Christmas

Third married Christmas. 

First Christmas just the two of us (well, 3 including Sydney). 

On Christmas morning, we were blessed to open many thoughtful gifts. We had packages from our families and a few gifts for each other. Sydney, of course, had some things to open as well. And even without her gifts, she would have been perfectly content playing with the ribbons, bows, and paper from our gifts. 

After we opened presents and stockings (and cleaned up Sydney's wrapping paper mess), Dan made a delicious (and our third annual) Christmas morning brunch. I'm thankful I have a husband who loves to cook!

Apparently, almost everyone in Hawaii goes to the beach for Christmas, and we thought about it, but it was kind of a gloomy day.

So after brunch, we FaceTimed with almost everyone in our family and finished preparing the house for dinner. Normally, we just have the round table in our dining space (seats 4), but since we invited more than two people over, we brought in additional tables (the bistro table, which has been stored in our garage all year, and our outside patio table). It was crammed, but cozy. 

Then, that evening, we enjoyed a delicious Christmas dinner with friends at our house. Dan had invited some of the guys he works with - single guys and guys he knew that weren't going to be celebrating with family. A few close friends stopped by, too. The DiBlasi sauce was a hit! Sadly, I didn't take any pictures of the people, though.

Overall, it was a relaxing and special day, with old and new traditions. Merry Christmas!

Keep Smiling...

Christmas Eve

In the past, Dan and I have been able to spend Christmas with both sides of our family. His family always does their big Christmas celebration on Christmas Eve, and my side on Christmas Day, so it works out perfectly. It's definitely such a blessing that both sides of our family celebrate in upstate NY! 

This year was different for many reasons. But since we were celebrating on our own this year, I realized that we could go to our first candlelight Christmas Eve service at church. And so we did. And it was really nice. 

We spent Christmas Eve evening with our friends Kelly and Andy and their adorable son Andrew. We're so thankful for their friendship. I love the background story, too. It really is a crazy, small world. One of my coworkers in Erie knew Kelly from high school (I believe) and knew that they had just moved to Hawaii and that Andy was also in the Army, so she passed along Kelly's contact info incase we had any questions. Boy, did we have questions! Kelly and Andy were such a huge resource for us. And they graciously answered all of our questions/emails. They have two labs, so they shared info about shipping a dog to Hawaii. They shipped both cars, and we ended up using the same company they did for our second vehicle. I can't express how comforting it was to talk to someone who had just been through the big move we were preparing for. 

Anyways, back to Christmas Eve. We ate dinner at their place and then went to church for the service. 

It was a really special service and time together. My favorite part was the Christmas hula that the little girls of the church performed. Absolutely adorable (sadly, no pictures of them). 

After the service, we parted ways and headed back home. I got in my Christmas pajamas, obviously (Dan saved his for Christmas morning, don't worry). Then we each picked one gift to open, and Dan started cooking the famous DiBlasi Sauce for Christmas Day. The last time we made "the" sauce was with our friends Brooke and Freeland (see here). We thought of them and wished they were with us this time, too. 

Sydney, of course, didn't leave his feet...just incase something were to fall on the ground. It simmered all night. The house smelled delish!

While Dan was cooking (I helped a little), I was playing around with the settings on my camera and took lots of pictures of our Christmas tree.

To make it feel more magical and Christmas-like, I added snow (again). And yes, I know it doesn't snow inside, but we can pretend the snow is outside of the window. 

We had a wonderful, low-key Christmas Eve and enjoyed a lot of quality time just the two of us. But we definitely missed celebrating with our families. Hopefully we'll be closer to everyone next year!

Keep Smiling...

Honolulu City Lights

Waikiki

[Realization: officially made it through one year of blogging...yay!]

All Christmas season, I was looking forward to having a Christmas date with Dan to see the Honolulu City Lights display downtown. We had previously seen some lights in Waikiki and they were super pretty, but they were not "the" official City Lights display. 

I absolutely love cities at Christmastime, and I was excited to be in a new city this season. Growing up, we'd always go to NYC at least once around the holidays - there really isn't any comparison, but Honolulu definitely did not disappoint. 

Dan would probably agree that I was a little too excited for this date. And... [guilty] we definitely went through the entire display three times so I could get pictures before dark, just as it was starting to get dark, and then one last time once it was really dark. Christmas lights are just so magical!

Even though this is how Dan really felt about the lights, he put on a smile and let me take as many pictures as I wanted. He's a keeper...

While we were waiting for it to get dark, we went inside Honolulu Hale (City Hall) to see the Christmas tree and wreath displays/competition. 

Then, we got amazing doughnuts from Leonard's Bakery...

...just as the lights were coming on.

Once it was really dark, the lights were even more magical. Pictures don't do them justice.

What a fun night!

Well, we're off to celebrate the last few hours of 2012 with some friends.  I can't believe another year is over. 2012 was such a blur! There were so many changes/life events/things to be thankful for. But we're looking forward to a new set of adventures in 2013.

Happy New Year! 

Keep Smiling...