It’s sort of hard to tell by my paparazzi drive-by photo, but the priest decorated his white & gold vestments (the traditional colors of the Christmas season) with a red and green lei. So I guess it’s true. Even priests get leied in Hawaii. But seriously, did you know that Catholic priests say a specific prayer for each garment of clothing worn for Mass? That’d be quite a process! I must say, I’m curious about the special lei prayer.

Christmas Mass mingling

It was a beautiful Christmas Eve Mass at St. Elizabeth’s parish, the parish we’ve been going to for the last couple of weeks. Every week, the church has a sunday evening mass that we like, and it is usually a packed house. We expected tonight to be no different. In order to avoid clawing for a seat, we planned to get to church around four fifteen for the five o’clock service. Next year we will know we don’t have to leave quite so early …

4:35pm: where is everyone!?

For the last several years, my mom has made post-mass Christmas Eve dinner super simple: a delicious one-pot chicken tortilla soup. I, however, opted not to make soup since I’m still working on the cabbage soup from earlier this week. But I did stick with the mexican theme and made one of Daniel’s favorites, taco pizza!

refried beans, taco sauce, corn, hominy, black beans, shredded cheese, taco seasoned ground beef, red cabbage (thank you clarisa!!), feta, and tortilla chips

A broken crust makes it appear as though a mouse took a little nibble out of the front. Let me remind you that there are a million cats surrounding this hotel. We do not, I repeat, do not have mice.

With a slice of our delicious blonde lime pie for dessert, Daniel settled into watching our favorite Christmas movie, A Christmas Story. Fa-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra! What’s your favorite scene?

lip-puckering good

With Ralphy and Randy playing in the background, I scurried off to an appointment with Santa in his workshop.

Now, if I only had something to wrap.

Kidding, of course. I had plenty to wrap, and upon completion, I was ready to stuff Daniel’s stocking. But I had to locate the stocking first.

hahaha! I found it!

We’ll see if Daniel has such luck finding it tomorrow morning. I happen to know that Santa likes to hide stockings. 🙂

MERRY CHRISTMAS to all, and to all, a goodnight!