Mele Kalikimaka- it means we hope you come and visit soon ; )

This year Christmas was full of several new traditions for John and I, and many fewer miles traveled. It’s crazy how we have come to miss those long hours in the car driving between Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the traffic we miss (we get more than enough of that here) we miss the adventure of the open road, new music, and plenty of time to just drive and talk.

This was our second Christmas as a married couple, but the first one where we really had money to get each other gifts. It’s not really about the things we got or the money we spent, but more about being able to treat each other with those gifts.

It’s been such a blessing to have two incomes again. (In our first year of marriage we only both had an income for 3.5 months.) Aside from what we got for each other and our immediate families we did send out a few small packages to friends. Here’s my little Christmas elf working hard on the ornaments we made and sent out. 

 In our efforts to get ourselves into the Christmas Spirit when its sunny and 80 degrees outside we decided to go with a real tree this year. With the help of some of my favorite DIY blogs we outfitted the tree with all homemade ornaments. Our living room has taken on a monochromatic blue scheme so we kept the tree to shades of blue and white.

 It was such a relief to finally get all of the gifts packed up and ready to be mailed!

Aside from gifts, we sent out a Christmas card that John designed:

 Well wouldn’t ya know after I came home and showed the boy that cool O’clock watch I found a few weeks back he was just as thrilled about them as I was… so thrilled in fact, that he bought us both a few. (sort of a Christmas present to ourselves, from ourselves?)

Just in case you were wondering- when you are supposed to be taking pictures like this:

and instead take a picture like this:

 the appropriate reaction will most likely be something like this:

Followed by a swift kick in the pants!

In case we haven’t overloaded you with pictures this post, we’ll leave you with our newest and most enjoyable holiday tradition. Christmas Eve homemade sushi!

 So we got a little carried away with all the rolls we wanted to make… good news is leftover sushi is just as good the next day!

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For those of you that stayed with us, here’s a few sneak peek pics of our apartment, and some proof that I’m becoming fully domesticated :)

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas

So if you know us you probably know John’s love for all things white. On the other hand color is kind of my thing…or at least it was. I know, I was the one set out to convince him why color was so much better- but i think i’m giving in. While organizing lists for our christmas wishes this year I kept noticing a trend in mine. WHITE. So I thought I’d share a few things that caught my eye in my holiday search this year…

 I’d enjoy one of these… or all of them- I love the matte finish

:)
Although I don’t really anticipate getting all of these items as gifts or with my own money (especially since I haven’t told anyone about these little loves until now) I found it oddly refreshing that the items from West Elm I chose were listed under objects. Because that’s all they are…

*All pictures are linked back to their original location :)

http://www.westelm.com/products/pure-white-ceramic-vase-collection-a760/?pkey=cvaseshttp://www.westelm.com/products/ceramic-owls-a931/?pkey=cobjects

Keeping up with keeping up with us...

For those of you who want to keep up with the blog but don’t want to have to check our blog daily to see if we’ve posted I thought I’d share how I keep up with blogs. This way- you’ll know when we update and you don’t have to keep checking back and being disappointed when there’s nothing new and undoubtedly exciting to read.

Because my personal and blog email are through Google I use Google Reader. You can access the Reader here..

 If you don’t have a Google account it may prompt you to sign up for one. No worries it’s free! For anyone with a Gmail account it’s just an added feature available. So once you get the signing up or logging in squared away you’ll see a screen similar to this:

 If you open up another window or tab on the internet, go to our blog, or any blog you’d like to add to your reader, and copy the URL. Back on the Reader tab you’ll click the box with the plus sign next to Add a subscription. Paste the URL and as long as Reader can recognize the URL as a blog it will start compiling all of the blogs that you set up to view. Once you’ve added a blog subscription the Reader brings it into under the Subscriptions tab and automatically post the 10 most previous posts on that blog. When a blog you follow has a new post the title of the blog will be bolded and the number of unread post from that blog will be in parenthesis. for example:

yes.. I have myself on my own Reader. Give me a break I had to make sure it was working! Also it makes me feel like our blog is legit!
So you can keep adding subscriptions to your hearts content. It’s pretty straightforward, but if you get hung up just shoot me an email and I’ll see if I can help.

