Holiday Parade

We made to the Hawaii Kai holiday parade...thanks to it starting in our back yard!

Mele Kalikimaka 2013

Although we are missing our family far away, we are enjoying each other and our new toys today! 

A very Merry Christmas to you!!

Christmas Eve

We spent the morning visiting Santa at the mall with some quick lunch at Subway and CPK! It was Christmas Eve...we were accommodating everyone.  At CPK we anonymously paid for a table near ours and the joy on Noah's face and his excitement in wanting to watch the other table was awesome! Lots of explanations of enjoying that feeling of giving and not expecting or needing a thank you in return.

That afternoon we headed to the beach in Waimanalo...it had been Too. Long.

A little rainbow, some rain, and lots of fun!

10 Days Until Christmas

We're winding down our 2013 school year and getting ready for a long Christmas break in which we have high aspirations to get much done and spend lots of time at the beach.  I'll settle for one trip to the beach and no missed practices! Haha!  Here is a peek at the Christmas happenings around here….

Way back in mid November, Dad and I made a spur of the moment purchase of a live tree!

 Clearly we weren't excited!!!!! :)

 That's also about the time that all the Christmas decor was going up around town….Also, Santa had already arrived at Ala Moana with NO line!

 The tree had modest beginnings…but was green and beautiful! And still smells SO GOOD!

 Here we are waiting for the local community holiday parade.  The marchers lined up in the park behind our house….and yes, it was fabulous to here the marching bands' Christmas songs bright and early!

 The tree was finally put together and is quite cute!

 One night, our elf, Mario, added to the tree trimmings!

 He was also very excited about St. Nick's Day.

 We spent one afternoon in Waikiki checking out the Christmas decor in all the hotel lobbies.

 The sand sculpture is always a favorite...

 as is the gingerbread village!

 The boys do such a good job appeasing me and posing in front of EVERY tree in town. :)

 That night we even managed to make it to the Holiday Light parade in town.

 The excitement was building as we waited or the lights to come on and the parade to begin!

Holiday memories….the BEST!

Holiday Snapshots

In an attempt to not fall behind again....even though my computer is still not cooperating, I am going to just upload some holiday snapshots from my phone. Things like, the cookies we made. Us delivering those cookies to the fire station and the mail workers. Santa visiting or building. Our snow, scratch that, sand man. Some back flip work in the water. A bike outing. A Wicked performance. And some others. You'll have to match the caption to the right picture!
There's even a shot of our STL nieces and nephews from my side of the family snuck in there!

Oh Christmas Tree

So you've seen a little about how our tree is surviving in our house these days, but I have yet to shae the story of it's birth into our family.  

Getting a live Christmas tree in Hawaii is a little different than it was in the Midwest.  There is no way we were going out to chop one down.  We actually ordered our tree back in August through the kids' school.  I'm pretty sure it was raised in California, cut down sometime in November, then put in a crate and shipped here to be picked up by us on December 1st.

Around this time, as the crates of tree began arriving here on Oahu, the news stories were blowing up about several crates of trees being infested with tree slugs and other parasites.  Awesome.

Nevertheless, we set out on the 1st to pick up our tree.

The five Selters and Uncle Tom all piled in the car and set out on the 3 or so block drive to the tree lot.  We arrive to the lot where all the trees are still bundled and lying in a giant pile.

 We hand the gentleman our ticket.  He takes a look at it. "Right this way."  He cuts open a tree and says, "how about this one?"  Looks good to us!

 Never mind the fact that there is no needle shaker outer machine.  At least they cut the bottom and rebundled it for us.  Dad grabbed some twine from the rubbish and he and Noah began to strap that thing onto the top of our car....Grizwold style.

 We even shoved a few extra branches in under the tree to take home with us. Haha!

 Poor Baby Jo....he is thinking, my family is crazy!

 But at least we are fun!

 We got to our building and picked up a tree bag from the lobby.  It's purpose is to prevent needles from being tracked through the lobby and hallways and especially from falling into the elevator tracks.  Good idea in theory, until Dad busted a huge hole in the bottom of the bag!

 The tree made it up and Caleb was the first to hang his ornament on the tree!

I just LOVE Christmas memories.

4 more days!