Christmas is over and so much has happened. First some things about Christmas.  Christmas eve started with our assignment at the PCC dressed in our wonderful costumes.  We had double the number of guests to greet...over 900!  It seemed like the line would never end.  Then we went home to crab legs from Costco.  They tasted so good.  I prepared a Christmas program that included a talk by Pres. Monson, the Nativity, Tabernacle Choir and our traditional sharing.  It worked but was certainly not the "real thing."  Then it was Christmas morning. We missed the huge Grandma Morgan stockings, but still had plenty of stuff from Santa. 

Kaye and Dennis on Christmas Morning opening Stockings

We opened presents and found lots of treasures.  Here are some photos.

Dad got a helicopter from the Boys

The best part of Christmas was having Facetime with all the family.  This is a great blessing of technology.

Santa left some pearl earrings for Mom

A Christmas Birdfeeder from the girls

After seeing what Santa left. We went with the other missionaries to the Turtle Bay resort for their annual Christmas buffet.  It had lots of food which was good, but not really Christmas dinner.  No green olives or baked yams.  But everything else you can imagine.

Wrights, Rowells, Frogleys Christmas 2013

Because we had the rest of the week off we went on a hike with the Cardnos up the side of the mountain south of Laie.  It was a two hour hike that went through real Hawaiian jungle vegetation of all different types.  We had cloud, sun, rain, fog during those two hours at different elevations.

Dad and Gary on the Hike

To celebrate our anniversary we decided to take a driving trip to Honolulu.  First we went to the International Market a Honolulu tourist stop for over 50 years.  We had seen it on our first trip to Hawaii and remembered how interesting it was.  It is being torn down to build a high rise and we wanted to visit it again before it disappeared on 31 December.  It was sad to see that it now looked much like the markets in China rather than what we remembered.  But I did have a famous Puka Dog.  It is made with a hogie that has a hole in the middle.  The hot dog is put in the hole with special sauce, relish, etc.  The bun is great as are the rest of the ingredients.  The shop is moving to Haleiwa so we can still get one. 

Dennis with a Puka Dog

Dennis  and Kaye at Tabernacle

After getting some deeply discounted trinkets we drove to the mission home.  It is an office building next to the 1950's famous David O McKay tabernacle downtown Honolulu.  Pictures are below.

Kaye at Mission Office

Dennis and Kaye at view point above Honolulu Diamond Head in background

 The week has flown by so we are grateful that we have one more week off.  Our branch president wants to go golfing at the Palmer course at Turtle Bay so we will have to do that.


Happy New Year to our followers...I think there are two or three.  I know- who wants to watch someones mission slides.  This is just the modern version.  I guess you would have had to be here to appreciate how great it is to be a missionary.