Tanky Tanky

We had just about the best Thanksgiving weekend we could have asked for away from home. It was the perfect school-and-work-less break that we needed to hold us over until Christmasland 2010.

On Thanksgiving morning Tanya was worried about getting our place set up for dinner, so she sent me surfing alone. I loved it. Being alone with my thoughts and the ocean is so refreshing every so often. When I got home we still had spare time so we went to Bikini Beach and read and relaxed.

We invited some other married couples from our ward over for Thanksgiving dinner. We had 16 people at our little shack! We did it at our house because most of these people live in studios that don't even have full kitchens (like no stove or oven) so a lot of them came over and cooked their stuff in our kitchen. Everyone brought/made part of the feast and it all turned out to be so good.
We're so grateful for the friends we've made so far here. It's fun to be with people that are in the same boat as us. We're all far away from our families and it was nice to share this holiday with them. On Friday, "Women be Shoppin'!" Tan went with our friends Natalie and Ashley to do some Black Friday shopping (not at an unholy hour) so Mark and I had a bro day. We played Donkey Kong (for Super Nintendo!), got our Taco Bell on, and surfed at Turtle Bay for almost 4 hours! (we have no pictures from this day)

Yesterday we went to Sunset Beach during the day. They are all set up for the big surfing competitions, but are just waiting for the waves to be big enough. They are predicting that it will start this Thursday. I will not be going into work on Thursday.

And we tried a new natural frozen yogurt truck that just popped up in Kahuku. It was very good.

And last night our new friends Zach and Julie invited us to come with them to Haleiwa. Every last Saturday night of the month, they have an art walk where all the art galleries stay open late (9:00, as opposed to the whole town shutting down at 7:00) and they have live music at all of them.

We went to a gallery of a girl named Heather Brown who is a local surf artist here on the North Shore. We would love to own one of her canvasses one day, but they are very expensive. her style is very juvenile, but in a cool way. She was actually at the gallery and we wanted to talk to her. Maybe next time.
Then we went to the Ron Artis gallery. He's an artist and he has a family band with his wife and 11 kids. They all just jam out and the little kids dress up in costumes and dance around. It was so much fun and they are very good. They can play any style of music. Here is a sample of them that we found on YouTube


Then we went out for Japanese food

All in all, a successful Thanksgiving break.