Christmas in Kauai

Christmas with family in Kauai! Last Christmas my family decided that the next Christmas was going to be in Kauai! My family was welcomed to the Island with a nice tropical storm. 

I took my family to Hopii Falls! This was one of Callie's favorites from when she was here last time on the island. But with all the rain we were getting the waterfall was gushing more water than I had ever seen! Callie and I braved the jump while my mom frantically ran back to the car. We both survived and kind of wanted to do it again but didn't want Mom to have a heart attack. We also went to trivia at Chicken in a Barrell. We totally are telling ourselves we got second place. One of the categories was Greek letters. We studied all day so that we would be ready! The only reason we didn't get first place was because our team was really small and each Christmas item someone was wearing was an extra point. My mom rocked it on the music round. She knew almost every song. I loved seeing her sing all the songs she grew up with!  

When the rest of the family landed we went to snorkel at Lawai beach. We saw every fish there is to see in the sea. We stopped by the spouting horn on our way back and I think we will remember the passed-out druggy girl in the parking lot more than the blow hole. We couldn't believe how still she was sitting in her car. Her door was open and she was super slouched with her chin touching her chest. We had to stare for a while to make sure she was alive. When we saw her hand twitch we ran out of there. That girl is going to have serious back pain when she wakes up. 

We had a lovely Christmas Eve hanging out at the Villa after church. We took a nap by the pool read our books, watched the most amazing sunset, and had a wonderful Christmas Eve devotional about my Grandpa Manuel from my dad. We played bells, ate some yummy food, and watched Polar Express

We took about 200 photos of the sunset from our patio. I mean is that gorgeous or what? We did several different combinations. We had the best room in the whole villa! 

Ava said Merry Swiftmas and I just loved that. We kept finding our conversations leading back to Taylor Swift. We played lots of family games in the evening. 

I'm not so sure what happened in these photos but we laughed pretty hard once we saw it. 

Christmas day couldn't have been more amazing. We ate some yummy food opened gifts and swam in the ocean! Gavin, Callie, and I made a sandwomen. We kept joking all day that someone would ruin Christmas if they didn't participate in something. Ava kept trying to get everyone to eat a sandy chip through what are the Odds game. Thankfully Christmas was saved because everyone participated and Graham ate the chip. 

 

We thought our sandlady was kinda cute. Callie found some grass to make a skirt and I put fresh flowers on her head. We loved Sandy. There was the Chiefs game playing on TV that day and I think this was the first time I even thought about football on Christmas. Us girls were thrilled when the cameramen showed Taylor in the box cheering on Travis. 

Ava showed us a video of a kid saying can I pet your dog? Can I pet your dog? So when we saw this fella was on the beach that's all we could say. 

Graham wanted to play his ukulele at the beach and he sounded pretty good. We spent the rest of the afternoon swimming in the pool at the hotel. We went down the water slide, and even got Mom to play Chicken Wars for a minute! Gavin surprised me with Taylor Swift tickets in Singapore next spring!  I think I am in shock! 

We paddled up the Wailua River the next afternoon. We all paired up on paddle boards! Surprisingly we made it to the waterfall a lot quicker than I thought we would. We wish we had brought our snack though. 

Grayson was the only one saying he didn't want to get wet. But every time I looked at them paddling this is what I saw. Both boys in the river.. Glad I wasn't sharing their board.

The boys never made it to the waterfall.. The rest of us enjoyed the lovely walk and falls! Because of all the rain everything was so lush and green. 

We had dinner that night at Keoki's Paradise! Sooo yummy! We all wore our white dresses mom got us for Christmas! Keoki's has the best Hula pie in the whole world and carrot bread. 

We spent plenty of time at the beach, eating snow cones, and shopping on the southside. I think everyone wanted to buy everything from Poipu Surf. I get Kama'aina which is 10-20% off at different stores. My family was eating this deal right up. I probably went and checked out several times because people kept finding things they wanted. Everyone found something they loved. 

We loved seeing the Hawaiian monk seal and turtles at the beach! We had a family movie night one evening and my dad put on The Fall. We were literally laughing so hard the whole movie. It's about two punk teenage girls who climb to the top of a radio tower and get stuck. The girls say shi* every other ward. It honestly was hilarious. We had a good time watching that. 

The Grand Canyon of Hawaii! During the hike, my dad's wallet fell out of his pocket when he almost fell. When Ava was hiking back up the mountain she saw it lying on the ground. Lucky day for my dad! He was able to buy his yeti that night with the wallet! This is a Christmas I won't ever forget. I had the best time being with my family on my island. We laughed and laughed and it was fun having someone come to celebrate the holidays with us. A Christmas I will never forget. 

December times!

My December started off with a holiday party for all concierges on the island who work for Marriott worldwide. I was a bit bummed that we couldn't bring a plus one. I enjoy my co-workers but sometimes we are just not on the same level. I was worried about being trapped in a boring conversation for 4 hours. Turns out I was right. Everyone got drunk and to be honest I don't really think drunk people are that funny. The smell of alcohol makes me nauseous and I just don't enjoy seeing grown adults act like they are twelve again. We had some people standing on the tables whipping their napkins around their heads. While others were shaking their booty a little too much on the dance floor all while trying not to tip spill their fancy drink. I just didn't understand. The party wasn't a complete loss because I won the giveaway, I ate some really nice food, and I got to see some of my serious co-workers loosen up a little. 

