waves - that I felt a little bit not great, but for the most part I was just fine. Not good enough that I want to go out on boat rides all the time, but I am glad I went. It was a good time and Dean had a blast! He was so cute. Anyway, here are a few pictures from our boat trip:
I hope you all had a Happy 4th of July!!