Mele Kalikimaka from Allie!

Allie's First Nutcracker!

Allie's teacher gave us tickets to a Nutcracker performance her daughters were in. We were so excited! I didn't think we would get a chance to see it this year. Allie was enthralled for the entire first act but by the second act she was beginning to get bored. :) It was fun though and we enjoyed it!

I have Allie working for me too!

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Christmas Parade!

Tonight we walked with Allie's Girl Scout troop in the Christmas Parade! I'm worn out! We ended up taking the bus to the start place for the parade. Then we walked the entire parade route and THEN walked home!

The girls loved it!  It's a pretty large parade - it seemed like complete chaos but everything went pretty smoothly.  We were walking with some other area Girl scout troops so we just followed them around because we had no idea what we were doing!  One of the group leaders made a sign for our troop to carry and they were so proud and took turns holding the sign.  The other girls handed out candy to kids on the side of the street. haha, they had put us at the back of group and we walked in front of the Girl scout cookie truck. I felt bad for the guy driving the truck - he had to keep stopping - The girls kept stopping to hand out candy and falling behind so we had to keep herding them and making them run to catch up with the rest of the group.

Ready to go!

It was so chaotic trying to make sure all the girls were together and no one got left behind that  was afraid we had walked past Jason without even seeing him!  Luckily he saw us coming and jumped in and joined us for the rest of the walk.  Once we finished, we walked up the street a bit to catch the rest of the parade.  Allie's school had a small float some of the older kids had worked on - she got scared because they had someone dressed up in a Grinch costume on the float! (She hates the Grinch!!) haha  There were a lot of kids/families from the school that participated in the parade :)

Afterward, we grabbed some dinner before walking home.  Just the day before Allie, me, and "Auntie Mo" had driven past a house on the next street over to ours that was all deck out with some unusual Christmas decorations (I still can't tell if its just someone's house or store!?).  We joked that it looked like Santa Claus' house and then when we looked back at the house again there was a Santa Claus-y looking old man walking around the house with his shirt off and his huge belly hanging out. So Mo and I started saying "Oh wow, Santa must be on vacation here before he has all that work to do for Christmas! He's probably staying there so he can be here for the parade!" - anyway, we had Allie really believing that Santa is vacationing here and staying on the next street over so he can keep an eye on her. So tonight when we walked home after the parade Jason said "Hey, let's go walk past Santa's house and spy on him!"  Allie stopped in her tracks and grabbed my hand and tried to drag me the other way! She was like "No Mom! No! I don't want him to think I'm doing something bad!!"  So I told her "It's okay, it's okay, he won't see us!" So when we walked past, she hid behind a wall for a second, peaked out and then ran past and ducked down so she couldn't be seen over his fence! It was pretty hilarious - she was so worried Santa was going to catch her prowling around outside of his house!  This is such a fun age!

Waiting for the parade to start - cookie truck in the background!

Comfort food!

Itʻs cold here today.

hahahahahahaha

No really, its cold to us warm people - itʻs been raining off and on and itʻs super windy.  (Please, please donʻt rain on our parade tonight!!)

I was just reading an article about comfort food and being that itʻs cold,  I started craving chong-guk.   I figured I could pretty much guess the recipe on my own but I just scoured the internet looking for one.  Okay, I have to talk to mom because the soup I found called "chong guk" is not the chong-guk mom made for us!  Chong-guk is a fermented soybean soup! Anyway,  then I found this other recipe for "hand torn noodle soup" which sounds about right.  Itʻs called "sujebi."

http://www.maangchi.com/recipe/sujebi

I love this website!

I wonder, did Mom really put anchovies in hers? Yeah, she probably just didnʻt tell us!  Anyway, I think I might try to make this sometime this weekend - it looks easy enough.  mmmmm. . . I canʻt wait!

Allie's new snorkle gear!

She can pretty much swim/tread water without much help now.  Once she puts on her little mask she takes off!

Bird Talk

Yeah, I donʻt know either.

I showed up one day last week to pick Allie up from school and this giant bird was sitting on the gate.  There was no one around! It was just sitting there. . . It actually talked too - the kids kept running over and saying "Hi" to it.

