Luau

We had a lot of fun going to a stake-wide luau last night. The evening started with the unearthing of the pork. The church we go to has a very large parking lot that they open up for large meetings. The back bit of it has a plot of dirt with nothing growing in it that was just perfect for cooking 500# of pork for over 600 people.

The Menu:
Pork
Chicken
Meatballs in some yummy sauce
Green salad
Fruit salad
Rolls
Rice
Pasta Salad
Chop Suey
A wonderful beverage of water melon and coconut.

There were people serving from the buffet lines and everyone walked away with a heaping plateful of food. There was even some food left over after the masses had their fill. I think the kids each went back to the food 4-5 times, Tag eating his fill of bread and fruit, Princess eating bits of everything. Miss Pebbles likes the same things Tag does, begging fruit off of everyone around her.

We were just wrapping up the first round of food when the dancing started. The people who preformed were from the Hawaii Polynesian Cultural Center and they did a tour of many island countries through dance, song, and greetings in their various languages. She would shout out, asking if anyone was from this or that country that they were featuring, but didn't ask if anyone was from New Zealand, which is too bad because we have a missionary from New Zealand in our Stake (it's funny to listen to him do his best American accent in testimony meeting, then half way through he sort of gives up and goes into his country's accent).

The costumes were very fun to look at. Of all the kids, Miss Pebbles most got into the spirit of things by whooping and hollering and clapping along with the rest of us. She especially like watching the fire knife dancing. The fire dancer they featured was the three time world champion fire knife dancer from Hawaii. He started with one fire knife, added another, then hooked the two together to dance with one really long one. It was kind of interesting to watch a young assistant occasionally come up on stage and tuck money into their costumes throughout some of the performances.

The older two kids were seldom to be seen as they each found a pack of friends to run around with. The parking lot was all fenced in but we still made sure we could find them every now and then, and they were always having a good time.

There were a couple of trees there that had some serious swarms of moths creating a sort of gray/yellow halo around the crowns of the trees. It was interesting to look up and see those swarms on these awesome, old, gnarly trees against a sunset sky. I wish I had my camera with me for all of this!! Oh, well.