Mele Kalikimaka!

Mele Kalikimaka is the thing to say
On a bright Hawaiian Christmas day!

Or so the song goes.  We have a lot of updating to do, but at the same time, there isn't much to say.  Employed husbands are much happier, except when they're employed exactly during the days when I'm not employed, so that means our adventure time over the last three weeks has been cut down to, oh, zero.

My schedule was pretty normal.  We got a day or so off after the Pearl Harbor memorial ceremonies, and then we did a concert with a local middle school.  After that week, though, my schedule was pretty normal, and Stephen's was also pretty normal, which means I worked Monday-Friday playing Christmas carols around the base, and Stephen worked Wednesday-Sunday getting people out on boats.

We actually had Monday and Tuesday off together last week, but it was pouring buckets.  Those were some of the worst rain storms I've been through in a long time, and it only picked the two days we were off together, so I don't even have pictures to share about that!

Fortunately, Stephen finally got approved for his Hawai'i teaching license, and when he did the math, found out that averaging just three days a week would be better than his job at the marina, so we're excited for school to get started up again.  He already made contact with the principal at Kalaheo High School just up the street from us, so hopefully he can get on the list at that school.  The way it works out here, once you're on any school list, you're eligible to sub at all the schools on the island, and it's a small island.  If he does really well, we'll look at picking up an island beater (that would be a car...) so the commuting isn't an issue.

On to the pictures, since that's why you're all here anyway...

 Santa definitely made his presence (presents?) known!  Amazon Prime is the best thing ever!  Maybe it's something about not having any snow, or any cold, or any wintery anything, that made it feel necessary to make the Christmas happen.  And we did.















Stephen is being jolly, in case you couldn't tell...



Most people I work with went home to the mainland for the holidays, so Stephen and I had a quiet Christmas Eve in.  We had a friend over for dinner, and I tried to make a whole Lithuanian shebang.  I don't know if I got all the details right, but I made beet salad, silke(s), a bacon-less kugelis (Stephen was glad I had the meatless reason, because he was kinda mad when I said I wasn't putting bacon in it), and baked fish, and I also supplied some black bread, smoked salmon, and cooked veggies from Whole Foods that completely didn't go with the meal but we all thought were a welcome addition.  I didn't have time to make my favorite, the cranberry pudding, but our friend had a German stollen that his grandparents sent from a bakery in his hometown, so we thought that sufficed for dessert.  I also made some spiced wine that we all enjoyed.  Turns out using actually decent wine makes for decent spiced wine, even when you're missing spices.  Who knew?

We also all watched Scrooge together, and now we've indoctrinated a new person to the hilarity that is the Albert Finney musical.  I don't even know if he actually liked it (except he loved the Ghost of Christmas Present), but I don't care, it was still fun!

Christmas morning was a lot of fun!  Technology is wonderful!  We Skyped with my family first while we opened presents, which was so neat and so fun!  We finally have a nice desk, so one of the last piles of clutter has been organized and a Blu-Ray player so we can stream movies and shows out to our lanai.  Cuz, you know, just sitting outside isn't always enough.

When we were done opening presents with my family, we then Skyped with Stephen's family and went through the same process, opening the gifts we got for each other.

Well, I supposed I don't really need to go through a play-by-play of everything we got.  I make it sound like we came away with the motherlode of stuff, but really we just ended up with a nice, condensed Christmas of only things we really wanted or needed, plus a lot of chocolate, which messed with my plans to make banana-macadamia pancakes.  Le sigh.  :-)

Christmas Day was actually the first beautiful day of the week, so we went down to the beach and yes, we saw a TON of people sunbathing and wearing Santa hats.  It was really cheesy.

Then Stephen went back to work, and I ensued being bored.  I tried to make the most of it.

In the picture on the left, I went down to the base and rented a Stand-Up Paddleboard (aka SUP) and went around the bay.  It was overcast, but fun.  I think that was on Friday, if anyone really cares.  I'm a lot better at SUPing than I am at surfing.  In the picture on the right, which was just on Saturday, I was bored enough that I rode my bike down to the marina (about a half-hour trek from our place) and joined Stephen on a kayak for his lunch break.  He gets an hour, so that's just enough time to get the kayak, go a decent way out, and then come back.  Like I said, I was BORED.  Sunday morning, we took my new TRX down to Kailua Beach Park before sunrise, tied it to a tree, and I showed Stephen some of the basic moves before I dropped him off at work.  I was too tired from the early morning wake-up and too lazy to feel like doing anything other than reorganizing the place after our Christmas feast, so that was that.

Today, I had to get up for work again, and again, it was Stephen's day off.  He drove me to work since it was only going to be a half day, we both got some good practice time in on our instruments, and then we met up with a friend of Stephen's from the Army School of Music and went to hike Koko Head, which is near Hanauma Bay.  It was a beautiful day for climbing a million stairs!

Here is a view from the trip up.  They're not really stairs, they're railroad ties for when they needed to get supplies up to the lookout point at the top.  Now we just walk up them like stairs.  I can't seem to find any other information about them online, but maybe Stephen can fill that in later.

A view of Hanauma Bay

I don't know what I'm looking at

Standing on top of some lookout ruins with Hanauma Bay in the background

Hug a random cactus

The railroad bridge everyone fears

Sheri and I crawled on it

So yes, even with the three super rainy days, there's still no shortage of sun and beautiful views.  Oh, and on the way back, we drove along the eastern shore, and right near Bellows AFB, I got an amazing treat!

A coconut!

It's a touristy thing to do, but on the side of the road, a guy had set up his coconut stand.  So you buy a coconut and he hacks it open with a machete and provides a straw.  If you've ever had the trendy-popular coconut water from the health food stores, well... it tastes like crap compared to this.  Don't even bother.

Well, that's all I have for now.  This is probably the last post of our crazy year, so Happy New Year, be safe, and we'll see you again in 2015!