Happy New Year!

Kai is growing like a little bean stalk! When we took her to the vet 2 days after we got her, she weighted 7 pounds. We don't have a scale but I am almost positive that she is now almost 10 pounds. Just picking her up to take her outside I can tell that she is heavier. Also looking at the pictures from when we first got her till now you can see that she is bigger.I don't know how many of you have read Marley & Me or seen the movie but I believe Kai has seen the commercial one too many times because she tried to run through our front screen door. When she hit it she was so confused on why she wasn't outside! It was so cute!By the way, this is Kai in a basket of our CLEAN clothes!

Since Gil has been on vacation and we have gotten Kai, everything we have done has been very low key. We spent most of our time watching movies, reading and working on our Christmas puzzle.
Christmas was a little odd this year. Gil and I both agreed that we think it was because we weren't with our families. It was fun to start our own traditions though. This year we decided that we would exchange one gift on the beach. We had opened all of our gifts after midnight on Christmas Eve so we saved our ornaments for each other and exchanged them on Christmas morning on the beach. I really liked it. I thought it was unique and something we may not always be able to do. But I can officially say that I went to the beach Christmas morning 2008!
We are hoping that our families will come here for Christmas next year...hint hint. ;)
This was our Christmas dinner. I was very happy with it! It all turned out really well!

We have been trying to spend a little bit of time out of the house every so often so Kai gets use to us not always being there. The first time we left her, we went to the movies. We saw Spirit because Gil deserved to see a man movie, since I always drag him to chick flicks. I was really antsy though and couldn't really focus on the movie because I was worried about our little Kai back home. We were gone way longer than I thought we would and when we got home I decided we wouldn't go to another movie for a while. Of course we tried a week later (when we went to go see Marley and Me...super sad movie by the way!) and she did much better the second time. We weren't gone as long though either.

Oh, I forgot to tell you what happened the first time we left her alone. We had blocked her in the kitchen while we were gone. When we came home she wasn't there! She had managed to push the boxes and sneak out. I ended up finding her curled up in our closet on a pile of our dirty clothes! I thought it was so cute!

For New Years we went out to a nice dinner in Kailua. It was a preset menu with a wine pairing for each course. It was a lot of fun to get all dressed up and have a nice meal together. That is something Gil and I have always enjoyed doing together...it is kinda our thing but since we moved here we haven't really had the chance. After dinner we came home and our friend Meredith came over. Her husband Pat was on duty so we invited her over for the midnight celebration. We played Wii and popped a bottle of champagne at midnight. Meredith had so much fun playing Wii that her and Pat went out and bought one the next day! I won't lie...it really is a LOT of fun!
This is us on New Years all dressed up.

That is all we have really been up to. Gil starts work again tomorrow. He leaves next week for the big island. They train there for about 2 weeks then they are back home for a month. I will be staying busy with Kai...hopefully training her not to bite! Wish me luck!

I hope you all had a great holiday season and hope this new year brings great things for you all!

Oh, I almost forgot. Most of you probably heard about it on the news...mostly because Barack Obama was vacationing here in Kailua but if not our power went out around 7 pm the day after Christmas...I think and didn't come back on till 6 the next morning. This is us playing backgammon by candlelight.