IMR: Entries: 2001: December: 25 — Tuesday, December 25, 2001

Kalikimaka We had a most wonderful Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, rich and full and busy, but blissfully free of most craziness and stress. We had a most wonderful Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, rich and full and busy, but blissfully free of most craziness and stress.   Katie and the blinking tree of many gifts. Opening Christmas gifts as a precise science. Katie shows off her adorable reindeer pillow. Katie helps distribute presents to everyone. Katie tries on a cute hat from Aunty Lacene. Jen and Katie compare their new cookware. Christmas Mass at Sacred Heart Church. Katie brushes up on her ... church stuff. The cathedral holds a full house today. The church choral group sings up a storm. Father Marc Alexander was in top form. Katie eagerly awaits the collection basket. Christmas Day was spent at grandpa's house. Katie watches the fishes swarm at low tide. Katie picks pipipi stranded on shore. Dad really gets into Katie's Play-Doh. Cousins Chad and Romy Hatae. Eathan thinks he's getting clothes. Katie gets even more gifts to open. Gayle watches as Katie does her thing. Jen and a branch of the Hatae Clan. A golden Christmas sunset in Hawaii. A purple sky spread over Koko Head. A three-quarters moon hangs overhead. We spent Christmas Eve with mom and her family, and Christmas Day with dad and his kin — after a long-overdue church visit for Christmas Mass. (Not only did I not crack a single joke, but I also, finally, got the "Sign of the Cross" right.) The skies were in a good mood, too, and blessed us with remarkably good weather for winter. Apart from a few gray clouds yesterday morning, the holiday was bright and clear and blue. While at dad's, playing with Katie on the sea wall at low tide, I had one of those quintessential "lucky to live Hawaii" moments. The year 2001 will be unforgettable, for both good and bad reasons. But when I paused tonight to do an impromptu quality-of-life survey, I just had to give it a top grade. Surrounded by my family and such beauty, even without any of the stuff under the tree, I couldn't have been happier. To be sure, the stuff under the tree is still pretty cool. Thanks to an unexpected small web design job I stumbled into earlier this year, not only were Jen and I able to give out more than Christmas cards this year (well, gifts for our siblings and all relatives age 10 and under), but we also got to give each other some pretty cool stuff. And I had a blast shopping for Jen. I got her a TDK MOJO MP3 player (the "just tell me what you want" no-surprise gift), the "Almost Famous Untitled - The Bootleg Cut" DVD (the "that would be nice" gift), and a National-Panasonic SR-MM18N 10-cup "fuzzy logic" rice cooker, steamer, and all-around versatile kitchen appliance (the holy-cow, totally secret finalé gift). Identifying, then buying, then hiding that rice cooker was a much more convoluted undertaking than I'd anticipated — very nearly a slapstick comedy — but I'll spare the details. My gift was a bookshelf stereo system, to replace the old Sony system I bought off Wayne more than eight years ago. That old stereo had been to Hilo and back, surviving six rough moves. After Katie discovered it, though, parts started disappearing, or stopped working altogether, and for the last year it had been nothing more than an amplifier for the TV. I'd actually been trying for months to find a system that didn't look like a prop from Galaxy Quest, but even the salesman at Sam Sung ultimately admitted that practically all stereos these days have ridiculous arrays of blinking lights and useless bevels, holes, and gills. At least this one does 6-channel Dolby surround, which makes DVD viewing volumes better. And technically, when I picked up my sexy Olympus digital camera in August, I rationalized the purchase as an early Christmas gift (to myself, with a little help from Martha's mom!). So, I got that too. Jen and I got Katie a huge, wooden doll house, which came in a box that was bigger than her. (It was also wider than standard-length wrapping paper, making for a pretty funny-looking present.) Of course, it's too big to fit in our apartment, and Katie wasn't too happy about leaving it behind. The box also says (as the understatement of the year), "Some assembly required." I expect I'll spend the better part of a day this weekend putting it together. Our families and friends were also overly generous. Lots of great clothes (mom got Jen some dressy maternity-and-more outfits, dad and Gayle gave her a couple of beautiful sweaters). And gift certificates for groceries and family restaurants showed many were especially perceptive. Not surprisingly, Katie cleaned up. At mom's, easily three out of five gifts under the tree were for her. But she got a surprisingly, yet somehow heartening, small number of toys, instead adding dozens of adorable outfits to her wardrobe. Fortunately, she's still young enough that getting clothes is not a bummer, and she was just as thrilled to parade around in a new corduroy Tinkerbell jumper than she was to get the Play-Doh travel kit. Clothes outnumbered toys at dad's house, too, but in the latter category, she got lots of airplane-themed goodies. "Maybe she'll be a pilot," Gayle and dad mused. "Not if she has our eyesight," I said. "I'd settle for a CEO of a major commercial airline, though." I did go into work yesterday, and as I'd somewhat suspected, I was the only one silly enough to do so. I alternated between blasting Björk and They Might Be Giants MP3s (a discordant, but strangely tolerable, mix) and watching CNN, while I stuffed, sealed, and mailed several hundred newsletters. Then I headed over to mom's bank to see about another freelance web gig, then joined mom for lunch (sweet-sour duck at Ken Fong's — just decadent!). Sick of messing with envelopes, I went to pick up Katie afterward, and we both went home early to take a nap. Jen had a longer day, certainly, as it involved retail work the day before Christmas. When Katie and I picked her up when Macy's closed at 6 p.m., she was tired and exasperated — not because people were shopping right up until the last minute, but because they seemed to be angry that they weren't the only ones doing so. We then drove out to Mililani to join mom and her family at Uncle Al's house for the annual Christmas party, which was already in progress. Everyone had finished eating by the time we arrived, so we got the table to ourselves, and quickly stuffed ourselves with delicious food. Some folks retired upstairs to watch "Legally Blonde" while others