Tag Archives: sink or swim

We have a house!

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So we moved into our house this week, it has been WONDERFUL to get out of a hotel room. Everyone needed a door to close to get away from everyone else. I love my children but I am really, really glad that I can send them upstairs to play, or to the park right behind our house.

We have some hideous awesome temporary furniture that we get to use until our stuff gets delivered. But really, it’s nice to have beds, a couch and a table and chairs. The same day we moved in we had our temp furniture delivered, our express shipment delivered and had satellite tv hooked up.  So we at least have enough stuff to cook and get through the next month. It’s been great to be able to cook dinner again. It’s going to be a long time until we eat fast food!

There is a LOT that I want to do to this house. I really want to paint some walls but we have to get approval first… Also our (tiny) yard is pretty much just red dirt. So I am really looking forward to getting some grass seed in there and doing some gardening. I have a little papaya tree in my front yard and I am hoping I can actually get it to produce some big ol’ papaya.

Oh, and one of the perks of living in Hawaii? I found a roach today in my kitchen. Since we have hardly any food it must have already been here. Needless to say I was throwing up in my mouth, I have NEVER had to deal with roaches before! First thing tomorrow I am calling maintenance to have them come spray the crap outta my house. I can deal with ants and spiders but roaches are a deal breaker.

Need to take some pictures to show, but we’ve been so crazy running around getting errands done. Really looking forward to relaxing and settling in!

Hotel Living

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I am officially over living out of a hotel room. One week, that’s all it took.  Plus we’ve been lucky because I’ve been dropping Omar off at work then running around with the kids so we aren’t stuck in here all day. But man, it sure didn’t take long for me to miss cooking. And dressers. And a bedroom door between me and my children.  We moved from our hotel right smack dab in the middle of Waikiki to one right near the base. Our temporary housing allowance was getting cut off because we refused a house to wait for the house we really wanted, and that means we have to start paying out of pocket for a hotel. So goodbye beach hotel, hello cheap hotel. I’m not complaining, it’s clean, has wifi in the rooms, a pool and is SUPER close to the base.

We did have some delicious Chinese food for dinner tonight. Let me just tell you that Chinese food in Europe? Is not what you are used to, we got used to it over there but man was it so good to have our unauthentic American Chinese food again!

Also Cinnabon for breakfast (yes I know I will soon be 200lbs). Little Omar said to me “Mom, you need to learn how to make cinnamon rolls like these!” Honey I am sorry, the closest you will get will be from the tube. I haven’t had the patience to make yeast breads in forever.

It’s been pretty fun taking Omar out to eat everywhere, it’s all a first for him. First Cinnabon, first Taco Bell, second time at Popeye’s (the first was in Germany of all places!) Although I did almost disown him for saying he didn’t like the cheddar bay biscuits at Red Lobster (and yes we are planning on hitting up EVERY SINGLE chain restaurant on island!)

Found out which school my kids are going to. Not 100% happy with it. I can change it to another school but I am not sure how much of a pain in the butt that will be or even if they will approve it.  I hate the way they draw district lines. We end up going to a school that is across a highway instead of the one that my daughter could ride her bike to.

I think we are going to explore the beach on Hickam tomorrow since it’s just up the road. I’ve heard that it’s nice. I’m still kicking myself for not packing my snorkel stuff. I’m trying not to buy more but I don’t know if I can wait until our stuff gets here in September!

The end of the month can not get here soon enough, I am ready for a house!

Opening Day!

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Oh Summer… I have been waiting for you…

Museo de la Miel aka the Bee Farm!

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Okay ONE more field trip! This is the last one, I swear! I went with O to the Bee Farm, about an hour or so from Rota. (I think, I was on a bus with preschoolers, it was kind of a blur) They have an organic farm, bee hives, and I think process the honey there as well.

Mr. Ready-for-the-day.

Then this happened. Hello creepy bee person. Our poor guide was the only English speaker and a new hire so she didn’t exactly know the ins and outs of beekeeping 100%, a fact that she reminded us of a number of times. Creepy bee person also gave us samples of bee pollen.

Ignoring my hand-what the hell is wrong with my hand?- this is bee pollen. I guess people put it in smoothies? They collect it by installing little bee cleaners at the entrance to each hive that has the bees squeeze through a little opening and brushes all of the pollen off of them into a little catcher. It tastes like sweet dirt. Blech.

Here is my kind of sample! FRESH honey! It. was. delicious. The kids didn’t like it because it had bits of wax from the honeycomb in it and I think it freaked them out a bit.