Iʻm not a fan a giant birds that could bite your fingers off.  This could have only been worse if it was creepy monkey that could rip your face off.

Happy Turkey Day!

Sorry for the lack of upates lately - we were busy with Jason's family visiting. . . More to come!

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Sew cute!

We had a lazy Sunday today - I wasn't feeling much like going anywhere.  We've already visited most of the museums, the zoo, the beach, etc in the past couple weeks.  There wasn't much exciting going on any where and Allie didn't seem to care too much about going any where in particular when I asked her.

I started working on a small sewing project (my goal is to make most of the Christmas presents this year!) hehe, we'll see how this goes.  Allie was bored and hanging around me while I was working so I figured maybe it was time for me to let her try her hand at sewing - something she's actually been asking me to teach her for a while but I was always worried about, you know, kid with a needle.  Anyway, I figure 5 year olds in China make our clothes so she should be able to figure it out.  So I gave her a big embroidery needle (easier to handle and harder to lose or drop on the floor), some felt and sat down and gave her a short lesson and set her on her way.  I cut out the pieces and then just tell her where to stitch them together.  First, she made a Christmas stocking for the kitty!

"Kuromi" was too long to write, so she just wrote "CAT" hehe 

And then she went crazy.  She spent nearly the entire day sewing! I'd tell her to draw something and then working from her drawing I'd cut out the pieces for her. She then sews the pieces together (I usually start the thread for her) and then decorates the end piece.  She loves it - the whole time she kept exclaiming "I LOVE sewing!!"  I think she loves seeing the end product and realizing that she can actually make cool, functional things all by herself. Anyway, I'm thrilled that she loves it so much. And it seems like a really great way to focus her energy and get her to do something that's "quiet."   It's really amazing to watch her - she's actually very careful and you can tell she is very focused on what she is doing.  By the end of the day, she was surprisingly dexterous with a needle (she never once pricked herself), able to thread the needle on her own and able to do several different simple stitches. I was surprised at how quickly she picked it up and how well she understood how to construct things. Each project is more ambitious than the next.

Small pouch, sewn & decorated by Allie

All in all, she made a stocking for kitty, a pouch and a small bag.  I'll have to put up pics of the bag she made, it's really good!

Hat Parade

Sorry - lazy week last week.  Actually I usually update this during my down time at work (shh. . . ) and only worked 2 days last week.  I wish I could keep this kind of work schedule forever!

Anyway, the kindergarteners at Allie's school made hats for their "Healthy Hat Parade" - part of their "Healthy Harvest" theme they had at school.  On Friday they all wore them to the morning school assembly - I like how they do the school assemblies every Friday.

The kids were cute with their crazy hats.  It started pouring rain during the middle of the assembly so there was a moment of all the kids squealing and running under cover to get out the open courtyard.

Allie with her class

Anabel, Allie & Dylan (new man of the moment - hehe)

Allie is starting to learn reading & writing at school! Already!! eek! When we met with the teacher she said they would be reading small books by the end of the year. wow. I think I could barely write "cat" and "dog" by first grade!

Allie's homework.. .

Also, she received her first report card last week!  Pretty good, although it more or less just explained where she was at in grasping certain concepts.

Election Day/Girls' Day

Allie and I both had off Tuesday from school/work because of the election so we decided we'd have a fun girls day!

The night before we went to the library and checked out a bunch of books and a couple movies and stayed up watching the movies and eating popcorn.  Allie passed out half-way through That Darn Cat and I couldn't sit through Barbie Princess Fairy Mermaid Glitter rainbow whatever (yeah I totally made up that title, but I'll bet I'm not that far off - the Barbie movies are THE worst).

On Tuesday, we decided to go to the zoo since we hadn't been in a while.  First, I stopped off at the school to vote.  Ran into some minor problems because I forgot to reregister after we moved. All was okay though.  They gave Allie this ring:

I love how it says "Made in China" right across the bottom of the flag! haha. . . what a statement.
Tried to explain what "voting" was and what we were voting for to Allie. . . yeah, I still don't get it either, kid.