just caught up with each other. The special guests this time were my cousin Alexander (now in the Medical Service Corps) and his wife Claudia, visiting from Maryland. We tried, unsuccessfully, to convince them of the joys of early parenthood. While there, I was able to help Uncle Al get his computer to talk to his Sony digital camera. Every other techy friend and relative hadn't been able to make it to work, apparently, so meanwhile he had just kept buying Memory Sticks™ every time one filled up. I just deleted the USB adapters from the system, and when it rebooted, it worked like a charm. He was glad to be able to finally see all the pictures he'd taken over the months. He was also bummed that he'd already gotten rid of an iPAQ that he returned because it had also refused to talk to his computer. As the evening progressed, the little people in attendance got progressively crankier, and since we still had to open presents (yes, on Christmas Eve — I never figured out why), we headed home before there were any meltdowns. Katie quickly realized that it was finally time to tear open the colorful packages that had been taunting her for weeks, and she went from drowsy to hyperactive in an instant. Fortunately, she was still a sweetheart, and burned hundreds of calories helping me distribute all of the presents to each member of the family. (Though absent from the party and much of the evening, even Todd and Heidi showed up just in time.) We let Katie go through her enormous pile of goodies first. In no time she had the ritual down — tearing open the gift, cheering excitedly, showing it off to everyone (a la Vanna White), then putting it off to the side to move on to the next present. And I guess the "tearing open" part gets more violent with each passing year... while Katie started off meticulously picking at corners or taped flaps, soon paper and bows were flying everywhere. When, finally, she went after the wrapped doll house, its sheer size and weight was still no match for her quick fingers. Then, in turn, everyone else dove into their loot (with occasional help from a rip-happy Katie). All in all, we had the process down to a science, with Heidi and I keeping the cramped living room free of empty boxes and torn wrapping paper, and Jen dutifully keeping a list of every gift every one got for the inevitable task of sending out "Thank You" cards. When we were finished, there were long, strong hugs all around. We packed what we could and headed home. Katie was wired, and only went to bed with the promise of playing with Play-Doh the next morning. Jen and I relaxed a bit before going to bed shortly before midnight, and I watched the clock until it read "12:00" just so I could wish Jen the earliest possible "Merry Christmas." This morning did, indeed, involve Play-Doh. I hadn't messed with the stuff since I was a kid myself, and both Jen and I were probably enjoying ourselves as much as Katie was. We were even mostly successful in keeping the colors separated, even though we knew ultimately our rainbow of choice would become eight cans of brownish grey. With some coaxing — and one false start, since our schedule turned out to be off by an hour — we then headed out to Sacred Heart Church for the penultimate Christmas ceremony. The cathedral was bright and packed and all decked out, and immediately we were glad we came. (We also decided then that we'd go to the New Year's rites at my family's Buddhist temple next week, too.) Katie was restless, and a little out of practice, but still remembered some songs and responses, and gleefully tossed our offering (a.k.a. "mail") into the basket. And, as I mentioned, I didn't crack wise and even went through some of the motions with everyone else. After Jen got her bland cracker and Father Marc Alexander delivered an especially sharp sermon (something about God as an electric light bulb), we headed home again for more Play-Doh ... and a long family nap. We headed out to dad's in the afternoon, stopping along the way at Duck Yun Chinese Restaurant at Aina Haina Shopping Center for a giant tray of gon lo mein. (We didn't pick up Grandma Ozawa this time, sadly, as she was feeling under the weather and wouldn't be joining us.) Dad and Gayle were working their respective magic in the kitchen when we arrived, and Eathan was busy untangling wires behind the television. Katie had brought her Play-Doh with her, though, and was eager to share its many theraputic benefits — dad quickly got sucked into playing with the stuff. In fact, he played with it long after Katie had lost interest and wandered off. Before the rest of the family arrived, we opened the gifts that were waiting for us there. Then, since it was such a beautiful day, we spent as much time as we could outside. Dad and Eathan skilfully piloted the barbeque grill, while Katie, Jen and I relaxed by the ocean. Soon, people started to arrive. Chad and Song (just in from the Chinatown fishmarket, where they had sold 135 pounds of sashimi and poke in the morning), Romy and Tayler, Uncle Paul and Aunty Jean, and Grandma Hatae. Then Uncle Leslie, dad's brother, and his wife Yukiko. Then Yoh, Eathan's roommate when he was at the University of Washington. There was plenty of good conversation, and Eathan put "The Princess Diaries" DVD on the big-screen TV for the quiet folks. Of course, there was also plenty of good food, too. We ate and ate and ate nonstop, gorging ourselves on gon lo mein, sushi, kal bi, turkey, shrimp, and much more. By the time the sun set, I was ready for another, much longer nap. Soon enough, it was time to wobble out the door, loaded down with giant bags of gifts and food. Katie and Jen fell asleep almost as soon as we got home tonight, but I'm still up, basking in the lingering glow of this most satisfying of holidays. It's been just about the best Christmas ever, and I want to enjoy it a bit longer. I also wanted to see what's on this new director's cut of "Almost Famous." "He was never a person! He's a journalist!" And since I'm distracted I can't think of anything else to say. Except, I guess, Merry Christmas.

Comments Yeah, and we all know how well you stick to the rationale of "early christmas presents". Psfth. *grin* —Joleychic (December 27, 2001 6:24 AM) E kala mai! Comments have been disabled due to overwhelming abuse by spammers. Please click through to any of the video hosting services linked above to leave a public response, or feel free to send an e-mail. Mahalo! < December 24 · December · December 31 > © 1997-2008 Ryan Kawailani Ozawa · E-Mail: imr@lightfantastic.org · Created: 13 November 1997 · Last Modified: 14 January 2008