Christmas 2013

Mele Kalikimaka everyone!  We hope you all had a wonderful holiday and that you were able to spend it with loved ones!

Last year, Johnnie was deployed for Christmas.  It didn't feel like Christmas.  There was no joyous Christmas morning with presents to open and loved ones to hug.  I opened gifts as they came in the mail.  I didn't Santa didn't even get Cameron anything because she was too young to know any different and already had everything she could need.

This year was so much different and so much fun!  Having a child (who is now old enough to enjoy things) brings an excitement back to Christmas that I haven't felt since I was young.  We bought and decorated a real Christmas tree and we stockpiled presents underneath it.  Family members sent presents for Cameron which I wrapped for her to open Christmas morning.  Santa brought presents for everyone.  We hung out all morning in our pajamas opening presents, video chatting with family, and enjoying homemade apple cinnamon rolls that I made.  After Cameron's morning nap, we went to church and were mesmerized by how amazingly beautiful Christmas songs sound when they are sung in the Hawaiian language... seriously, wow!  After a day of lounging, we went to a friend's house for a delicious Hawaiian Christmas dinner and laughing good time.  It was a wonderful Christmas... especially because we were together as a family this year.

Cameron is too young to understand Christmas, Santa, and traditions this year so that gave us a grace period.  Next year we'll have to up our game and get started early.  I really want to have some Christmas traditions that we do every year and some take time to prepare!  Here is my tentative list (which is really a reminder for myself):

• A family trip to get a Christmas tree
• Decorating the tree
• Hanging stockings
• Elf on the Shelf (maybe... we haven't decided on this yet)
• A Christmas countdown or Advent calendar
• An early mailed package from Santa that contains Christmas pajamas, a book, a movie, popcorn, and hot chocolate
• Watching Christmas movies
• Reading Christmas books
• Sending Christmas cards
• Listening to and singing along to Christmas music constantly
• Doing some anonymous good deeds for others
• Baking Christmas cookies
• Taking a night drive or walk to see Christmas lights
• Setting cookies and beer milk out for Santa
• A photo of Santa in our house
• Opening presents in our pajamas Christmas morning
• Making a special homemade Christmas breakfast treat
• Making and eating Christmas tamales
• Going to church together for Christmas mass
• Cutting a slice of the Christmas tree trunk to use as a keepsake ornament 

I used the app icaughtsanta again this year (see last year's photo) to put Santa in our house with Dulce.  You can also upload a photo to the iCaughtSanta website to create a photo of Santa in your house instead of using a smartphone.  To get this photo, Johnnie stood to the right of the chair to get Dulce to look in that direction.  

Hawaii is one of Santa's last stops of the night so he was pretty tired when he got here ;)

Cameron got quite a few presents from family but only a few from Santa.  We really don't want to overdo Christmas by having Santa bring a ton of presents every year.  We are fortunate enough to provide things we want and need throughout the year so we would like to keep Christmas simple and meaningful.  There is a little rhyme that I've seen many times on Pinterest and know that some of our friends have done for their kids this year.  It goes like this:

"One thing they want, one thing they need, one thing to wear, and one thing to read."

That's right... only four presents from Santa.  I really love this idea and we did it for Cameron this year.  It really helps with choosing gifts and alleviating some holiday shopping stress.  Besides, combined with what Cameron got from family, she still made out like a bandit this year.  I think that in future years, Santa will bring those four things and we parents may add one more "want" present.

Cameron, age 15.5 months, got the following things from Santa this year:

    Step2 Shopping Cart  ~  Pullover Bibs  ~  Sperry Top-Sider Shoes  ~  Diving for Opposites Book

We didn't wrap her larger presents and she was pretty amazed when she saw them.  She had a good time ripping the wrapping paper off of the other presents, doing better than I expected with that task.