So then I tried to tell her, that as women, it is important to vote because there was a time when some "boys" thought "girls were too dumb to vote" and they had to fight for the right to vote. To which she replied "yeah, but its really the boys who are dumb because THEY FART!" Ah, we'll just have to save that lesson for another time.

After that we headed to the zoo.  Maybe we've been to the zoo too many times because Allie was more interested in the fat pigeons walking around and the guppies in the water than any of the actual zoo animals. Her favorite thing to see at the zoo is still the guinea pigs. They have a gigantic guinea pig cage and a revolving door of guinea pigs (I'm not sure if they just die off quickly or they rotate them, but there's always different guinea pigs. . . hmm. . . ).

There's a lion behind her somewhere.

Anyway, after about an hour, we're both done. Usually there is an argument about eating at the zoo because Allie always wants to eat there and I refuse to b/c the food is really awful and overpriced.  We came to a truce and decided we would go get Yogurtland later.

Hammin' it up for the camera - Yogurtland makes everything better.

Happy Halloweenie!

Allie as a Princess-Kitty-Fairy. She's covering all the bases this year.

I had decided to host a Halloween party at our house this year since our friends had come to the consensus that they no longer had any interest in "going out".  We used to love to go down to Waikiki for Halloween - the main strip around Kalakaua becomes completely packed with people just walking around, checking out other people's costume, taking video, pictures, etc.  It's always good fun.  However, the not fun parts are trying to drive down there, trying to find parking once you've driven down there or if we've taken a cab, trying to catch a cab home isn't easy either.  I guess we're finally getting too old for all of this excitement and I care more about Allie having a good time.  Also handing out candy to the neighborhood kids is fun too. So we decided this year, we would just hang out at our house and hand out candy to the kids.

Anyway, since we were hosting this venture at our house I was in freak-out, OCD cleaning/cooking mode.  Jason left town the day before so it was just me & Allie. I spent the early part of the day cleaning and making last minute preparations for the party.  Allie's school was holding an event so we went were gong to go to that and than trick or treat around the neighborhood surrounding the school.  Her friend, Sabrina, met us there.  There really wasn't too much going on at the school, they had a few simple games for the kids to play and get candy.  When we decided to start trick or treating there were still some house that weren't ready.  Also the road in front of Allie's school is kind of busy and there are no sidewalks and it was dark and sometimes you have to walk kind of close to the road, so it was a little sketchy.  However, we were still able to hit a few houses (plenty of candy for the kids!) but I think we may just return to trick or treating in Manoa next year. (less traffic, sidewalks, more people participating).

Allie and her BFF, Sabrina - Princesses forever!

Monkey

Cute baby pirate! Sabrina's brother, Lucas.

On the way home, I was amazed by the number of kids out in our nieghborhood! They have to walk so far between houses because a lot of the elderly people don't participate.  Anyway, we set up and handed out our candy too. My friends brought tons of candy! Some of the little kids (and even adults) come up and take giant handfuls of candy.  Some of the little kids I feel bad for, you can tell they come from the housing projects and can't afford costumes, and some are really sweet and timid about taking the candy so I don't really care how much they take.  I think that's why I like handing out the candy in our neighborhood, I know the kids come from our neighborhood (not like those who flock to the "nicer" neighborhoods to collect candy. . .ok, we are guilty of this ourselves) and a lot of them come from low-income families.  Its nice to make it fun for them - we decorated our garage up with fake cobwebs, lights,  hanging skulls, etc.   We all dressed up. We had fun. I hope the kids did too.

Mailman Fester (actual mailman) with Mailman Baby Rayne and Mailbox Jaime! Ridiculous!

We're still left with about 5 lbs of leftover candy, but I heard one of the dentist's offices is doing a "candy buyback" -they buy the candy ($1/lb) from the kids and then send it to the troops overseas.  I talk to Allie about doing this and she agreed.  We picked out of few things that we wanted to keep but bagged up the rest. Allie is very serious about getting rid of the stuff that I told her "will rot your teeth out" and also giving candy to "the army" because "they don't have any candy there. haha I'm not sure, she understand what it all means but it works.

This will haunt your nightmares.

