What Santa Brought Us

The best present Santa brought us was little Taj!  Even Nikhil loves this present.  (And, I did make these little tie shirts).

But, now on to material things.  In our family, we only buy presents for the kids (nieces, nephews, etc), which is a great tradition since they're the most important part of Christmas.  But Santa did bring me a little something I needed.  The backstory is that when I run, I always take Jeff's watch.  My watch (which he bought me for our first anniversary) is a dress watch and I don't want to run with that, so I take his surf watch.  He hates that I do that because I get sunscreen and sweat all over it and then sometimes I misplace it.  So, for Christmas, Santa bought me...

a Roxy surfwatch which I love.  I've started swimming at the Outrigger, which for some reason impresses my former swimmer/water polo husband.  The first time he saw me swim, he commented that  he was surprised, I think he thought I would be flailing around, since we always joke that I'm the land athlete and he's the water athlete.  Little did he know that I swam on the Springdale summer swim team until I was 10 years old - that's right, everyone should be impressed.  

For Jeff's present, I wanted to get him something meaningful.  It's a running joke that our only dates are to Hawaii Ophthalmology Society meetings.  We both have to attend, so we get a babysitter and the restaurants are nice, the meals are free and those have been our dates.  I am exaggerating only slightly, we do usually go out to dinner for our birthdays as well.  But, it occurred to me that discussing the latest Medicare cuts does not constitute a date.  And, some of you may be thinking, you two see each other all the time - at work, at home.  This is true, but not true.  We do obviously work together, but we each have our own patient load and we only see each other at lunch time, as we eat at our desk in front of our computer, so our main conversations revolve around payroll, administrative issues, bills.  And, at home, as parents, we are just trying to survive - get Nikhil his dinner, bathe him, get him to bed, which for some reason has now turned into a 2 hour affair.  So, it really leaves little time for real conversation.

I was browsing the blogosphere (why reinvent the wheel?) for husband gift ideas, when I came across this blog, find joy in the journey, with the best idea. It was perfect - 12 pre-planned dates, one each month, for the whole year.  Jeff and I always say we are going to do things and then the day comes around for our "date" and somehow, a trip to Costco ends up getting substituted.  But, no more.  I gave him a box with 12 envelopes.  On the inside cover of the box, I included a schedule of the dates after going through our work calendar and finding the Saturdays that we aren't working.  

I also gave him little hints and he's already trying to figure out each date.

January is the most extravagant, mainly because it's our anniversary and after having Taj, we have had very little time alone.  Each envelope has a printed card with the itinerary and other information.

Some dates are free, I don't want to give them away, in case Jeff's reading, but they are all things we have talked about doing over the past 3.5 years living here in Hawaii.  I'll post pics of the envelope and date as we do them in case other Hawaii couples are looking for fun things to do here!

Happy Holidays!

We had an exciting 2 weeks.  My sister-in-laws came in from California and it was an awesome, chaotic time!  There were 9 kids - 8 years old and under, which makes for a very fun Christmas morning.

Here's the Christmas tree at my mother-in-law's house with ALL of the presents under it.

Getting together with my husband's family is what makes me want to have a large family.  It's so nice to have all the kids running around and everything is just so much more fun. Though, extremely loud - and next year will be worse, since Taj and Jacqueline will be walking.  The adults figured that we have about 6 more years before things calm down because by then, the 2 oldest girls, will be 13 and 14 years old which is old enough to babysit!  Though 4 teenage boys will probably always be loud.






And, Mark, my brother-in-law hard at work, whipping up another delicious meal for us.  He is basically the holiday chef, he cooks non-stop when he is here visiting.  And, awesome meals too - short ribs, boeuf bourguignon, bananas foster.  For Christmas morning, he made a fritata.

The adults did get a moment of peace while the kids watched a bit of TV (less than 2 hours though as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics!).

 And then, the chaos begins!

We bought my mother-in-law her own Honolulu Eye Clinic hoodie.  She saw mine and said she wanted one like it (I had already ordered it when she mentioned this).  So, I pretended that we couldn't get it in time and then we gave it to her this morning.

So far, people think Taj looks like Nikhil, though I think he is starting to look a little different.  Bella thinks Taj looks like my dad, but he jokes that the similarity only exists because they're both bald.  But, looking at this pic, I think I can see the resemblance.

All the guys with their Reyn Spooner shirts

My mom made these cute headbands for all the girls.  Here's my youngest niece trying hers on.

 Ryan's Hot Wheels toy was the hit of the morning.

Nikhil got Bash & Dash (and he can tell them apart).

And, there was even a little break dancing.  This is my sister-in-law Kristina doing the "turtle".  The story behind this - Nikhil accidentally scratched my mother-in-law's floor because this awesome truck that he got actually had screws on the bottom, which we didn't remove.  To remove the scratches, Mark used some floor polish, which got the scratches off, but made the floor very slick, enough for KK to break out her dance moves.

At night, the kids put on a Christmas show.  They sang 'Hark the Herald Angels Sing'.  It was very cute and they even had a sign posted for all attendees.

Mark made these awesome molten chocolate cakes - one for each person.  Now, our family is large - so that was literally, I think like 40 cakes.  And, there's nothing more I like than melty, hot chocolate with vanilla ice cream.

Here's my mother-in-law with 9 of her grandkids.  Kind of hard to get all the kids to look and smile at the same time.  But, it's still a cute pic anyway.  One grandkid born every year since 2001.  2010 was the only year that a grandchild wasn't born.  Jacqueline was born in Feb of this year and Taj in Oct, so it was so close to having one every year.

There was a point in the night when I was taking out the trash and I could hear all the activity inside the house.  Jeff's uncle playing piano, the murmur of the adults talking, kids laughing and screaming.  And, I thought, this is what cheesy Christmas movies try to imitate - what we had, but minus the snow and cold weather.

We missed all the family who couldn't make it this Christmas - Uncle Ric, Alison and the Wai Family.  We were thinking of you.