Dulce's big present this year was a new elevated food and water dish.  I recently discovered that Dulce loves drinking warmer-than-room-temperature water... strange isn't it?  I refill her new water bowl every morning now, as opposed to the water-dispensing bowl she had before.  I put treats in the bowls when I wrapped them and she had fun sticking her nose in to get them out :)

I didn't expect to get any Christmas photos for our card this year since Cameron will not stay still for a photo - until I found out that Cameron hates the sand and does not like to walk in it!  I was able to sit her down and she actually stayed put.  Dulce is extremely easy to pose and photograph (and will even wear a hat for a treat).  Cameron, on the other hand, is quite difficult to get to look at and smile at the camera.  I wonder if anyone saw me jumping around and making noises trying to get a smile on the beach that day...

I'll be honest and tell you that this is a composite photo - meaning that I combined two photos using Photoshop to create it.  Getting a dog and a toddler to both look at the camera and smile is next to impossible.  I took the photo of Cameron that I liked and superimposed it onto the photo of Dulce that I liked.... just like magic ;)

The photo below is not a composite.  Cameron would not move from that rock and Dulce sat patiently next to her.  I told Cameron to pet Dulce (which she understands and does often) and she reached over and patted her on the back - picture perfect!

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"The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the

presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other."

~Burton Hillis

Tower Lighting and Celebrity Sighting

This past Friday night was Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam's 44th Annual Freedom Tower lighting celebration.  Johnnie had just flown out on a work-related trip so Cameron and I walked over by ourselves to check out the festivities.

The Freedom Tower (named in 1985) is an octagonal-shaped water tower on Hickam Air Force Base that was built in 1938.  This well-known landmark stands 171 feet high and held 500,000 gallons of water when it was in use.  Historians say that the tower survived the Attack on Pearl Harbor unscathed because enemy fighters thought that it was a religious structure and were therefore afraid to fire upon it.

The tower lighting celebration is held every year and is free for anyone on base to attend.  The tower is at the far end of a large grass field and people were encouraged to bring blankets and lawn chairs to sit on.  There were a lot of free activities such as photos with Santa, craft stations, bouncy houses, and trampolines.  There were many food booths selling snacks and dinner plates, and there was also free hot chocolate and cookies.

A stage was set up at the base of the tower for performers.  The Air Force Band of the Pacific played a wide variety of music for a couple of hours.  There was a guest performance by young ukulele star, and YouTube sensation, Aidan James.

The grass (or actually the roots of the grass?) are extremely thick making it difficult to walk on and push a stroller on - it was like walking on a thick, cushy mattress.  Cameron couldn't walk more than two steps in the grass without falling so we sat on the curb right in front of the stage.  This turned out to be a great advantage later!

There was a little mosh pit of children dancing in front of the stage and Cameron loved watching them but didn't join in.  She stayed near me, swaying her shoulders to the music until she saw him... her first crush.  She cautiously walked over to him, hands clasped behind her back, and smiled shyly.  He smiled back and she laughed.  She reach out and touched his glowing necklace so he took it off and handed it to her.  She laughed, played with it for a minute, and then tried to put it back on him.  He put it back on and then she wanted it again so he gave it to her again.  This game continued for at least 5 minutes.  Finally he had to leave but he let her keep the necklace.  He was such a sweet young man to be so patient with a baby :)

Right before the tower was lit, some celebrity guests made an appearance on stage - Emma Stone and Bill Murray!  Cameron and I were already by the stage so we had a great view but as you would expect, a tidal wave of people suddenly surged up behind us.  I grabbed Cameron in one arm and my big DSLR camera with the other and got swept forward with the crowd.  At that point Cameron started screaming from the sudden movement and noise.  I didn't dare put her down because I knew she would get trampled so I balanced everything and did the best that I could to quickly snap a few photos before we got out of there.

Filming started at the end of September here in Hawaii for a new still-untitled Cameron Crowe military-comedy-romance movie starring Rachel McAdams, Bradley Cooper, Bill Murray, Emma Stone, Alec Baldwin, Danny McBride, Jay Baruchel, and John Krasinski.

