HoHoHo!

Thanks to the awesomeness of the Norfolk pine tree, I was able to put up our Christmas tree this weekend. If you put up an imported real tree in HI this early you will have a pile of dead needles by Christmas, but last year I discovered this delightful variety. The really cool thing about this tree is that it's fairly "green" for a real tree. You also only have to water it like twice all season and they do NOT shed needles. So they cut off the top of these giant trees, allowing the tree to continue growing. Yesterday, I took Eve and her friend, Leah, to pick out our tree. Normally, I go alone and look at every single tree and very carefully chose the BEST one. This year, I let Eve do it and our tree is sooooo crooked, but she picked it out. I will allow my OCD self to love the tree anyway. I'll just turn my head when I look at it each and every time all season long.
CRH and our friend, Kevin, went diving yesterday. I took Eve and Leah to a local resort with my friend, Robby, and played in the pools and hot tub. When we all arrived home, we started decorating the tree. CRH and Kevin initially put up all the lights, until we went to plug it in and over half the strands did not work. I realized those two bright lights had NOT plugged boy ends to girl ends and they had just tucked things around. Duh...so, I unwrapped the lights and Kevin and I redid it all because CRH declared himself done after that fiasco. The rest of the tree decorating went very smoothly and the finished product is our lovely Charlie Brown, crooked tree.

Happy Black Friday!

The Hart family enjoyed a fun day yesterday, well 2/3 of us did. 1/3 of us had to work insane hours, so I can't speak for him so much. We are VERY THANKFUL for how hard he works and continues to provide for us though.
Ok, so I decided that I wanted to cook Thanksgiving dinner this year. Previously, I have always been assigned pies (because I can bake like a champ), bread, or to bring the can of cranberry sauce. In the spring when my grandmother found out about our divorce, she said to me "Amy, how are you going to eat? He does ALL the cooking.". I have laughed and laughed over this, but I think it inspired me. I started cooking and I realized I don't suck at it either. I attribute this to watching CRH cook for years, but I've got it not so much down as coming along.
Our menu included Roasted Turkey with Artichoke-Sausage Stuffing, Green Bean casserole, Deviled Eggs (which CRH made), Rolls (ok, I bought those), gravy, and of course the can of cranberries (which I opened). Dinner would NOT be complete without our favorite, Nutella Pumpkin Pie. I started cooking Wednesday night and finished prepping Thursday morning.
Thursday afternoon, I went to my friend's house for Thanksgiving lunch and to pick up Eve Hart. We ate a delicious meal with their family and then I headed home to finish cooking our dinner. I was SO full, but I managed to put in a dent in this plate.

After dinner, CRH went to work from 7pm -7am and a friend of mine and I took Eve and 2 of her friends to The Fun Factory and to see Tangled. It was cute enough, but I'd rent it if I were you.
Today, we avoided the stores (except the grocery store for wine and Ace for cheap Christmas lights and both stores were desolate). I spent the day instead working my tail off with Eve and a friend rearranging her room. It looks awesome now, but holy crap I'm sore. I cleaned the house like company was coming (though no one is until January) and now I'm ready to decorate for Christmas tomorrow!
Hope you all had a great turkey day! It's been a hard year, but I have so VERY much to be thankful for...family, friends, a job, my health, school, and less we forget my location!

SUP

We are LOVING the SUP. I soooo want a board, maybe one day. Although the problem with having my own board is that I would have to be able to get it out of the water...a skill I still must master. I can get it to the water, get on it, paddle it (even with a kid on the end), but getting it out is something I'm not rocking yet.
Today, I spent a delightful 2 hours at Kahuku Beach walking up and down looking for shells. I found some really cool ones and as I was heading home CRH texted to see if I wanted to go paddle boarding. Of course I did!
He picked Eve up from school and we all went to the beach. We took turns paddling her out and she and I went under the rainbow bridge and down the river twice. I am WIPED out now, but it's a good wiped out. At the end, she wanted to paddle herself. CRH held onto the leash and she went at it.
We capped off the day with a sunset cocktail at a local restaurant and headed home for dinner. No one will have to rock me to sleep tonight...zzzzzzz.

Minus Another Tooth

This weekend was soooo relaxing and fun. Saturday, I woke up and took Eve to a craft fair at a local school. She and I had fun walking around and looking at things. We gathered ideas and made plans for the holidays. I took her for a long beach walk Saturday afternoon and we picked up lots of cool shells and saw a sea turtle out on the beach. It was a perfect North Shore afternoon. CRH texted me as I was coming back with Eve down the beach and said he wanted to meet us with wine and apps for sunset. It was a gorgeous evening. On the beach, Eve's front tooth started bothering her. She bit into a cracker hard and it started bleeding some. When we got home, she asked CRH to pull it. Oh how thankful I was to have him here to do that....ewwwww. Today, she's down another tooth. I love this toothless smile. I'm happy all of her Christmas pics will be this cute smile.

Today we hung out and had a low key day. I actually woke up this morning thinking that it had to be Monday because I was so relaxed, but I was delighted when I figured out it was Sunday and I could go back to sleep.

Happy Belated 40th Birthday!

I'm so totally on island time these days, it's gotten ridiculous. I love it. It is the way I was meant to live. Ok, enough excuses though. CRH turned 40 last week! For his birthday, I was going to rent a stand up paddle board for him for the day. The morning of his birthday, I called the place and they didn't have anyone available to meet us to rent a board. I would like to mention that on this particular beautiful, sunny day I think their staff was all out surfing. ;) Anyway, I reserved one for the weekend so that we could all go but sadly CRH's work schedule changed. Today was the day and we went out this morning for several hours. It was tons of fun. This was his first time and only my second. He caught on quickly and ended up paddling me on the front of the board down the river for about an hour. It was gorgeous! We saw tons of turtles while we were out too, both together and separately. Incidentally, we remarked how this was the first time we've done anything involving a paddle since our unfortunate outrigger canoe experience of 2000. I guess now that we're getting divorced, it was ok to try it.
So, I highly recommend this activity now on the Hart Family tour when you visit. It's so easy (mostly, depending on the surf) to rent a board for the day and it's a great peaceful, fun workout.
Happy 40th Birthday CRH!