Deepa's Christmas Party

We also had a great time at Deepa's Christmas party. Everett sang karakoke and said, "it's more of a reading game than a singing game" after reading every word on the screen.

Simon chased the girls around the house:

And then there was more karaoke. Fua is the karaoke queen!

Christmas morning

We awoke at 1am to happy exclamations, "He came! Santa came!" In laying down the essential Christmas morning rules, we omitted one important detail. We told Everett and Simon that they could get into their stockings when they woke up, and they couldn't open presents until we woke up at 7. But we forgot to tell them a minimum sleep time before they could get into the stockings. Lesson learned. So we told them they had to go back to sleep until 4, but they actually slept until 6. They slept in the hall on the hard tile floor because they were so anxious to get back into the front room and get to those stockings!

Aaron's Christmas Eve Party

We had a great time at Aaron's Christmas eve party. There was delicious food, fake snow, and a truly entertaining gift exchange. Thanks Aaron!

Christmas preparations

Just in time for Christmas (by staying up nearly all night on the 23rd), I finished sewing the curtains for our front room and our Christmas stockings. It took forever to make all 24 panels (mostly because I'd rather spend time at the beach than sewing, but I'm also too cheap to pay $5/panel when I can do it for practically nothing). As promised, here are pictures of the orange that surrounds our front room now, and our Samoa stockings. Unfortunately our $6 Christmas tree takes after the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and like the leaning tower, with a little bit of help, it stayed standing!

Manuia le Kerisimasi!

Christmas in American Samoa is a bit different. The governor has a multi-day Christmas song thing that all the government agencies sing in. It was broadcast on TV at the time and now they are doing re-runs, just in case you missed it! The AG's office had these festive shirts and red lava lavas made so they all matched.

It was a little weird to spend the 23rd at the beach, but we always have fun! We went to Utulei and then Clif and I got to dive at Faga'alu. While we were at Utulei one of the kids with us found a pipe in the water. She picked it up and dumped the sand and water out, and out came a baby octopus! It was so neat! Of course, it was the one day I had left my camera at home. I only wish I had been able to get pictures of it!

Then Clif and I went diving and saw three trumpet fish - an adult, a juvenile, and a baby. It was so neat to see all the different stages. The baby one looked a bit like a pipefish at first glance. We also saw a jellyfish. We spent about five minutes just watching it float in the water. It was really neat to watch it from underneath and see the sun shine through it. We've heard that they are really rare here, and I had just told Steven on the phone that morning that there really aren't any.

It's not just the weather that makes Christmas different here. It's also the decorations. We went to Leone to check out the outrageous church decorations. Pictures of this church are showing up everywhere because it's the most overly-decorated church on the island, at least when it's not lit up. Although they only decorated the front. There is nothing on the sides and back (I think we should complain!). The churches are pretty fun to see, and we still need to go see the pyramid and Eiffel Tower in lights. That should be amusing.

Simon is Six!

We had a few people over for Simon's birthday dinner. He had a great time and loves all the presents.

apparently the superhero phase isn't over

Everett: But mom, why?

me: Because I don't want you running down the road without supervision.

Everett: But I have my own Super Vision inside me.

Leone caves

Saturday we went to the Leone sea caves. They aren't really caves though. They are more like blow holes because there are holes at the top of each cavern. In fact, they may actually be blow holes, but I've never been there at high tide to know. We went when the tide was fairly low so we could swim into them from the ocean side - the kids weren't too sure about jumping into them after the lectures we've given them on how dangerous it would be to fall into one of the blowholes along the walk to Airport Lagoon.

Thanks to Liz for the great photos!

ASSA swim meet

The American Samoa Swimming Association had a swim meet last weekend. Everett was very excited about his races, and ended up getting a 3rd place ribbon in one of them. Simon was very unsure about the whole thing, but we were able to convince him to swim in one race.

Thanks to Paul for the amazing pictures!

Christmas program at Pacific Horizons School

Simon's class (the starfish) doing "ho ho ho" at the Christmas program.

Everett had some lines to say before the song and I caught him just as he was trying to remember the last half. He remembered and did a great job!

pictures

Larsen's cove

Everett's handcrafted "berthday" card

Simon

Nu'uuli Falls

weird samoa caterpillar thing at the waterfalls

weird samoa slug thing on our house

weird samoa slug thing in our house