First lesson as a newbie blogger...

DON’T START A BLOG THE WEEK BEFORE CHRISTMAS!!  

(or moving into a new place, or New Year’s Day, or any other big events in your life)

DUH.

Sorry for anybody who felt left hanging.  Totally a bad call on my part, but I’m so happy to have something to come back to now that Flyboy and I are finally getting settled and figuring out what “normal” is going to be like here in Hawaii.

What have we been up to, you ask?  Hmm…well, let’s backtrack to December.  We were living in a hotel in downtown Waikiki while we looked for the perfect place.  Real estate in Hawaii is pretty crazy – the good rentals evaporate faster than you would believe, and pricing is ridiculous, even for the really icky ones.  Basically, take whatever you think you’d pay on the mainland, strip off about a third of the square footage and then double your monthly payment.  Talk about a rude awakening.  Whoa.

BUT…we found a pretty awesome place in a little town not far from the base we’re stationed at, with some sweet views of the mountains AND the bay.  Flyboy was sold as soon as he walked out onto the lanai, it took me a few minutes, but the sheer size of the place and the grounds of the complex helped me get on board.

We couldn’t move in until December 30, so Christmas was a little different in the hotel, but we made it work.  We spent Christmas Eve with friends (dinner, candlelight service, and karaoke) and then got up at the crack of dawn middle of the night to catch our East Coast family at the typical wake-up time.  Made my day, I tell ya.  If I can’t be there to jump on their beds, you better believe I’m gonna ring the phone off the hook!

borrowed photo, check out more from here

So what is Hawaii like at Christmas time?  You would think with the warm weather and the massive melting pot of cultures over here that it wouldn’t be a big deal.  It is.  These people know how to decorate.  Downtown Honolulu spends thousands of dollars on a display at their city center with letters the size of people, and a Mr. and Mrs. Claus the size of our first house in Texas (barefoot with feet in the sand, of course).  There’s not the big fuss over the religious syntax here – rather, everything is “Mele Kalikimaka!”  You may remember the phrase from a song made famous by Bing Crosby many, many years ago.  The words have no literal translation, but are a phonetic rendering of the English greeting first brought to the islands in the early 1800’s.

Yep, there's goldfish under there...

There’s no chimney for Santa to get stuck in, nobody hoping and praying to wake up to snow, but there’s plenty of Christmas cheer all around the island.  December is the peak season for tourism around here (both American, Asian, as well as other international visitors) so they make sure the spirit is alive!  A few things we got a kick out of were the numerous snowflakes hanging from the ceiling in City Hall (seems a little out of place here) and the giant goldfish bowl they created at the bottom of the hotel’s Christmas tree.

All in all, it was a good holiday weekend for us.  Not the big, family-filled celebration I'm used to (thankfully, my wonderful grandmother got them all together before we left for our big move).  But thanks to the USPS, I think they all knew I was thinking about them.  And thanks to Apple and their amazing FaceTime technology, I even got to see a few of the most important people in my life.  A holiday season like this one really puts things in perspective.  I am so thankful that we've got such wonderful people in our lives.  I'm thankful for the friends we got to share dinner with here in Hawaii, and I'm  thankful for the family we have back home willing to answer the phone any hour of the day.  But most importantly, I'm thankful for my husband and that he didn't let this Christmas go by unnoticed like he could have done.  So many girls I know are spending their first Christmas away from their husbands, and it made me realize just how lucky I have been to spend it with Flyboy.  Our time for separation will come, but until then I'm gonna make the most of each and every day and celebrate  all of them with him just like it was Christmas.

- Kristin