The Fletcher Ohana: 2012

From our Ohana to yours, we wish you all a very Merry Christmas!!!

Mele Kalikimaka is the thing to say on a bright Hawaiian Christmas day, but why is that the thing to say? Thanks to my Hawaiian words app on my iPhone, I knew that "mele" meant "chant" but that has nothing to do with "Merry Christmas". So I decided to do some research, and it turns out that "Mele Kalikimaka" is actually a phonetic translation of Merry Christmas and was not part of the original Hawaiian vocabulary!

"When the missionaries and other Westerners first brought the custom of Christmas to the islands the Hawaiians had difficulty pronouncing Merry Christmas and turned it into words that rolled more easily off their tongues."

"The phrase is borrowed directly from English but since Hawaiian has a different phonological system - Hawaiian does not have the /r/ or /s/ of English and doesn't have the phonotactic constraints to allow consonants at the end of syllables or consonant clusters - "Merry Christmas" becomes "Mele Kalikimaka""

During the holiday season, I've heard the locals use both phrases but since Bing specifically said it was the thing to say on a bright Hawaiian Christmas day, Mele Kalikimaka it is ;-)

We had a really nice Christmas today, continuing on with what is becoming a Christmas tradition for us: spending the day with friends when we can't be with family. The past two years we have not been able to fly home to spend Christmas day with our families, so instead we spent the holiday with our military family :-)

Last night we went to the children's Christmas Eve mass, which included a reenactment of the nativity story. It was a very interesting portrayal by the school kids, some of whom wore costumes and some of whom did not (just an example: Mary wore a cute green skirt, Joseph was in a white robe, and baby Jesus was a 6 month old little boy in a red t-shirt and diaper, haha!) But it was very cute and Noah only had to be taken out of church once (after he smacked his head on the back of the pew and started bawling...)

After mass we went over to our friends' house for dinner and a gift exchange with the kids. While we were there, Santa arrived with a present for each of them!

Noah giving Jack his gift

Avery drew Noah's name for the gift exchange and for the past week she had been telling us about how excited she was to give Noah his present that she picked out for him. She was so excited, in fact, that she stood there and watched Noah open his gift instead of opening her own present! :-D

Santa arrived and Noah ran off ;-)

There was a slight moment of panic when Santa announced that he was done handing out presents and it was time for him to go because Noah hadn't received a gift yet...luckily, after much prodding and insistence that their should be another present in his sack (we were the last stop of the night and I think Santa was ready to go home...) Santa looked under the stuffing in his sack and found Noah's gift! The little girls were very excited for Noah when Santa finally found his present!

We woke up on Christmas morning to find that Santa had brought Noah his very own tricycle and a Thomas bouncer thing (I think that's the technical name)!

Thomas!!!

When Noah first saw the tricycle he thought it was his friend Ian's, but he was very excited to hear that he now had one of his very own :D

Taking it for a spin

We were able to Skype with Grandma J and Aunt Cici (Sara) and Papa and Grandma Anita this morning! While we were Skyping with Papa and Grandma, Aunt Holly and Uncle Jeremy showed up so we got to "see" them, too! Noah loved getting to open his presents in front of an audience, and he loved ALL of his gifts!

Remote control firetruck from Aunt Holly and Uncle Jeremy!

"How the Grinch Stole Christmas" from Grandpa John

Noah loved his Thomas tent from Aunt CiCi!

Half way through opening presents, Noah decided he didn't want to wear pants anymore...

Our friends Josh and Tracy and their kids came over for a nice Christmas dinner this afternoon. It was my first time cooking a turkey, and I think it was a success if I do say so myself ;-) After dinner, we spent some time outside and even took a quick trip up to the berm to see if we could spot any whales.