Dec 2023- Mele Kalikimaka!

It was so fun to experience Christmas in Hawaii and take a break from our regular schedule! We got to enjoy the island like visitors do.  

We did so many things this month that this is only the second half of December-first half is the previous blog post.

We were invited to a music professor's house to experience their family's Advent traditions. Every Sunday during the month of December they invite about 5 families over for finger foods and then a music program. First they light the candles of advent and recite a poem.

Then it's the music program, where everyone has brought instruments and each family chooses a Christmas song for everyone to sing together. There are some really talented people here, including another music professor who was there that night. It was so fun and reminded me of my family's own Christmas music programs growing up.

Watching Audrey dance to Let It Go and taking it so seriously, the best. I love this age for things like this.

Audrey's preschool had a dress up week, where each day had a theme. This day was "Ugly Sweater" and Audrey owns no sweaters or anything of the sort. Her one long sleeved shirt is the closest thing she has to a sweater, so we made her look Christmassy.

Audrey was SO excited that Santa came to her preschool! She came home with this picture and told me all about it. She couldn't' stop talking about it for days. "Mom, did you know that Santa's favorite song is Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer? We sang it really loud for him, and that's how he knew where to find us."

The property managers came and trimmed the coconut tree and took down all the coconuts. One time Coen picked up a coconut outside and it felt heavy as a bowling ball!  I asked my Hawaiian friend, "should we just never stand under a coconut tree? That seems so dangerous if one fell on you." She said, "Yes- a coconut can kill people if it falls on them, so when the coconuts are starting to look ripe, they'll come take them all down." The kids' last day of school was the coconut trimming day, and it made me nervous how the guy was so high up in the tree! He did have a safety belt around him and the tree, and something that helped his shoes stick into the tree. A video:

Since we didn't have any family parties, gatherings, etc to attend besides our one Advent party, I decided I had to step it up with the traditions and create some for our family. I decided the first night of Christmas vacation the kids would have a sleepover out by the Christmas tree. We watched a movie with popcorn, and the kids were so excited to sleep in the living room.

On Friday we went on our Costco errand + adventures. We stopped at the macadamia nut farm to let the kids whack a few macadamia nuts with rocks. Here's Audrey holding the macadamia nut once the first layer has been removed. 

Then we went to the mall (it had been so long since we've been in a mall!) and we did a little shopping  and then went to a Mexican restaurant. 

That evening we went to the Hukilau marketplace (which is at the PCC) for a Christmas lights night they were hosting. It was so fun, and best of all- all free! We rode the Polar Express around the PCC to see the Christmas lights.

Cute!

A video:

Mele Kalikimaka! 

We got to see Santa and our friends the Rappleyes were his elves.

We did a scavenger hunt and got prizes. Audrey's glasses in this picture make me laugh so hard!

Morning stroll at our beach:

Audrey plays outside so much, and never wears shoes- a true Hawaiian girl already. It's hard to tell in this picture but her noes and her legs and feet all have dirt smudged on them!

Speaking of no shoes, I sometimes see kids go to school with no shoes on. At all. The school does specify that you need to wear footwear on the day you have PE. All the kids wear sandals though, no tennis shoes to be seen here.

We had a lot of chickens around here, like the rest of Hawaii. We see mamas with their babies, and I always count the babies of each color (black and yellow), and then inevitably, the mama will loose a baby every couple of days until the babies have grown larger. Usually there are about 7 babies to start and they dwindle to 4 maybe. But this mama had 9, and didn't lose any for the longest time! Very impressive mama chicken! Here's a video of the baby chickens, after she had lost one:

We invited our friend over to decorate sugar cookies (we made them a second Saturday in a row!) I held her baby and put him to sleep like this, stretched out on my legs.

Christmas Eve outfits! It was nice to have church on Christmas Eve because we didn't have anything else to do :) 

Walking home from church on Christmas Eve with our neighbors:

We went to the Visitor Center on Christmas Eve. We watched the Christ Child there which was a nice way to fill time that day.

Brent took our individual pictures in front of the temple, just for fun.

We had chicken gnocchi soup for dinner and then we watched Claymation Christmas, at my insistence. Brent doesn't love it but I think it's the best little show! Audrey looked so cute watching it!

Then we had our spiritual part of the program where Brent reads Luke 2 and I read The Living Christ (or a part of it). 

The kids were so excited to set out the cookies and carrots for Santa and his reindeer. 

Coen totally cracked me up by labeling each reindeer's baby carrot. 

This video of Coen so excited that it's Christmas Eve reminds me of Andrew:

After the kids were in bed, Brent and I went over to his office where we had stashed some presents, to get them ready. 

On the way back after getting out of the car, I saw what I thought was a twig. I stepped over it and then thought, that wasn't there an hour ago. I turned on my flashlight to discover a giant Hawaiian centipede! Ack! I had heard of these- you have to be careful because their bite is venomous and extremely painful. 

Simple Christmas ready.

Christmas morning- the kids were SO excited!

They each just got two smallish things from Santa and one present from us. Since we are in a small house and we'll have to move our stuff somewhere, we decided to do a pretty small Christmas in terms of gifts, and then our larger present was going to Kauai together. 

The thing that I love about kids is that they're just as happy and excited with a few gifts as they are with many.

Ava happy with her new mug (from my mom) and hot chocolate:

After we opened presents we decided to head to the beach. We had been having some fairly cool, gray weather lately and Christmas was the first sunny day we had in a week or so. It felt so nice to go to the beach! We went to a bay about 15 minutes south of us.

We basically had it to ourselves. We had nowhere to be, and it was so relaxing and fun. 

A Christmas I think our kids will never forget!