Healthy Harvest Day

On the Friday before Halloween, the kindergartners have "Healthy Harvest Day" which tries to get the kids to focus on eating healthy and living a healthy lifestyle (right before they consume mass amounts of candy, I guess? haha).   Each class had to plan some sort of activity and since I volunteered to be one of the parent leaders for the class I got roped into this. Nah, I don't mind it - thereʻs really only a few things we plan for the class each year, so its really not that much extra work.  Anyway,  one class made healthy smoothies, one did yoga, one made ants on a log, etc. So we decided we'd do some sort of physical activity - we did "pumpkin bowling" and "balancing an apple on a spoon race".

man, those little kids beat the apples up - we went through nearly a dozen apples.  The boys are awful.  They would hit them with the spoons, throw them up in the air, kick them. Seriously, what is wrong with boys? Its like they have this need to destroy things - ugh.   Anyway, its was fun - we were wore out by the end! After we completed all the activities with the kids, I stayed for lunch with Allie for which she was very excited!  Mmm... school lunch!  Anyway, we, the parents, were saying we should enjoy that our kids love having us there so much because once they get to middle school that all changes!

Allie & her friend, Zoe, taking turns trying to pick each other up.

pumpkins!

A chubby Kuromi and Allie's scary rainbow-loving pumpkin!

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Pumpkin Carving!

Finally got around to carving our pumpkins tonight!

Allie and I decided we wanted a Kuromi pumpkin so I worked on that.  I used my dremel to carve out part of her head - my camera doesn't take very good pics in the dark so I'll have to post of pic of the pumpkin in light.  It came out alright, took forever and I was covered with pumpkin stuff when I was finished!

Jason helped Allie carve her own pumpkin.  He had her draw a picture of what she wanted - she said she wanted to make it really scary!  And then Jason carved it for her.

This is what she drew:

This is the end result:

Pretty awesome!  I just love the scary pumpkin she drew and then the rainbow she drew over it. haha

Pumpkin Patch!

On Sunday, Allie's Girl Scout troop planned to go to the pumpkin patch. The girls will earn a patch for ?? I don't know, they give patches for everything now. haha  I drove us out there without getting lost fortunately!  It's located in the middle of nowhere and the last time we went (two years ago) we got incredibly lost.  They had planned to meet at 11 am - we got there at 11 AM but then it took us 30 minutes to drive back the dirt lane and find parking.  It was craziness!  I think they only open the farm for 2 weekends for pumpkins.

Anyway, we didn't actually park until 11:30 AM, we saw one other mom from the girl scout troop and it sounded like the plan to meet at 11 AM didn't go as well.  Most people just split up to do their own thing.  I didn't really want to do the hayride, which isn't very fun when there's like 60 people packed on the wagon and you have to stand :( so we just wandered out in the fields to pick our own pumpkins. Since it was just Allie and I, we could only get small pumpkins! We picked up 2 smallish pumpkins and a colorful mini pumpkin for just $5.  It was hot, dusty and dirty, so we paid for our pumpkins and left! We haven't gotten around to carving them yet, maybe tonight! Also, we carved them a week before Halloween last year and by Halloween it was a big nasty moldy mess! gross! Pumpkins don't last here.

On the other hand, we're finally experiencing our "winter weather" which is nice because last week there were no tradewinds which made it really hot and uncomfortable at night.  It's been super windy and a little rainy off and on.  I can finally bust out my warmish clothes!

Girl Scout Halloween Party

On Friday, Allie's Girl Scout group had a Halloween party.  It was a lot of fun for the girls - the leaders do a really good job and go all out trying to put together fun things for the kids.

This year Allie wanted to be a Princess Fairy Kitty - trying to fit in as much as possible, I guess? She put the whole costume together herself out things she already had so we didn't have to buy anything this year! (so that was nice).  I did have to make her a kitty tail though!

Anyway, it was potluck-style and everyone made cute little treats for the girls.  I made a giant batch of brownies and put gummy worms in them (I was pretty lazy actually).  Some of the other moms went all out and made really cute treats. 

Hot dog mummies! 

Spider deviled-eggs!

We ate dinner and then the kids got to pick out little pumpkins and decorate with them with eyes/noses/mouths cut out from magazines. 

