Happy Valentine’s Day!

Aloha, everyone!

It’s Valentine’s Day, the day of love … which coincidentally, also happens to be Carla’s & my wedding anniversary!  Although we have another busy day at IOLANI, we’ll be joining our friends Wayne & Susan Miyao later for dinner.  Their anniversary is also on Valentine’s Day and they were kind enough to invite us to join them at Alan Wong’s to celebrate.   Wayne was part of our Hawai’i delegation that went up to the Tohoku area of Japan back in late October, and has been a great friend and supporter to me and my boys.

Now I’m sure some of you are wondering why I .. uh, we chose Valentine’s Day to get hitched … and it wasn’t only because it was the most romantic day!  You see, I thought I could “kill to birds with one stone”, meaning I’d only need one gift instead of two (anniversary and Valentine’s).  Well, it sort of backfired on me because I now had to try and come up with a REALLY special gift every anniversary!  The good news is that we’ve now been married so long that there are no more “special” gifts left … only me!  (I sure hope Carla’s not reading this!!  hahaha!!)

And finally … our Hiroshima family is coming to town!  Our cousins Tadao and Erika Nomi are arriving tomorrow morning for a 5-day visit.  It’ll be great to see them again and I know my mom is very excited … she hasn’t seen them since they were last here in 2009 as part of a film documentary about our family.  I won’t bore you with the details, but it was an amazing story about my mother’s journey to find her family roots and in the process, discovered relatives she never knew she had.  Pretty awesome …

I hope you all have a wonderful Valentine’s Day!!

Aloha, “D”