Mele Kalikimaka

I've dropped the ball on this blog again (I blame YOU, Twitter).  It is just hard to get to this blog when most of my peeps are chatting to me on Twitter all the time.  But I've recently gone back to old posts which was really interesting and helpful, so I'm getting back on this blog train.

I have a semi-good excuse.  I nipped away to Hawaii to visit my parents.  Traveling to Hawaii is so much cheaper in early December than late December.  This is the second time my mom waited for me to put up the tree. I really think putting up the tree is practically as good as being there for Christmas morning so I may make this a tradition.

I've been trying to make hand made ornaments for my relatives as gifts the last few years.  This year I made a holiday mouse:

Super fun project!

You can see how much my knitting has improved from when I first started a few years ago.

My parents have a large tree and TONS of ornaments.  It took Boyfriend and I twenty minutes to put up our tree.  It took me 3.5 hours with my mom to do the tree in Hawaii.  The majority of the ornaments we have were either gifts or hand made and there is a special story for almost every one. My mom loved to tell me who gave us this or who made that.  Especially special to me, my grandma and grandpa on my dad's side used to get us ornaments every year for Christmas.  I used to love it when my grandmother would take us to the ornament shop and let me pick one out.  It is so special now to see their names written on these ornaments along with the year they are from.  I didn't take the good camera home but am thinking maybe next year I will to take some photos of them.

All done!

See that big box on the left?  As an aside and public service announcement (because my mom doesn't read this blog and apparently she snooped and already knows), but KitchenAids are REALLY hard to wrap. When Target.com offers to wrap it for you for $5, you can bet your furry bunny butt that it would be money well spent.  My sister and I went in on gifts together for my parents this year so we got them each something extra special.  My mom's been oogling KitchenAid mixers for years and we finally got her one.

We took a detour after dinner one night to see the Honolulu Christmas lights.

I will have a much more detailed post about my training very soon.  But suffice to say I stayed pretty active while in Hawaii.  I either ran or joined my mom on her daily 5.5 mile walk each day.  I actually enjoyed running in Hawaii this time.  Usually I dread not having a big park loop to run through.  Neighborhood running is not my cup of tea.  I created a larger loop than usual which helped and the winter morning temps were very nice.  It was a little humid but the weather this time of year is so much more pleasant than going home during the summer.

I snapped some "Seen On My Run" shots in Hawaii for all of you:

My mom said this poor guy has been sitting here for a while.  Anyone else sense a Toy Story 3 Lotso-esque meltdown?

Not the prettiest hibiscus, but when I was growing up one side of our property was lined with this type.