Merry Christmas 2023 🎄 & Happy New Year 2024 🎉🎊

We built our Christmas tree, placed our 🎁, and the kids were utterly surprised 😮🥳!  They really thought that we were going to give them iPads AFTER the 11th generation has come out, and refurbished ones too!  This was before when we told them that they were getting just the case for now...

Not too much of a smile, were they?  They sort of expected the ornaments (for each other, not themselves, as secrets).

🎅🏻🤶🏻also gave them something that neither of them, especially Keko'a, would imagined!  Look at his face!

Finally, the moment they found out about their new 🧸, hidden under their pillows while they were opening/celebrating the 2 images above 😉

We went to Tantalus Lookout Point the next day.  Another thing off our bucket list.

Ma'e Ma'e will be an NVMS ambassador (1 of 25 I think) to some middle schools in Korea.  She'll be 🧗🏻‍♀️up Makapu'u Lighthouse - more like a hike on asphalt pavement uphill - for 45 minutes.  She was complaining about walking downhill for 1 minute - even less than that - from the parking lot to the lookout point at Tantalus 🤦🏻‍♂️

The view from the lookout was gorgeous especially during the day we went, and that was after several days of on and off 🌦 for the past week or so.  However, like I stated, one and done, because the view won't change probably for the next thousands of years.  Side note - one could see Molokai and Maui, possibly Lanai too, from the viewpoint, but not as close as from the lighthouse.

We then spent the next couple of days going to the mall, getting Christmas ornaments thanks to 50%, plus Doctor who, plus Snorlax, plus Datsun.  Kids were super hyped getting every ornaments they wished for, again at 50% off price, so that they could keep an unopened version.  They were also super glad that we decided NOT to return our original price - with a discount - ones, knowing the cheapskates we are, since those have sentimental values.

As far as 🎂 went, Keko'a got some nice 🎁.  They were great, and we knew it, or we wouldn't be able to up the ante on the Christmas ones a days later.  We drove to Broke Da Kline again for Unicorn ice-cream 🍰 and we all really liked it.  We also tried Spoon in Ewa Beach and frankly, we all thought that it was over the hype.  It was also a 40+ minutes wait so we went to the ROSS closed by, with Keko'a checked out the Safeway and O'Reilly next to it.  Ma'e Ma'e said that this is the worst ROSS on the 🏝, and in a way, I agreed.  It's a BIG store compared to most other ROSS, but it had few merchandise left (maybe it was the weekend before Christmas?).  However, even the big non-Christmas stuff were few 🤔

Routing back to Spoon - a 40+ minutes wait?  I know (and it has a notice board saying so) that it's NOT fast food, but even if it's a fine diner, which it isn't, a 20+ minutes wait is excessive (referring to Chef Ramsey on Kitchen Nightmare).  Worst, the ones we ordered were lunch special like meat and seafood jun, bulgogi, and something I forgot.  Ma'e Ma'e had the rice cake.  None of which were gourmet dishes.  The other thing that I'm doubting now is Yelp's rating in Hawaii, and Spoon kind of strengthened my suspicion, only to be confirmed by the 4 stars review at Bangkok Chef at Moilili yesterday.  Watered down everything, pad thai and pad kee mow that were utterly mushy, and stay chicken that tasted nothing like grilled.  😳

Finally here's an image of Ma'e Ma'e having her 🎂.  She was caught 😲 as she didn't expect us to get her an entire 🎂.  She thought that we were just going to buy red velvet 🧁 like we did in the past several years!

We've also tried - the entire family together - Kamitoku 🍲 but kids didn't like it.  Couple of things - it was an hour wait despite being there early and the staff there reserved tables for 1 hour (opened 11 am, but tables reserved for 12 noon) when we only ate about 30 minutes.  The other thing was that, and this has already been so since it offered the lunch special, the beef was VERY chewy and this time, there was not enough soup.  

Will be going for more shopping the NYE weekend but not too 🤪 because Keko'a has ⚽️ practices unlike the CE weekend...

🎪 will be coming next weekend (house being tented again) so we'll be heading to Ala Moana hotel a 2nd time.  Keko'a is SO looking forward to that 😲 and he's probably the only one 😂

P.S.  we recently received our updated property tax assessment and guess what?  It has lowered to what we weren't asking for during the dispute.  I believe that C&C Honolulu's finally admitting its mistakes after updating our property info and found that what we were requesting was a true reflection.  Score 1 for us finally!✌🏻👍🏻