Monaloca

While our family and friends are shivering through uncommon rain and cold on the mainland, we’re happily enjoying a mellow Kailua vacation. Melina has taken to Grandma Rapoza very well. It helps that Grandma has a big lab, Samson, that Meli adores and likes to help her feed. She’s also become an expert stair climber thanks to the small steps leading up to the front porch and down to our room.

We’ve had a couple beach visits and would have had more but the weather’s been off-and-on rainy or windy, which brings out the Portuguese Man o’ War (we saw one wash up the other day). Kai and Meli both love running in the waves and carrying bucket-loads of water back to a sand volcano that Daddy builds. Unfortunately for us, Melina’s still a sand eater. She also likes ocean water. Must be the salt.

Joey’s niece Nancy and her family now live just a few blocks away. Her kids, Maya and Zeke, are close in age to Kai and Melina so we’ve been spending a lot of time with them. Kai and Maya act like old buddies. (They are, really!)

Zeke is obsessed with “Mina.” He follows her around, gives her hugs and kisses at every opportunity (as if she doesn’t get enough of that from her brother), and will even pull her picture off Granny’s wall to stare at up-close. It’s pretty cute. Maybe by the time we leave Meli will return his affections.

Other random highlights:

* A Matthew Fox (from “Lost”) sighting in Kailua town our first afternoon here.
* A visit to the Honolulu zoo.
* A trip to Ala Moana mall and visit with Santa. (Kai smiled politely. Melina screamed. The photo is fantastic.)
* Following Barack Obama’s own Kailua holiday on the local news. We drove up to the private lane where he’s staying the other day, but only saw clusters of American flags and Honolulu police cars as evidence he was staying nearby.
* And of course, oodles of unscheduled time!

The fun continues so we’ll have much more to come. In the meantime, happy Christmas Eve to all!

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