Hmmm. I don’t know about this delicious, fresh, organic honey you are forcing me to sample…

The cool set up inside… There are some huge bee colonies living in here. Also there is some mesh down at the bottom so you can put your ear up to it and listen. It is LOUD!

Nature is awesome!

Some not so friendly plants!

Organic strawberry patch. Some strawberries may have been harmed in the touring of this field. Sorry Bee Farm! There were some overzealous gardeners who picked some green strawberries. (Also walking ON the strawberry mounds.  It wasn’t my kid, promise!)

LOTS of peacocks. And lots of peacocks screaming. I lived in Northern Idaho for a few years and a neighbor some miles away had peacocks. The screaming always sounded like a woman getting murdered.

Pretty little peahen.

My son in his absolutely adorable beekeeper outfit! Too bad I decided to focus on the wall behind him and only take this one shot! Yay me!

     

The art of beeswax candle making. First roll it all crooked while being silly (and looking like a zombie). Decide that is just not going to do, unroll the whole thing and reroll it perfectly! Hooray!

I am a terrible person. I took the photo of this GIANT beetle/cicada thing on another mom’s backpack before I told her it was there. It was just so pretty/hideous!

Back inside, these are some historic beehives. Turns out people have been doing this whole beekeeping thing for quite a while!

The goods. I had to restrain myself as I only had a couple minutes as the kids were loaded onto the bus.

Oh. My. How fabulous would this be over ice cream? (And look, Pollen on the left! You know I snatched some of that up!)

My mom would get us honeycomb every now and then as a kid. I thought it was super fun to eat but this stuff was a little pricey and I didn’t know if my kids would even touch it.

Instead I ended up with an adorable little honey pot (came filled!), a little dish and magnet that will get turned into a Christmas ornament. Just what I needed, MORE Spanish ceramics!

Wonderful day at the bee farm, they do small group tours as well. If you have older kids they will actually take you out to the working hives. Picnic tables, cafe, playground, parking.

Info!

Bee Farm

12 Euro per adult

Mother’s Day Weekend Recap

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We had a fun weekend, took the dog to the beach, went to feria in Jerez, then out to dinner for Mother’s Day at Blanca Paloma, aka my happy place.

My kidlets were threatened that they better be on their best behavior so I could enjoy my favorite dinner, the beautiful day, and the sunshine. They did great, iPods and Nintendo DS’s helped.

 

Me and crazy pants. He demanded a silly photo.

The salad of my dreams. Fresh mozzarella, fresh pesto, sun-dried tomatoes. So, so good. I also had some bruchetta with tomato, provolone and feta.  No pictures of that because it was inhaled.

Happy Mom’s Day to me! I swear I don’t always have bitch face!

On our way out, the beach was PACKED when we got there and empty by the time we left. It was a beautiful day!

On Saturday a friend of mine and I took our boxers to the beach. This whole area is under water at high tide but at low tide there is a TON of room for them to run.  Swimming isn’t allowed so it stays empty and we can let the dogs run and they don’t bother anyone.

 

Bowser decided to cool off and get into the water. He’s never done this before, but once he realized how much it cooled him off he didn’t want to get out!  I don’t even know if he can swim! We’ll have to see this summer!

All three puppies! Bowser loves his buddies!

In the amount of time that we were there (maybe an hour total walking) I got sunburned! This Spanish sun is NO JOKE!

Snapshots from this week

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Random photos from the week:

Arriving at work right after a rainstorm, sun finally showing up!

Headed to feria!

I think we have one of the prettiest military hospitals around. This is the courtyard in the middle…

I am childish but this made me laugh… SeaBee on a beach cruiser…

Ladybugs are EVERYWHERE! Which is awesome because as you can see, the aphids are also everywhere! I keep catching ladybugs and sticking them on my plants!

Is this just a Spain thing or do they do this in the states? The drive thru at McD’s was long so they had a guy walking from car to car taking orders on a palm pilot dealy.

And we made some cute teacher appreciation gifts for all of our wonderful teachers in our life! M has a teacher at school and at SAC (after school program) O has THREE teachers in his class. Then I wanted to get something for one of his old teachers that isn’t in his class anymore but who he ADORES! Also I wanted to get something for our three lead teachers, so I ended up with NINE (!) teachers to get something for! It ended up being cute, easy and personalized and I hope they love it!

Tomorrow is FRIDAY! Hallelujah!