Synopsis: "The movie sees Bradley star as celebrated military contractor Brian Gilcrest, who reconnects with lost love Tracy (played by McAdams) after returning to the site of his 'greatest career triumphs'. But as with any Hollywood love story, there's another person in the mix - a hard-charging Air Force watchdog (Emma Stone) assigned to Gilcrest, whom he unexpectedly falls for."*

*Read more and see photos of Cooper and McAdams on set here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2491092/Rachel-McAdams-Bradley-Cooper-team-new-rom-com-Hawaii.html

Much of the filming is being done here on Hickam Air Force Base and many of my neighbors and friends got parts as extras.  I'll see if I can snap a few photos of some of the filming locations to share with you all in another post.

Here is a YouTube video that someone posted of Stone and Murray's little speech:

All in all, the celebration was well worth keeping Cameron out past her bedtime :)

*******

"At Christmas play and make good cheer,

For Christmas comes but once a year."

~Thomas Tusser

O Christmas Tree

This will be the 7th Christmas together for Johnnie and I and we have never had a proper Christmas tree before!  The first year (still dating) we put up a small fake one at his house.  Christmas #2, #3, and #4 we didn't bother with a tree because we were traveling.  Christmas #5 we were in Korea and didn't decorate at all.  Last year Johnnie was deployed so I only decorated a very small fake tree and it didn't feel much like Christmas.

This year we went to Helemano Farms in Wahiawa to choose and chop down a Christmas tree.  This was my first time ever going to a tree lot to choose a Christmas tree.  It was a lot of fun and I look forward to doing this every year from now on as a family!

Helemano Farms only had Norfolk Island Pines available this year but that was perfect for our first Hawaiian Christmas together as a family!  The Norfolk Island Pine is a triangular shaped tree with symmetrical circles of branches evenly spaced on a thin trunk.  It is affectionately referred to as the "Hawaiian Christmas tree" as very few actual Christmas trees are grown here.  Traditional Christmas trees have to be shipped here (like everything else), traveling almost 3,000 miles by cargo ship across the ocean from Washington and Oregon.

The neat thing about Norfolk Island Pines is that they don't need replanted every year like other Christmas trees.  Once the top of the tree is chopped off, it regrows!  It's a tree that keeps giving - perfect for Christmas :)

The needles of this tree are very pliable so it is a much softer tree than it appears to be.  The trunk has needles sticking out all over like a cactus but they bend when you touch them.  We had no problem pushing our way through thick branches wearing shorts and t-shirts.  Hahahaha... shorts and t-shirts to pick out a Christmas tree :)

The branches of this tree will not hold a lot of weight.  You can hang heavier ornaments close to the trunk but you have to hang lightweight ornaments on the rest.  I actually had to use wire to attach a chopstick to the back of the top of the tree to make it firm enough to put something very lightweight on top.  We have a tree angel and a few ornaments that we collected over the years but left most of them packed up this year because they were too heavy.

I gave Cameron a bag full of lightweight felt star ornaments that I bought in Korea.  She had a blast helping me decorate the tree!  After she piled them all on, she shook the branch to make sure they wouldn't fall off :)

We bought some small ocean-colored bulbs and used some starfish that I had in my crafting supplies.  I used crafting wire to attach a large starfish to the top of the tree, and used wire and beads to create starfish ornaments to hang from the branches.  I wrapped burlap around the tree stand in lieu of the tree skirt that I haven't made yet.

Christmas lights photography tip:  If you have a camera that you can set to Aperture Priority (Av) mode, set the aperture to a large number to make the lights look like little starbursts.  The aperture for the photo below was set to f/16.  You'll also want to set your camera on something steady like a piece of furniture or a tripod to get a clear photo because the shutter will be open longer.

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"Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree.

 In the eyes of children, they are all 30 feet tall."

~Larry Wilde