House Guest

Now that we've finally settled in and unpacked, I've been spending my time catching up on paperwork, doctor appoints, phone calls to immigration and all that fun stuff. We went to the beach for the first time today, though it was only to do our Christmas photos. We dressed up and put Ella in her pretty Christmas dress and headed down to Ko Olina, a resort area not far from us. We managed to get some pictures but it was hard to get Ella to look at the camera when there was no one to distract her. She spent most of the pictures trying to look at us and playing with my necklace. I won't post the one I'm sending out until Christmas day, but here are some of the others from today.

When we got home, we found our first house guest hanging out in the kitchen. I'm sure it was a Gecko (aren't they green though?) but he was a light brown/gray color. Totally harmless so I managed to catch him on the counter when he leaped from the wall. I caught him under our pasta strainer and used our cutting board to transfer him outside and to freedom. He was only about 4 inches long but still made me jumpy. Ron passed me a cup and said to put him there and cover it with my hand...is he crazy!! There was no way I was getting any closer than I had to! My motivation and quick action was from pure fear that he may want to stay overnight and I was not about to spend the entire night looking for the sucker!