They also played a game where they wrapped each other up with toilet paper (like mummies). It was really cute.   The kids had a lot of fun, more of the girls are becoming friends and playing with each other now (or rather that Allie is becoming friends with more of the girls).  Its really neat to watch them bond and start helping each other out. It seems like their attitudes toward each other are different than if they were just in a class together.  Maybe its because its only girls or because its such a small group, but there's none of that bossiness or cattiness that seems to usually occurs between girls.  I guess that's what I liked about Girl Scouts too.

After the party Allie exclaimed "I love girls scouts so much!" 

Make new friends, but keep the old. . .

Purikura with Lauren & Karen!

On Monday, I spent the day with my friend, Karen.
I met Karen through my friend Lauren who met her while they were both interning a the Honolulu Weekly back in December or January. We all hit it off well and started hanging out. We donʻt get to see her too often though because she doesnʻt drive and lives in Wahiawa.  Sheʻs from Scotland orginally and has lived all over the place and spent a few years in Japan, hence why she has never learned how to drive (she never lived some placed where she needed to!). 

Unfortunately, her husband is leaving the army now and theyʻre going to be moving to Ohio ironically enough.  I think his mom lives there now.  Haha, Iʻm trying to set her up with Melinda so she has someone to hang out with when she gets there. I think they would get along pretty well. Theyʻre both the kind of people that arenʻt hard to get along with.

Anyway, I am sad that she is leaving.  She has been my hiking buddy and is always up for seeing and trying new things.  I'm trying to spend time with her before she leaves here in the next week or so.  On Monday she rode the bus into town and I picked her up and we drove to Lanikai and did the Lanikai pillbox hike (not much a hike really, pretty short!).  But beautiful views.  It was pretty steep though. Some how neither of us fell the whole time. . . until the very, very end when I fell on my butt and slid down the hill. haha After that we went ate fish tacos at Maui tacos (Iʻve been eating a lot of tacos lately, huh? Well, theyʻre cheap and about 1000 times better when theyʻre not from Taco Bell!).  and then we went to the beach at Lanikai and swam in the water.  

After that we headed toward town and stopped at the Pali Lookout. They make tourists pay to park there now!  Anyway, that got me thinking that she had never been to one of the lookouts that overlook the city so I took her up to Makiki Heights.  Makiki Heights is also where the Contemporary Museum is so we stopped there - they are closed on Mondays, but my friend was working and able to take us into the galleries for our own personal tour! :D

Pali Lookout

After that, I was going to take her back to the mall to catch the bus home, but then Karen asked me if I wanted to go get Taiwanese shave ice from this place that weʻve eaten at before.  I said "Yes!" (Itʻs goood!) and then we decided to pick up Allie from school so she could come with us!  Taiwanese shave ice is a little different than Hawaiian style - they pour a brown sugar syrup on top for one. And its all about the toppings!  They have about 10-12 different toppings you can choose from.  Allie went ahead and got regular rainbow shave ice, but I got Taiwanese style with pudding (that lovely little yellow/brown thing on top), mochi balls and coconut tapioca. I let Allie try it but I think the tapioca weirded her out - she did not like it! haha

Taiwanese-style Shave ice - yummy!

Since it was evening by this time I offered to take Karen home and also because I wanted to see her dogs before she moves!  They have two Huskies/Malamute mixes - one almost 1 yr old and the other is 5 or 6 months old.  So we drove through rush hour traffic to Wahiawa (which took forever, it seemed) and then we had to go through the scary process of going on base! (Since she lives on the military base).  Its not that scary really, its just a weird feeling - they check her ID, check my ID, ask us where we are going, etc.  

Allie & her new friend, Trotsky.

The dogs were sooo cute! Theyʻre very hyper, of course, but they seemed to really like Allie, especially the bigger one! I think b/c she was more down on their level.  She liked them too (she loves huskies) but she didnʻt like them licking her in the face.  She sat down on the couch and big one came sat right next to her. Anyway, Allie keeps saying she loves huskies and wants one, despite the fact "those dogs were crazy!"  After that we drove all the way home, had a Happy Meal dinner and Allie was ready for bed.  She got her flu shot that day at school and it seemed like it made her sleepy.