Tree Trimming

After church today we went to the NEX for lunch and bought our Christmas tree. I was pleasantly surprised by the reasonable prices on the trees at the NEX. We bought a Noble Fir from Tacoma, WA.

Christmas Tree Shopping 2007
This was the tree we bought - a Noble Fir from Tacoma, WA.

We came home and re-arranged the furniture in the family room to support the Christmas tree setup.

This is the Hawaiian quilt tree-skirt we picked up at the swap meet.

Last year, YS didn't really understood what we were doing. Yes, he enjoyed putting up the tree and "helping" put the ornaments on the tree, but I don't think he really associated it with the whole Christmas season. Today, I was surprised by how extremely excited YS was about decorating the tree. I mean, he was in a state of perpetual motion and absolutely could NOT stand still. He was hopping everywhere he went for hours on end. He couldn't wait for me to put the lights on the tree so he could put the ornaments on, and he kept asking over and over and over again when he got to put the star on the tree. So after I got the lights on, I lifted YS up to put the star on top.

YS puts the star on top, 2007.

My favorite quote of the afternoon: ES remembered the "rules" on placing fragile ornaments from last year and commented to LW that we had to hang a fragile ornament up high so YS couldn't reach it. LW explained to him that it was okay, YS is old enough now to know not to break them. Not long afterward, YS said, "Daddy, will you lift me up? I want to put this one up high where ES can't reach it and break it."

Weekend Recap(updated Monday afternoon)

So Saturday, we went to the swap meet at the Aloha Stadium. We got this awesome Hawaiian quilt...Saturday afternoon we went to the NEX (Navy Exchange) to have my Emerald Shellback certificate framed as a birthday present from my M-I-L, and then cooked some burgers on the grill for dinner.

For Sunday brunch, we went to Haleiwa Joe's in Kaneohe. It was a great breakfast buffet overlooking the Haiku botanical gardens. Here's what the view was like from our table...
Sunday afternoon, we went to the Kahala Resort over on the other side of Diamond Head to watch the free dolphin show (only paid $4 for parking)...


Then we went to Hilo Hattie's. OMG! This was my first time to HH. It's like the Hawaiian Shirt Shopping Mecca. Plus, they've got quite the operation going with the cultured pearls there. The lured us in with their typical pitch making us think we'd "won" a chance to pick out an oyster and see if it had a pearl in it. Of course it had a pearl in it, then they lured us into buying the settings for it. But hey, I got my wife's anniversary present taken care of, so it was all good (although our checking account balance is substantially lower now).

Thanks to good ole Chris Columbus discovering America, we got to enjoy our Monday morning over at Ko Olina in Lagoon #4 (the southern most one). We had perfect timing and arrived just as somebody was leaving, so we got a parking spot there (Lagoon #4 is desirable because they have bathrooms there). The beach there is perfect for little kids - very gradual slope and no waves. Our younger son (YS) was jumping in and splashing and swimming and having a ball. Our eldest son (ES) wanted to go snorkeling, so I took him out to the edge of the lagoon and swam amongst dozens of brightly colored tropical fish.

Blunoz & ES watching the fishies.

We were having a nice enjoyable time mostly looking down at the fish in the rocks. Then I looked up in front of us to find myself staring face to face with a baracuda. This is similar to what I think I saw (image from Wikipedia)...

I wasn't exactly sure if I should be worried or not, but I didn't want to wait and find out (especially with a six-year old in-tow), so I said to myself, "self... SWIM AWAAAAAY!" and we swam back to shore. Now, here in the comfort of my la-z-boy, I read up on them and understand they aren't that dangerous, but I won't intentionally go close to them just in case (especially if wearing shiny objects that might be mistaken for small fish... like my watch... or my wedding ring...).

ES and I walked down to the southern end of the beach to find a geocache while we were there, too.

(1) ES with GPS. (2) ES found it! (3) ES with the cache and a travel bug.