Shopping madness

Yes, even the stores in Kauai are filled with craziness right before the holidays!

Afternoon at the park

Last Saturday we met some friends at a park in Koloa. The kids had a great time on the playground and running around chasing the roosters!

Noah and Olivia

Just hanging out

Eli and Noah chasing the roosters

Noah looking for the roosters he'd just chased away

Noah, Eli & Olivia

Daddy's turn to have fun!

New Tricks

Noah has found some new ways to ride his quad around the neighborhood

Lights on Rice (Christmas parade #2)

Noah and I attended our second Christmas parade of the season on December 7th in Lihue (on Rice Street, thus the name). This was definitely a much more traditional Christmas parade than the one at the mall, and was very cool for 2 reasons. First, the parade took place after the sun went down so every float used Christmas lights as part of their decorations. Second, and the most exciting part of this parade, was that Daddy was in it!!!

PMRF (our base- Pacific Missile Range Facility) had a float and Ely was one of the "lucky" ones who got to walk with the float. I think the guys actually had a much better time than they expected, and I know Ely loved handing out candy to the kids :D

Noah and I waiting for the parade to start.  I had to bribe him with an M&M to get him to smile for this picture! I think this is his, "There Mom, I smiled so give me my M&M!" face :-D

Here are some pictures of a few random floats that had neat light displays

Of course, there were some local bruddahs' trucks in this parade, too!

One of the high school marching bands had their own flood lights. They were so bright that the street lights all turned off as they passed!

You can't tell from this picture, but Noah was "marching" along with the band

I think every other float in this parade had a Santa, but I don't remember seeing any Aloha Santas this time.  However, the police department had Santa on a Segway carrying a gun! 

Noah loved all the candy they were handing out! Every time I looked over at him he had managed to sneak another piece!

PMRF float:

That's Ely on the right :)

The Skipper with Mr. & Mrs. Clause

Pretty sure we were the only float with a "missile" ;-)

There's Daddy!!!

There were definitely some "awes" from the crowd during these photos :)

Sneaky sneaky

A box of Christmas presents arrived for Noah the other day from my Aunt Shari (thank you!), and I figured it would be better to leave them in the box until Christmas so I wouldn't have to worry about Noah opening them early. Little did I know he would enlist Mickey's help to sneak into the presents anyways!

Christmas Cards

My awesome friend Heidi dabbles in photography so she offered to take some photos for us for our 2012 Christmas card! I'm hoping you have all received your Christmas card by now, but if you haven't send me your address and I'll cross-check it with my file and figure out what happened.

Here are some of the photos that didn't make the cut.  Yes, I'm posting a lot of photos, but I couldn't narrow it down any further because I am just assuming you all want to see each and every photo, right??? Really, I had a hard enough time narrowing it down from the 140 images Heidi originally gave me!

That red dirt you see on his feet ladies and gentleman is the red dirt of Kauai that clings to everything! 

After some googling, I found this interesting piece of information:

"Kauai is known for its red dirt. This substance is basically rusted volcano rock, turned into dirt over millions of years. Because Kauai is the oldest of the Hawaiian Islands there is more erosion there and therefore, lots of rusty red dirt. The soil's red color is due to the fact that it contains a large amount of iron oxide.

Kauai locals recall being scolded as children for getting the red dirt on their clothes. Parents knew that once clothing was stained with the local dirt, it was stained for life. They knew of no way to remove the stubborn redness. In fact, the red dirt is well known for its strong staining property and is the reason behind the Hawaiian custom of removing one's shoes when entering a home." http://realdirthawaii.com/   

Somehow my post on Christmas card photos has turned into an informative session on dirt...haha! It's true, though, everyone takes their slippahs (aka flip flops) off before entering a home.  In fact, the school children actually take them off at school before going into the classroom!

Lots of the tourists get suckered into buying "red dirt shirts" that are the color of the dirt here.  I say "suckered" because I personally have no desire to wear a shirt this color...but maybe that's just me and my skin tone ;-)

Here's a little blurb I found about the history of the red dirt shirt:

"On September 11, 1992 Hurricane Iniki hit the Hawaiian island of Kauai, causing nearly 2 billion dollars in damage. Among the businesses affected was our small screen print shop. All of our white shirts waiting to be printed were drenched with water and stained with Red Dirt blown in from the storm. Instead of throwing out the shirts, we decided to dry them and print them as they were. The T shirts, stained with the ultra iron rich Red Dirt soil and printed with Hawaiian based themes, became a hit with the locals and visitors alike.

Our three year stay on Kauai is going to be an educational experience for all ;-) Anyways, back to the photos!

This is Ely's favorite Santa photo :-D

The winning photo for our Christmas card :-)