Tag Archives: living in hawaii

It’s my Blogoversary!

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So an entire year of nonsense. Who would have thought? Honestly, I have NEVER been one who has been able to keep up a diary or journal – and Lord knows I am not a writer – so I am pretty proud of the fact that 180-some posts later I am still enjoying this.

I am only kicking myself for not starting sooner. I’ve been reading blogs for years and was very intimidated. Finally decided to jump right in and I am so happy I have. I hope that people reading get a peek at our life and maybe learn a little about living in Spain or Hawaii.

So onto our day today!

Veteran’s Day so the kids were out of school. Once again I am sitting there wracking my brain trying to find something fun to do.  I have to try and force my children out of the house or else we will never go anywhere, become hermits and I’ll never shave my legs again.

So google, various military wives forums and bingo, out to MCBH to hit up their Tiki Island. I love this side of the island, it is just so beautiful and EVERY time I come out of the tunnel I just can’t believe I get to live here!

Started off with a little mini golf. Omar had never played before, and it was only a tiny bit frustrating to try and get him to hold the dang club the right way! There weren’t too many people there so it was great.

 

 

 

 

Here is Omar after hitting his hole in one. Guess he caught on pretty quickly, he was the only one to get one!

 

After a round of mini golf we hit up the bumper boats. Oh. My. Goodness. I don’t know when I last laughed that hard.

 

 

 

 

The boats have squirt guns on them. We were soaked.

 

 

 

 

Mckenna. Soaked.

Omar. Soaked.

 

Adios Tiki Island! If you go do boats first so you can dry off during golf!

After that I drove around the base a bit, ending up driving up this hill? Not sure if it was legal or whatever, but there were no signs and no one stopped us. And the view was spectacular!

 

We ended up having a great day (after a mandatory commissary run that was painless! A miracle!).

On to a busy week, thankfully it’s a short one!

 

 

 

So, yeah, this happened…

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I finally went to the doctor today to get my finger looked at. It was the same finger that I had jammed in our last game and I kept telling myself that I just needed to give it time to heal. Well it just wasn’t feeling any better, it was still swollen and every time I tried to straighten it or hit it on something it still hurt like hell.

So off to get it checked, got some x-rays taken, doc tells me that it’s fractured for sure, there is a chip somewhere. So just great. I have never broken anything in my life, but I guess a finger isn’t a bad bone to break! So all was fine up until I got turned over to a corpsman to have it splinted. He made sure that finger got as straight as possible. I. Almost. Died. And I have a pretty high pain tolerance. So now I’m all wrapped up for a few weeks, hopefully my finger is normal after this.

I will say, I never realized how much you use your ring finger until every time I try to use it, it hurts! I can’t put my hair up, type, wash dishes, open jars! It’s terrible! My husband told me I should send his ship a red cross message so he can come home and help me! I can’t do anything, I am broken!

Living in Hawaii {4 Month Update}

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We have officially hit four months of living in Hawaii.

And I am in love with this state.

Hawaii can be a difficult place to live. It is so very different than living on the mainland. It can be hard to not have every store and restaurant you are used to having around the corner. (No Olive Garden, Michael’s or Chik-fil-a!) Living here means that you are living far from family, at least a 5 hour plane ride away. It can be expensive, housing is expensive, food is expensive, we are on an island so you will pay more for everything. We are lucky to be able to shop at the commissary and exchange which offer a huge savings over shopping on the local economy.

But with all that it is still magical to live here. I will be driving and then all of a sudden see a gorgeous rainbow, a vibrant green volcanic range, or a stunning sunset over the beach.

We did come here with a bit of an advantage. After living in Spain for four years we learned to live without many of the American conveniences that people complain about not having here. Plus we’ve been living far from family. So when we moved from Rota to Pearl Harbor it was awesome for us! We had Target and Starbucks and T-mobile…

It is like most places for me, it depends on what you make of it. If you spend your time here complaining about how much you hate it, you’ll end up hating it.

We’ve had a great time getting out and exploring the island, learning about the culture and customs and eating!

Don’t get me wrong it’s far from perfect here, the DMV is a nightmare, the traffic is the worst, and the bugs are out of control. There are shady parts of the island, it sucks being 6 hours behind all my friends and family on the east coast (especially when your husband deploys!)

I have found some fun friends by stepping outside my comfort zone and playing football, volunteering with the PTA and getting together a FRG for the Paul Hamilton.