I got a text one night from someone in the bishopric asking if I would speak on Sunday. I'm not one to say no ever so I agreed to it. I was a little frustrated they were asking me so late into the week I only had a few days to prepare. Non the less I got my talk done and was ready to speak. The morning of my talk I woke up at 8:38 and remembered that ward counsel is at 8:45am. I flew out of bed and just had time to brush my hair and teeth before throwing on a dress and sprinting out the door. When I walked into ward counsel I saw the Relief Society president holding some Lei's I just looked at them and thought how pretty. When I sat down everyone seemed extra excited to see me that day. Everyone was saying hi and smiling extra big. I thought that was odd but didn't think too much into it. Anyway afterward counsel, I was walking into sacrament and the bishop told me that I would be speaking with Elder Utchdort today... um, what? Then I remembered the leis and how happy everyone seemed to see me and that was because they were all just told who would be at sacrament meeting and who was speaking with him. I panicked for just a minute but then felt totally fine once the meeting started. I decided to just stick to what I had written and speak from my heart. I don't want to brag but I think I totally killed it on my talk. Everyone was laughing and I see could almost every single person looking at me the whole time. I would write down what Elder Utchdorf talked about honestly he was just talking about everything. After the meeting, someone told me that Elder Utchdorf told them out of all the times he had been to Hawaii my talk was the best talk he had ever heard. Someone else told me my talk was better than his. Another girl met me with tears and said my talk helped her so much. I emailed a copy to three people who stopped me on my way to yw's. I'm not going to lie I felt proud of myself and now I have a pretty cool thing I can share in two truths and lie. Just kidding. But honestly, this was an experience I won't ever forget. I was glad Gavin snagged a picture. 

November, Thanksgiving, and Gavin's 27th Birthday

November started with the cutest tea party at my friend Ashley's house for her birthday. We all wore cute dresses while eating bread and salads. We spent more time twirling under the sunset than eating. But hey let a girl do what she wants.  

 We both knew we would be working on Thanksgiving so making a feast that day was out of the question. I really wanted to have all my favorite homemade recipes. So we decided to have Thanksgiving on Monday when we were both off. We would prep and bake all day Sunday while we set up our tree and watched some Christmas movies. We were really looking forward to this. Unfortunately, we were wrapped into going to Elf the Musical which was cute but had some really cringe acting. On our way home Tony started overheating. We had to pull over and let him sit the rest of the night to cool off. Thank goodness a member of my ward was in Lihue and helped us get home. We came home around 9pm and were too tired to do anything. Which means the next day we did everything! 

We worked together from the start of dawn baking, cleaning, and putting up the Christmas tree! While we listened to tunes and had movies playing in the background. By 6 pm we had the holiday spirit in our house. Outside our landlord's boyfriend's daughter (Jessica) decked the house out with Christmas decor. We had a blow-up Santa and Frosty in the garage. Sparkly candy canes lined along the fence. And silver star in the middle of the house that shoots out scented bubbles that smelt like pines. Along with a whole lot of bright colorful flashy lights on every other inch of the roof and gutter. The holidays had officially started! We had the fire going on our TV and a feast to eat. We made sausage stuffing, mac and cheese, sweet potatoes, Rhodes rolls, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, and gravy along with a Costco pumpkin pie. We were in heaven. We invited Savannah over to eat with us. After dinner, we were so full we decided to start a Christmas movie on the couch. Gavin and I were seriously so full we didn't have the energy to do anything else. We were in a serious food coma we passed out on the couch a few minutes into the movie Home Alone.I must have been in such a deep sleep because I don't even remember when I fell asleep during the movie. All I know is I could hardly open my eyes when the credits started rolling. I felt so bad for Savannah that we totally left her hanging.

We feasted on our leftovers all week long. It honestly was a really fun Thanksgiving I didn't even mind working on Thanksgiving day later that week. Gavin, I sat in the cafeteria that afternoon eating watery potatoes, cold stuffing, and not-so-good turkey under the fluorescent lights. Because we work at The Sheraton we decided that we wouldn't let our work schedule keep us from doing any of the fun holiday traditions that we like. If one of us works on a holiday we will pick a different day that month to celebrate. It's worked out great. We haven't been stressed about missing out on anything because we celebrate in the way we want when we can! I did go over to a Friendsgiving for dessert after work on Thanksgiving with a bunch of our couple of friends. Poor Gavin got stuck at the hotel. The restaurants ran out of turkey and Thanksgiving food they ended up stealing the employee cafeteria food to feed the guests... I think that caused a lot of problems. 

November ended with Gavin's 27th Birthday! Gavin had to work on his birthday so I made sure I had special lunch for him in the cafeteria. I had a friend drop it off right before. We had some Poke, soda, and snacks. That night we were both so sugared out from our Thanksgiving fest we had bean dip for cake and played games. We of course celebrated Gavin all weekend long. One of his mission friends came to town so we went on a hike in Waimea Canyon and ended the birthday weekend with pizza and golfing. But Gavin turned 27 and I couldn't love a man more. He is everything good and brings so much happiness into my life. My life wouldn't be the same without him. Cheers to 27 years of living and many more to come.