Then our beach time turned into a family effort of catching crabs. There were so many tiny white crabs hiding in their holes, and we were laughing and chasing the crabs to catch them in our buckets. Brent was chasing a crab and it ran right in between my legs where I was standing and I screamed! In the end I think we caught like 10 crabs, and Ava and Coen took turns naming them. Coen and I kept watch over our crabs until we released them.  Here's a video of one of the first crab catches: 

After we had released the crabs, Ava turned to me and said, "Best Christmas EVER!"

Audrey made a sand birthday cake for Jesus.

After the beach, we came home and cooked our Christmas dinner- Costco spiral ham and mashed potatoes + sides. It was so much work to cook it and clean up, and we had so much leftover ham. That's when I decided big Christmas dinners are meant to be shared with extended family. Sniff sniff.

The day after Christmas I planned a special trip into Honolulu WITHOUT Costco shopping. Very special. First we went to see the many Christmas trees at the Honolulu city hall.

The trees were all decorated with a Hawaiian theme. This one has cans of spam on it!

This was a favorite- it's the volcanoes.

We saw Shaka Santa outside:

Then we walked around the grounds of the palace and the capitol building. These banyan trees are awesome:

This is a statue of the Queen Lili'uokalani who was the last sovereign monarch of the Hawaiian Kingdom until the US took over (and put her under house arrest?!). She is greatly revered here and was a talented song writer. One of the songs she wrote, Aloha 'Oe is added to the back of our hymn books, and we sing it in church as a goodbye song to people who are moving. 

Here's her palace:

After we toured around, I planned that we would get Chick Fil-A for dinner. We were all very excited about this since the kids had not had it since summer! As we were waiting for our food in the drive through, the worker handed Brent two ice cream cones. He told her that we didn't order those, but she said they accidentally made them too early, so they were giving them to us. Now the kids were double excited about Chick Fil-A.

We went to the beach, Ala Moana, to have a picnic. It was right at sunset and oh so beautiful! Off in the distance we could see Diamond head crater. There were no waves here, which was so different from the beaches by us.

The pure joy in Audrey's pose here!

A video of the happy kids:

After our Chick Fil-A picnic, we went back to the city hall area to see the Christmas lights and decorations.

The lights were OK, but we thought they're more impressive at BYUH! (Also why does Ava look like a teenager here?!)

Audrey is such a little mommy- her favorite activity is to play with her babies. She really loves it if I'll play with her and be the "dad", which drives Ava crazy.

We continued taking care of Rocket while his BYU student owners were on the mainland. We all got lots of kitty snuggles. This is the one and only cat I have ever held.

I worked a couple of the days between Christmas and New Years. Brent had the younger two at his office with him and I had Ava so that we could all get work done. We have to separate the kids or else they fight. Afterward, Ava and I stopped at a beach just north of us that I had never been to, but I drive past all the time. We watched surfers out there and Ava found shells.

In the meantime, Brent finished working and took the younger two to the PCC. Ava and I met him there for some dole whip and ice cream.

Brent's professor friend, Steve, offered to show us a hike just behind BYUH. It was pretty complicated to get there, so we were glad he was showing us! First we walked through a quarry area behind BYU buildings, and then we walked past farms- see the banana trees? 

Then we crossed a river and the hike started.

I counted that we crossed the river 13 times. The kids thought that was the best part of the hike and were very entertained by the crossings! Luckily we wore water shoes and sandals. But the one thing I forgot was bug spray! We got so many bug bites!

Our destination was Wailele Falls (about 1.5 miles each way). The pool at the bottom of the falls is very deep so you can jump off the rocks and swim.

Coen and Audrey just got in to their ankles but not much more since it was pretty cold, like a really cold swimming pool. Nothing like Oregon ocean or anything though. 

Brent and Ava were brave and jumped off the rocks and swam! 

Here's a slow-mo:

I just got my feet wet but didn't swim. Unless it's warm water or super hot outside, I prefer to watch :)

New Years Eve- I ordered a few decorations and noise makers from Target that entertained the kids. People in our neighborhood started lighting off their fireworks around 4, when it was still light outside! We went down the street and watched some of our neighbor's fireworks with the kids and we had to keep backing up. These were serious fireworks, and some seemed to be straight up TNT haha. After counting down to someone's midnight (but not ours) and putting the kids to bed, Brent and I watched TV and walked around our neighborhood some more, completely in awe of the amount of fireworks going off at 9, 10, 11pm. 

A few minutes before midnight, we went to the roundabout in front of the temple where there was a local student band playing, and all of Laie had gathered. At midnight, the amount of fireworks was unbelievable! So many houses around town setting off fireworks- none of it was sponsored by a city or anything. Fireworks are actually illegal here, so how everyone got their fireworks, I don't know. 

Here's a video of the fireworks still going strong 10 minutes after midnight. It was a spectacular show thanks to our Laie neighbors! I'm glad Brent convinced me to stay up for it, even though I tried to talk him into going to bed early. 

On New Years Day it was another beautiful sunny day so we went to the beach across from our house in the morning. I love this picture of Audrey:

When Ava goes to the beach, she gets covered in sand, every time. She plays hard! I don't know if you can tell, but the sand is all over her face and hair. A lot of the beaches around here have little spigots/showers where you can rinse off- a definite plus for the beach! Since our beach doesn't have one, we try to rinse off as best we can in the ocean, and then after we walk home, we use the spigot on the side of our house before going inside for showers. 

Brent and the kids spent a lot time working on this castle. Audrey is shouting "Happy New Year!" and throwing sand in this picture:

What a fun Christmas and New Year's Eve! There were definitely some moments of loneliness and feeling the weight of having to do all of the traditions on our own, but staying here really gave us the opportunity to just enjoy Hawaii and create so many memories. Next up will be our trip to Kuai. Stay tuned!