We Are Here: Merry Christmas!

We spent the past few weeks in New Orleans. We had not planned to do this till a change of dates in Sage's kindergarten interview in Hawaii shifted our plans around, and we realized that we could celebrate Christmas with extended family. It's near impossible for me to take off enough time from work to fly to the mainland for the holidays, so this is our first big family Christmas since 2004, the year before we moved to Hawaii.

I thought that I would have tons of time to blog while in New Orleans and had been planning to post a lot with great intent to fill in the gaps from the start of our trip in July. I even hoped to try to capture some of my mom's fascinating stories from her family's past (ghost stories, romance, history -- she has every genre covered, and she is an amazing storyteller!).

Unfortunately, there was no time to write.

The biggest downside of living in Hawaii is being far from family. We really crave and miss being with family, so we wrung every bit of family time that we could out of this visit to New Orleans.

The girls and their cousins made a film. We still have to edit the footage and will post a link to the video when it's done.

The movie is about a magical forest.

I was cast as the Bad Witch that pretends to be a Good Witch in this scene.

We had the pleasure of seeing my talented mom (violinist), sister (violinist, pianist, harpist) and niece (cellist, harpist, pianist, and choir member) perform in several Christmas concerts around town.

Mary is fourth from the left in the back row. She has a perfect voice.

Mary practices a lot more than Phoenix and Indigo. To their dismay, I was inspired to increase their practice time.

Aunty Aimee -- she is usually the concert mistress for the UNO Civic Symphony Orchestra

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We ate lots and lots of good food. As amazing as the Cajun and Creole cuisine in New Orleans is, the food from my mom's kitchen surpasses all else -- think Cajun and Creole augmented by Deep South meets Taiwanese infusion and add a little bit of Mama Liu artistry = Best Food Ever! The girls were very happy to be surrounded by bountiful home-cooked food especially after the rationing and limited variety they have had on the boat.

We took pleasure in all the things that we cannot do while living on a boat -- daily showers, watching TV, riding bicycles, going to the movies, being able to drive places instead of just walking everywhere, and mostly being with family.

BIG THANKS to
1. All the Lius and Wilkinsons. We are so grateful to my family for their hospitality, generosity and for all that they did to make the girls' first big family Christmas so memorable and wonderful.

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2. Tate and the Goodman family for the huge box of Hawaiian goodies that greeted us in New Orleans. We have really missed Hawaiian treats during our travels (nori and Hurricane popcorn win out over other snacks any day and nothing beats lilikoi jelly!) I did not get a chance to take a photo of the box before Jamey put away everything, but picture a box exploding in volcano-fashion with tons of goodies and Aloha!

3. Brenna and family for the Hawaiian leis that greeted us back on the boat! The leis traveled the same route we did across the U.S., and down the East Coast over the past few months and were welcomed with open arms and mouths!

4. HUGE thanks and hugs go to the all of the Clarke and Duffield elves for the special delivery that greeted us on the boat on our return! We were extremely impressed with how clean the boat was --- THANK YOU, GRAMMY AND GRAMPY!!

Wow! In case you are wondering, yes, we are riding a few inches lower in the water.

5. Merry Christmas and warm wishes to all of our friends and family. We love all the holiday wishes, cards and emails we've received and love hearing from everyone even more than we normally do!
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Jamey and I decided to make some of our Christmas gifts this year. Did you know that there is now designer duct tape? The Platypus brand is thick and gorgeous to work with. The Duck brand is fun and has a plethora of patterns including Saints (Who Dat!), Red Sox, Star Wars, Angry Birds, Hello Kitty and many more beautiful and funky ones. It was a good family project that bonded us together (sorry for the bad pun), and the girls loved the satisfaction of creating beautiful things by themselves.