Mele Kalilkimaka 2015

This past Christmas we were lucky enough to go to Hawaii with Marel's family. We stayed in a big house on Laie Point on the North Shore of Oahu. This is the view we were greeted with as soon as we got to the house.

We tried to make it feel a little bit like Christmas. We brought our stockings and we made a bunch of paper snowflakes beforehand to take with us for decoration.

We all chipped in to make a delicious Christmas dinner with a Hawaiian-style ham as the centerpiece.

On Sunday while we were there we went to church near the temple, then went to the temple visitors' center where they had a display of all different types of Christmas trees. The girls (and Billy) of course liked the Hawaiian style tree the best.

Marel and I celebrated our 10th anniversary while there, we left the kids for a night and went off by ourselves. While out we went to a Buddhist temple up by the hills, and had some delicious Hawaiian barbecue at a food truck.

One day we went to the Dole Pineapple plantation and enjoyed some pineapple foods, ice cream floats, and candies.

On New Year's Eve we went to the Polynesian Cultural Center where we learned about and did activities and crafts from the cultures of the Pacific, and Caleb made friends with a duck. We ended the day with a lu'au and a theatrical dance performance.

Here the kids are showing us their best hula poses (and haka pose, because Balo is too manly to do the hula) before we all had to go back home.

Of course we went to the beach every day while there, but we'll talk about that in the next post.

Moose & Thanksgiving

Here we are beginning our annual blog catch-up. Here is a post we started months ago but never posted. It's from November. We had a couple of moose hanging out around our place. The kids enjoyed watching them as always, and Caleb was extra sad to see them go.

How does he look in Sabrina's glasses?

For Thanksgiving we had a larger group than we've ever had before, but that just meant there were more pies to sample!

Omaha in the Fall

After several days in Minneapolis, we drove down to Omaha. Here's Caleb eating dinner at a rest stop in Iowa.

One day while there we visited Uncle Evan at work at Union Pacific.

Then we went to the Children's Museum. They had a superhero themed exhibit, so the girls got to make masks and capes, which they were very proud of, and wore for the whole rest of the day.

Later that day we went to see the trains at the entrance of the city. When you're driving into Omaha on the interstate from Iowa, these two trains from different time periods are on the bluff overlooking the highway. They look impressive from the highway, but you really get a sense of scale standing beside the engines.

After that we went to cousin Emery's birthday party. It was a minion theme.

Although she looks like a zombie minion here, Sabrina actually is looking "at an apple on top of my head."

Another day we went out to a farm and orchard for some fresh apple cider slushies, apple and pumpkin doughnuts, to walk around the pumpkin patch and corn maze, and to take a tractor ride through the apple trees.

There was also a little playground there. Celia, as usual, showed off her prodigious skill on the monkey bars.

Caleb had a little trouble with the slide, though. I think it was a little too steep for him.

He was a little more at home in the tire tunnel.

That night we had a birthday party for Sabrina.

She had very specific requests for her birthday cake. She wanted a purple cake with purple frosting and an orange Jack Skellington face that said "Happy Birthday Sabrina" in the mouth. I think we pulled it off pretty well.

In keeping with the Halloween theme for the party, the kids made some Lego Halloween decorations. The main one the kids worked on for a while was this graveyard.

We also had an epic glowstick dance party in the basement.

Just a few days after we got back to Alaska it was Halloween, so we carved pumpkins. (Next year we'll probably need to carve one for Caleb, too.)

Sabrina wore two costumes this year. She went as Ariel to preschool.

Then both girls dressed as "vampire princesses" on Halloween night. They were very excited about the black hair dye and makeup...sort of. Sabrina hated the way the fake blood felt on her chin so she wiped it right off. They both only kept the fake teeth in for a few minutes. Then it took 4 or 5 washes to get all the dye out of their hair, and it turned our bathtub black for weeks. So we decided against the spray hair dye for the future. Caleb was an adorable little pumpkin.

Then a few days after Halloween we had some snow, so the girls thought it would be fun to run around in their swimsuits before then went to swimming lessons.