written by Candice Meyers
Mele Kalikimaka HGO Ohana!
I hope this finds you well in the midst of your holiday prepping. I know I am getting excited to celebrate my first Christmas in Hawaii.
All of my decorations have been up since November 1st and I have almost finished packing presents for our family to ship to the mainland. This year I made some jewelry for the women and bought various Hawaiian food items for the men. I would specify but they all like to read these post!
Below is the photo we used for our Christmas card - we are outside our piece of paradise in paradise. We were on our way down to the water and thought it would depict our time here in Hawaii perfectly - always heading to the beach.
This year is going to be much different since it will be the two of us. My husband made it just in time after being on a work trip for 3.5 months. Since this is our first Christmas with just the two of us we have been coming up with ideas about how we want to spend the day. What traditions do we want to start? What traditions do we want to keep going from our families? There are so many possibilities! What traditions have you started or kept going?
Both of our families always cook big and hearty breakfast and we aren’t going to let that slide - breakfast is the most important meal after all, right? We are thinking of snacking for lunch (my personal favorite) and going out for dinner and a few Christmas cocktails in Haleiwa. Another small but strict tradition we kept going is to open the presents under the tree first and then the presents in the stockings. Don’t ask why - but I do know that we will keep it going.
While we are living here on the island we will of course be taking a few hours to go to the beach and get some sun. We plan to blare Mele Kalikimaka by Bing Crosby and try to make a sandman (snowman but with sand). Hopefully if all things go well the water will be crystal clear and we can bring our underwater camera on a little snorkel dive.
Since we will not be with our loved ones on Christmas Day a FaceTime call is a must. In a recent Honey Girl blog post I mentioned that FaceTime was one of the things in life I am most thankful for. When you have friends and family that are all over the country it makes things that much easier when you get audio and video!
All these events that we are planning are all activities people expect on Christmas Day. If we had nothing and no one but each other I would still be just as happy. It’s not what you have that makes the day special, it’s who you have. Between my family and living in such a beautiful place, I’d say I have it all.
