Happy Holidays 2010!

Holiday Decorations!

This is my very first Christmas where I have a Christmas tree and decorated the house with Christmas lights!
We don't have too many decorations, but I still think that our house has the best decorations on the entire block!
I will definitely scour the stores right after Christmas for clearance sales to stock up on more decorations for next year.

View of the front of our house!
Blue icicle lights, lights on the tree trunks, and a reindeer!

Side view of the house.
We are very happy with how it looks


Close-up view of our eating reindeer.
Her head moves up and down.


We bought a real Christmas tree!
It's called a "noble fir" tree


This is how the tree looks with the lights off!
Ooh. Fancy.


aaaand.. this is how it looks with the lights on.
See Marbles watching on the lower-left? :)

Guinea pig mani/pedi

After an unfortunate incident the last time we cut the guinea pig's nails (which involved some blood loss. poor marbles.) we decided to let the professionals do it!

Orange County Cavy Haven offers guinea pig mani/pedis at $3 per piggy (what a deal!).
We all piled in the car (jeff, me, marbles and ruby) and headed down to the OC to give our girls a spa day.
And by "piled in the car", I mean:

• Setting up the pet carrier with plenty of soft fabric to ensure maximum piggy comfort
• Get Marbles and Ruby out of their house by chasing them in circles and cornering them. They can haul @$$ when they really want to...
• Put the pigs in the pet carrier and place into car
  
• Make a guinea-pig-snack-bag for the road, consisting of romaine and carrots
• Packing a guinea pig water bottle with their snack bag
  

Guinea pigs are travel size

The entire car ride down to the OC was filled with guinea pig squeaks and squawks -- courtesy of Ruby.

Marble was lucky contestant #1.

She put up quite a fight. Boy, was my face red.


Ruby was more cooperative


Marbles (in the carrier) watching Ruby get tortured

The entire process was very fun.

November = Baking

Ever since the weather started getting colder due to the fall season, I have been baking up a storm in my kitchen.
Not only does the colder, darker evenings makes me crave warm goodies from the oven, but using the oven also helps warm up the house a teensy bit (temporary solution until we get our central heating fixed). On top of all that, Thanksgiving is a week away, so its a good time to clear the cobwebs on my baking skills!

This is what I've been up to the last two weeks...

Pumpkin Pie

Candied Pumpkin Seeds


Chocolate Cake a la Mode


Oven Baked Potato and Yam Fries

Lemon Bars


Beer can roasted chicken


French Onion Soup

I think we are well on our way to packing away warm blubber for the winter months

Halloween! Jack-o-lanterns galore

Happy Halloween everyone!
What were we up to for Halloween this year?

Carved Jack-o-Lantern:
Jeff's drunken hillbilly on the left
Jen's Dracula on the right



Made Jack-o-Lantern Bell Peppers for Dinner:
BEFORE


AFTER


Jeff is eating Mini-Jack's brains!! AHH!


Mini-Jack-2 has been scalped


Knotts Scary Farm:
a view of the roller coasters at night

Hey. Who's that new kid?

Hey. Who's that new kid?

Three Rumps

Marbles: "I choose Bachelor #1"

Ruby: "Hey. That new kid is copying me"

------
Jen took these brilliant photographs. A big thanks to her very cooperative models.
See the entire set here:

The New Pig In Town

The cute animals of Hawaii

In addition to the cute animals of the sea we've already seen in my Hawaii blog posts (sea turtles, giant sand crabs, manta rays, fish), let's not forget about the animals of the land!

We saw....

Red headed birds....

Yellow birds, blending into yellow grass...
(talk about camouflage!)

Adorable green lizards

We saw these bug-eyed fellers everywhere, including the inside of our condo....

As well as ON JEFF!!!

Do you see the baby lizard? He's on Jeff's shoulder

(poor jeff.. look at that expression... priceless)

Marbles and Ruby are funny

Marbles and Ruby hanging out, eating hay. They get along so well

Ruby's lips are so cute!

A CLOSE UP!

Turn up the volume of this video.
5 minutes of persistent piggies trying to get past my barricade to go play under the couch.
Notice how Ruby loves to follow Marbles

Exploring the East side of The Big Island

During our visit to The Big Island, we stayed on Kona side, which is the West side of the Island. We wanted to explore the East side of the island (Hilo, Akaka waterfall, the volcanoes) but because it's all the way on the other side of the island, the drive over takes ~2.5 hours, we wanted to squeeze all the activities on the East side of the island all in one day.

It was a very busy and exhausting day.

Driving on Saddle Road to get from Kona side to Hilo side

(Reviews online all say that Saddle Road is dangerous and too difficult & unpaved to take rental cars on the road.
Those people are crazies. As you can see in the photo, the road is perfectly safe and paved.)

We arrived in Hilo

We tried "Kava". It was terrible

We took a helicopter ride, which goes over Hilo, the active volcanoes, and waterfalls

The smoke coming out of the active volcano

Explosion when the hot lava hits the ocean

Us outside of the helicopter. It was my first time

Mauna Loa Volcano
(the same name as the brand on Macadamia Nuts canisters)

We took a short hike to the Akaka waterfall

Jeff is on his knees. He did not shrink in height.

We saw some really exotic flowers during our hike

We took a short walk around Volcano National Park to see lava
(http://www.nps.gov/havo)

We bought some tropical fruit from farmers on the side of the road.
I fell in *love* with rambutans.