Kuli'ou'ou Ridge Trail

Since we moved out here I’ve been dying to find a trail to take us back into the high interior of Oahu.  The mountain range that rises behind Honolulu is almost always capped by clouds and its sharp peaks are divided by deep green rain forest valleys that stretch back into the range.  This morning we had a big breakfast and drove about twenty minutes to the East side of the island to hike the Kuli’ou’ou Ridge Trail, which didn’t disappoint.
The hike was two and a half miles one way that started in a low valley and proceeded up to a high ridge eventually summiting one of the medium height peaks.  The rain forest was beautiful on the way up, changing from the low tropical valley, to a mid range of evergreen type trees, and eventually changing back into more tropical vegetation as we neared the summit.  We experienced a short but drenching rainstorm about halfway up but luckily we were just passing the trails only shelter.  We stopped in to have a granola bar and wait out the shower.  The trail was muddy and slick and the clouds were always threatening more rain, but luckily none delivered.  As we neared the top, the clouds eventually completely enveloped the peak, and so unfortunately it was a white out at the summit.  While we were disappointed that we didn’t get to see the view, it was still a cool experience.  Standing inside a cloud felt pretty otherworldly, complete silence in a world of white.
Hope you enjoy the pictures, thanks for reading!

Posted by John

The valley ahead is where we’re headed!

Snack time.

The rain lasted about fifteen minutes and made an already muddy and slippery trail even more so.  We got lucky that we were right next to this shelter when the rain started.

 A look up through the thick tropical foliage.

 An impressive tree.  I don’t know what kind it is yet but I’m hoping to get a hold of a Hawaiian plant identification book soon.

 Looking across the valley shows the clouds resting on the neighboring peaks.

 The view to the ocean was pretty incredible.  Hard to believe there is nothing out there for a few thousand miles!

 Starting to lose visibility.

 Rach being mischievous… typical.

 The end of the world?

Some local wildlife. 

Thanksgiving Weekend

Thanksgiving was quite a challenge this year. The morning started with a pretty strong bought of homesickness for both of us. Thankfully we didn’t have to spend the day alone. Rich and Elizabeth invited us over for a late Thanksgiving lunch! We pulled some recipes to fix, we were supposed to prepare sauteed apples, honey glazed carrots, sweet potatoes, pureed squash and a chocolate and pumpkin pie. We got off easy seeing as Rich and Elizabeth wanted to tackle the turkey and stuffing and a few other sides. As usual (for me) what started out as well planned cooking turned into one big mess! John took on the sweet potatoes (his favorite) and he cut and prepared the apples and carrots.

I worked on the pies from scratch.

The pumpkin pie turned out tasting great but as John so graciously put it, it looked like I literally butchered the pie. I kept having to check if it was finished inside so I kept poking it and by the time it was finally done there were knife marks all over it! For some reason it ended up taking almost an hour longer to bake than the recipe said… So onto the chocolate pie.. Who knows what went wrong there! It just never set. So after all of that I didn’t have time to let the squash bake for an hour at 400. Luckily all of John’s dishes turned out great! So we left without the squash or the chocolate pie :( Turned out fine because we had so much food it was hardly missed. Better luck next year I hope!

The rest of our weekend was spent exploring the island.

We went to the Bishop museum on Saturday morning with Rich and Elizabeth and then to have lunch at a fresh fish market. We learned a lot about the history of Hawaii and the native people. We have been so spoiled with the amazing seafood here!

Later in the afternoon we went on a waterfall hike and found a trail we can’t wait to share with our friends when they come visit!

On Sunday we hiked Koko Head Crater (which reminded me a lot of climbing the Great Wall, the steps were very uneven and it was a very steep climb)

What we actually hiked was up the train tracks for the supply car from WWII. So we were walking on the rails and the cross- ties to get to the top. It was challenging, but well worth it when we reached the top!

We also hiked the crater that surrounds Hanauma bay. That’s the bay on the left side of the picture, we hiked from the middle of it all the way around to where the waves were crashing on the far side.

Koko Head Crater is the tallest peak in this picture.

I’m really looking forward to our next hiking trip. We’ll be getting a new charger for the Nikon in this week, so we’ll finally get to take real pictures of everything.. until then the phone pictures will have to do.