The only thing that would make it better would be if my husband were still here to explore the island with me!

First leis!

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So my neighbor (and fellow ship wife) is from Hawaii and she and her mom were busily making leis for some function or another… Mckenna happened to be over there giving her a hand and got to come home with a couple of leis. We weren’t greeted with any at the airport (something that if we ever have anyone come visit us I will to do!) so this is the first time we got to wear a lei in Hawaii!

Omar’s interpretation:

 

Look mom! Flower hair!

My goodness I wish this kid could take a normal picture. Oh well they are still cute.

And of COURSE I had to torture my dog.

Right here he is thinking ‘wait until she releases me, I am going to eat this thing in 2 seconds.’ Which I didn’t let him do. I of course had to hang them up so they can dry. 

And so my collection starts. Just wait until Omar comes home, I am going to pile him up. The exchange even has leis with the mini bottles of booze. Love it!

 

 

Bellows Beach

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Oh my… how has it taken me three months to get to this beach? It. Is. Gorgeous!

Like the beach you picture in your mind when you think of hawaii? The perfect curl of white sand with lush green mountains in the back and gorgeous blue water?

 

 

Yeah. This is it. Beautiful, soft white sand… clear blue water… just lovely.

 

 

 

So we set up camp right at the edge of the woods (great campgrounds right next to the beach for all you campers!) and hit the waves.

 

 

We went with a friend of mine and her two kids and we all had a great time. The water was the perfect temperature and the waves were perfect for boogie boarding. Mckenna hadn’t done in years but picked it right up again.

 

 

I could sit here with this view forever.

 

Or this one!

 

Omar was a little miffed at me after we wiped out one time when I took him out on the boogie board. Nothing bad, I think it just surprised him. Time to rinse off and eat some more snacks!

 

 

Little Surfer Girls (boogie board girls?) They had a great time riding the waves and digging a giant hot tub in the sand.

 

Sandy, happy children. Really, who couldn’t be happy with this practically in our back yard?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday in Waikiki

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So Sunday I had wanted to head over to Kaneohe Bay on the eastern side of the island, but we ended up deciding to make our way back down to Waikiki and go to the Honolulu zoo.  Of course the parking near the zoo is an absolute madhouse on the weekend.  When we were staying at our hotel down here we had purchased a month long parking pass at the hale Koa hotel parking garage ($90 for the entire month!) So we decided to park there again and just walk to the zoo, stopping for lunch along the way.

We stopped for lunch at the Yard house, which I definitely recommend. They have something like 130 different beers on tap. Omar got a 1/2 yard of some local beer, Kona blonde something, I got a pint of a pear cider (yum!). Lunch was good, I got the BBQ chicken salad and it was delicious… avocado, roasted corn, shredded BBQ chicken, can’t wait to go back. Prices were pretty standard for Waikiki and they do have lunch specials.

This is also the point where I realized that I didn’t have my memory card in my camera. I was SO upset! And I didn’t even have my back up point and shoot in my purse like I usually do. So now I get to lug around my DSLR for no reason all day. I did take some crappy cell phone pictures but it’s not the same.

After lunch we keep walking. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea. Omar is getting ready to turn around when I spot the zoo.  They have a military and local price so we got in pretty cheap. We only had a couple of hours before the zoo closed so we had to make it fast.  The kids really loved the howler monkeys, those suckers are loud!  For the most part the exhibits are nice, reminded me a bit of the Norfolk Zoo in some places.   The elephants didn’t make an appearance, nor did the lions.  I was most bummed about the fact that by the time we made it to the kids area of the zoo they were closing it. That area closes a 1/2 hour before the zoo closes so we only had a couple of minutes to crawl inside the big koi tank, check out the cool guinea pig house and see the goats.  The kids liked it so we’ll have to go back.

Loooooong walk back to the car, passing some shops that I really wanted to stop and peek into but everyone else was just done.  I keep seeing Hawaiian style quilts and they are just beautiful. They are going on my to buy list for Hawaii!

Also, yesterday we went and stocked up on snorkeling supplies. I can’t wait until my stuff gets here in over a month and Omar needed some of his own. he actually got this really nice mask that I’m a little jealous of, but he couldn’t get a good seal on any of the cheapo ones.

So this weekend we are going to try a new place to snorkel, hopefully one that isn’t as crowded as Shark’s Cove was. It seems like all the best places are going to be crazy crowded.  We’ll have to see what we can find.