Happy Holidays! (with lights on)

We hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas this year! Although we missed all of our NY friends and family terribly (as well as others in other parts of the country), we had a great day here in Honolulu. The kids woke us up around 7:15 - not too bad. In homage to New York, we made latkes for breakfast before letting the kids rip into their presents, something they did with the enthusiasm of Godzilla demolishing Tokyo.

Daniel, before gift opening, in Spiderman shirt and pose

Sophie and Mom

Daniel's favorite presents are a Cars game for the Wii, from his Uncle Gene and Aunt Julie, and a kids' laptop. Sophie's says she likes all her Christmas presents, including a wide-eyed Japanese-looking doll with the unfortunate name of "Poupette." (Cue nonstop laughter by Ryan, who notes that it's not just any ol' doll, it's a doll that has fragrance!  Poupette the Smelly Doll!!)  Both kids have also spent an awful lot of time playing Whack a Mole, a truly inspired game of banging large, noisy rodents into submission. Too bad it doesn't work for New York subway rats.

Daniel with his dog bank from Aunty Kitty, our next-door neighbor


Daniel playing tee ball (a gift from Dad) in our garage

Kellen and Rocky competing at Whack a Mole

After gift-opening, we spent the morning at Kahala Nui, a retirement home not too far from us, where both DeShannon and Rocky work in the activities department. DeShannon led the sixth floor residents in a game of Christmas bingo, and Sophie and Daniel joined in, with Sophie helping our tablemates hunt for their squares of reindeer, Christmas lights, and snowmen. Daniel won one round, but everyone got prizes eventually. Both Sophie and Daniel picked cheetos for their prizes. And really, how much more Christmas-y can you get than that?

We spent the rest of the day cleaning, napping, and playing with our new toys. For Christmas dinner, Ryan and DeShannon deep-fried yet another turkey, and learned this startling fact: deep-frying turkey in pieces is not any faster than cooking a whole bird. Most of our on-island cousins, plus our neighbor Kitty, joined us for dinner, and later Rocky treated us to a mini-concert of Les Mis classics.  Sophie sang "Silent Night."

The night after Christmas, we survived our first Hawaii blackout. The lights went out about 6:45. We coped by getting out our candles and flashlights and putting the kids to bed. The entire island, except for one neighborhood on the Windward side, was without power for most of the night. It was an eerie experience that really made us aware of the isolation of living on an island. I bet the astronomers on Mauna Kea loved it, though - usually the light pollution of Honolulu blocks their view of the stars.

Blackouts are a common experience in Hawaii, because of the limited number of power plants on each island -- it's not like on the mainland, where you can divert power from numerous other sources. Our power finally came on at about 9:30 the next morning, and the only causualties were a pizza we couldn't put in the fridge, and Sophie's outrage at having to go to bed earlier than usual.

So that was our Christmas. We hope yours was as fun, and as filled with family and friends (and perhaps somewhat more filled with electricity). We are eagerly looking forward to our first New Year's Eve here. Fireworks are a huge tradition, and everyone basically tries to blow up the island. For under $15, you can buy a 22 foot-long string of 30,000 firecrackers. And that's just for the amateurs.

Best wishes for a Happy New Year! We love and miss you all, especially around the holidays!

Just to make you jealous . . .

. . . a few photos from our garden:




Let you think otherwise from these photos, we do have seasons here in Hawaii. The rainy season is now upon us in all its splendid sogginess. We did get to the beach last Sunday afternoon during an uncharacteristically clear day, but we've given up entirely on trying to line dry our clothes outside due to the frequency and violence of the cloudbursts. We can't complain - we know what the weather is like in NY in December. Besides, here you can still wear slippers when it's raining, which eliminates problems like soaked sneakers and smelly socks.


Ryan's small vegetable garden has finally borne fruit. Three, to be exact. All tomatoes. A few more, plus one miniscule eggplant, are in the process of ripening. Of the three tomatoes, Daniel has eaten two of them as though they were apples: raw, and plain, biting directly into them. When I was Daniel's age, I thought tomatoes were for slicing little mouths into, squeezing really hard and pretending to make them throw up. Oh, wait, I do that now. Never mind.

My Aunty Linda (my Dad's sister) stayed with us for a few days last week. She was in town to see my cousin Grant, who is an assistant band director here on the island. She and Grant both came to Sophie's ballet performance. I think she took video. If I can track it down, I'll post it.


Sophie is finishing up her last week of school before a three-week long Christmas break and is eagerly awaiting Sunday, when the children's choir performs their musical. She asked last week how long it was until the show, and when we told her a week, she complained, "Aww, that's so long!" She's doing an ensemble number dressed up as a cheerleader, pom poms and all, and has a few solo lines in one of the final songs.

Daniel refused to join the other kids on stage, but he's been singing along to Sophie's practice CD. He's a little confused about some of the lyrics, though. Sophie's "cheerleader" song is called "Mighty God," and the second verse begins like this:

Who can set the prisoner free,
Who walked on water, calmed the sea?

Daniel's version?

Who can send the Christmas tree?

So when you ask, "Daniel, who can send the Christmas tree?" he answers right away. "God!"

At least he's connecting God and Christmas there somehow.

A few weeks ago we took a drive up Tantalus, which is a long winding road up through the mountains. At the top, you have a spectacular view of Diamondhead, the ocean and the city. Ryan was trying to get a good shot for the City Church website. It was a little too overcast for a perfect photo, but you can get a good sense of one of Hawaii's famous views.


I meant to download and post a few more photos (one of Aunty Linda and Sophie and maybe one of our Angel Tree collection day at church), and revise this blog a bit, but since I somehow managed to accidentally publish it already (I really think blogger.com was born out of a fiendish plot to drive HTML-challenged perfectionists INSANE), I'm just going to gather my dignity and finish up for now.

Stuffed (and I don't mean the turkey)

So, I'm finally sitting down to blog again. It's been a whirlwind few weeks, complete with THREE Thanksgiving turkeys (one roasted the traditional way, one smoked, and one deep-fried), a piano recital, a ballet recital, a birthday party or two, a baby shower (not ours), my Aunty Linda visiting from Hilo, and way too many leftovers for any one family to reasonably consume. And yet consume them we did. I think there may be a few scraps of ham left in our fridge, and a few tupperwares of turkey soup in our freezer, but other than that, if you cut us, we might bleed poultry and sweet potatoes, along with vast quantities of butter.

DeShannon and his favorite naked decapitated bird. Not quite as visceral as that Thanksgiving morning video of Sarah Palin at the turkey farm, but still not a pretty sight.


Uncle Soko brandishing his Thanksgiving booty. Cousin Kellan contributing to the dignity of the moment.

The Fam celebrating Carrie's birthday.

Back row to front, left to right: Grant, Kellan, Guy
Aunty Marvalee, Kyle, Christy (Guy's girlfriend), Jan
Sophie, Carrie, Daniel, Uncle Soko
(Aunty Debbie and Uncle Karl are somewhere around - it's their house.)

Sophie (who had not gone shopping with her dad) tried to help me guess what my present from Ryan was. "Chocolate?" she ventured. Daniel (who had gone shopping) said, "No, silly, it's shirts!"


Daniel blowing bubbles at Aunty Debbie and Uncle Karl's house - a very serious pursuit.


Sophie performing in her Worship Ballet recital on Sunday night. She is getting to be quite the seasoned performer: no stage fright at all, even though a few weeks ago, she had to be bribed with dessert just to play piano for our fellowship group.


The gals in purple dancing to "Joy to the World."


Season's greetings from Sophie and her face.