I know you are all going to think it is ridiculous, but we still celebrate Christmas with Santa. It's not just because we have Ke'alohi now, because we even did this last year. My parent's motto is that as long as we still believe in Santa, he will come. Our Santa tradition is that we give him one cookie, milk and some carrots for the reindeer outside. And then outside, we set out a bucket of water and some reindeer … [Read more...]
Christmas Eve marks the beginning of our family traditions. The first tradition is the 5:30 mass at Holy Trinity Church, the church and school we went to when Kai and I grew up. It was packed and full of people celebrating Jesus' birthday. The mass was nice and we even got to see my second grade teacher, Mrs. Hamilton and Kai's kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Bierwert. After dinner we headed to our usual Christmas Eve … [Read more...]
To continue our quest to see friends and eat at all the best places on Hawaii, we met up with my friend Jody at O-Bok Korean Restaurant in Manoa. I can never find my favorite Korean BBQ dish, meat jun, on the mainland which makes me think that it might be a "local" Korean dish and not a truly Korean meal. Meat Jun is a thin piece a meat that is dipped in an egg bath and then fried. It's usually the only think I will order when I … [Read more...]
One of the things I love most about Hawaii is how family and friends oriented everyone is. All friends are family and all family are friends. Most of our friends back home have children. This year, since a couple more of us "multiplied" we decided to do a Secret Santa with the kids so everyone didn't have to get presents for everyone. We had a potluck Christmas party at Jessica's house where all of us brought the little ones to … [Read more...]
After we had lunch with Ryan and Gari-Ann we headed over to Kahalu'u to visit Aunties Nalani, Brittney and Kalena and Ka'eo. While we were there, Brittney, an amazing hair stylist and make-up artist at Regis, gave me a free haircut and eye brow wax! While we were off chopping my hair, everyone else was in the house playing with Ke'alohi and Ka'eo. Ka'eo was so cute to let Ke'alohi play with some of his toys and sit in his … [Read more...]
I think you might be getting the impression that whenever we go home to Hawaii, all it is about is food, beaches, family and friends. You would be right! When I plan our trips back home, I have a list of places I want to eat (and what to order), beaches I want to go to and people I want to see. Today, we grabbed lunch with my high school friends Ryan and Gari-Ann. We were all in band together at Kamehameha and have been … [Read more...]
Uncle Will is officially a 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Army! We are so unbelievably proud of Lucas' brother, Will, who also just graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in Anthropology and was commissioned this afternoon. We are very disappointed that we couldn't be there to celebrate with him, Allie (his girlfriend) and Lucas' parents since we are home in Hawaii for the holidays. Never the … [Read more...]
