Christmas break hike

Ever since we moved to our house on the beach, we've been a lot less gung-ho about going to other beaches. It's just so easy to go to the one we live by and we've been to so much of the island that the allure of unexplored places doesn't really call to us anymore. So after a few days of relaxing at home and for the first time in months, we went to a different beach.

We hiked to Fagatele Bay. It's always beautiful there and usually too rough to snorkel. Luckily for us it was nice and calm; unluckily for us, everyone knew it was usually rough so no one brought snorkel gear. Oh well, it was still a beautiful place to spend the afternoon.

a very merry Christmas

In spite of staying up until ten or eleven the night before, Everett and Simon were up at six on Christmas morning. There is nothing quite like the thrill of seeing whether Santa actually made it to our house to get our kids out of bed.

They were both so excited to give the presents they had picked out for the rest of us and to open their presents.

After the gifting, we spent the whole day lounging around the house, playing with presents, doing puzzles, and most importantly, playing Mario Kart on the Wii. I don't really love video games, but Mario Kart is fun!

We hope you all had as wonderful a Christmas as we did - Merry Christmas everyone!

Christmas Eve

Aaron had a Christmas Eve party again this year with lots of mulled wine, a traditional turkey dinner, and a hilarious gift exchange. It's been one of the highlights of Christmas on the island for us.

The gift exchange never disappoints. The Samoan flag and ukulele were in high demand, meaning they were stolen and re-stolen and re-stolen all night long - no lame "3 steals" rule here! Steal until you get it! Our kids managed to scoop up most of the toys - a light/sound sword, frisbee, star theater, and play-dough. They were pretty happy with it all.

Ned ended up with both floppy hats that made it under the tree. I'm sure that must mean something.
We had a great time - thanks Aaron!

Manuia le Kerisimasi!

When it's ninety degrees outside and all you can think about is how awesome the trade winds are and why, oh WHY, don't they blow all year long, it can be a bit hard to get into the typical Christmas spirit. In order to get there, you need lots of Christmas lights. And I mean LOTS of Christmas lights. I know I blogged about this a couple times last year so it's a bit of a repeat, but you really can't have too much of a good thing, can you? Especially when that good thing is Christmas lights!

This church in Leone is covered in Disney-themed characters, and just about every other holiday decoration you can imagine. I love how the nativity scene is surrounded by Mickey Mouse Santas.

There is a family here that does amazing Christmas decorations. Last year, they had the Eiffel Tower and Golden Gate Bridge in lights. This year, they had a light show where different lights lit up to the beat of the music. It was really incredible. Simon was asleep by the time we got there, but Everett was mesmerized.

another blog award!

Wow, thanks again to the Dughallmor Beagles, we have another blog award! It's the Proximidade Award and is for "blogs that are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers! Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award." Thank you!

I love the award, and I almost hate to poke fun because it really is nice to get them, but I just can't help myself. Because what I love most about this award is that whoever wrote it praises his or her own writing as "cleverly-written" and says that recipients "must" include their language letting the world know how clever he or she is. That's pretty awesome.

So the people I choose to pass on this most clevery-written blog award language and who MUST post it on their blogs are:

Erin's Backwards Life

Granny Nette's Frogs & Friends

The Grow Family

Heather's Clement Life

Jon's Trippin' the Northwest

Kendrick Nut House

Kristin's Adventures in Parenting

Rachel and Ryan

Seriously, people, the rules say you MUST. I didn't make it up.

Simon is Seven!

Simon woke up singing "today is my birthday, today is my birthday" over and over, but when people would wish him a happy birthday he got all shy and didn't know what to do. It was kind of cute.

We had a bunch of kids over to properly celebrate. They seemed to have a great time.

bathroom crab

Remember when I said we had a resident crab in our bathroom? Well, he either grew a lot or he got eaten by this monster.

I used to not mind the crab so much. He only came out at night and seemed fairly harmless, but this guy is a little too big to be a bathroom crab/pet. So Clif took him outside one night. Apparently, he wasn't fit for the wild. I'm pretty sure I found him dead the next morning.

*I don't know why Blogger keeps insisting on putting this picture this direction. I even saved a version half a turn the other way just in case it was having a weird "turning the photos" glitch, but that one posted the same direction as this one. He's a crab.. they walk sideways, his picture is sideways too... idk. I loaded it 3 times 3 different ways and it all came out like this. So I'm done trying to fix it.