Back to the Blog

...maybe! Facebook has a feature on it now with updates from this day in 2010 or 2009 and I realized how much I am missing by not writing stuff down here instead. I'm not great at, ok really not good at scrapbooking or journaling or even printing many of the pictures I take, so this blog was a good source of archiving our lives for a while and I'm missing a lot! So, maybe it's time to start writing more regularly again...

So, this time last year I wrote about moving into a house and being on the housing waiting list just in case we couldn't hack it 'off post' and I'm not too proud to say we couldn't do it! We're signing for a brand new, five bedroom house on Fort Shafter on Monday morning and I'm pretty excited! Here's a few reasons why we're really looking forward to a new house and neighborhood:

1. A dishwasher! I can't express how much I have missed having one and I think the eczema on my hands will be a thing of the past also!
2. Central air conditioning. I love the climate here, but paying $500 a month to run two little window units just so we have a couple of cool rooms to hang out in when the rest of the house is a sauna is a bit crazy. And it would be nice to actually hang out as a family all in the same room on our...
3. Sofa in the living room! I've been disappointed since we discovered when our stuff arrived that we could not fit our sofa into the living room and it's been in the boys' bedroom for the last 10 months. It will be nice to not feel like I'm walking into a college student's house with a beanbag and futon in the living room.
4. Some space to spread out and a garage!
5. No more nasty white carpet that doesn't come clean!
6. Neigbor kids to play with and adult neighbors for us grown ups too! We live in a decent neighborhood, but there are not a lot of kids close by and the kids have really missed running around outside with friends. I've noticed also, that even the adults when they are home around here tend to not come outdoors much.
7. Our own driveway and outdoor space. While it's been nice having our landlords to interact with and they are great people it will also be nice to feel like we're in our 'own' house and not have to worry if we don't shut the 'compound' gate, etc...

and so that brings me to the things we will miss about living here:

1. Our lovely landlords who are really great people and really seem to enjoy our children.
2. Our outdoor planting space and all the lovely fruit trees especially the yummy lemons! I'm going to have to buy lemons again and the kids will miss their swing on the mango tree.
3. The location to the kids school and J's work has been pretty ideal. We're going to have to walk a bit further to school or maybe even pay for the bus and J will have to commute about 10 minutes but with parking will be missing his coming home for lunch that he's enjoyed this past year.
4. The kids will be leaving a pretty good school and starting at another good school, but changing schools is never easy and as BB put it the other day "I was just getting used to this school." This will be his 6th school since kindergarten and he's only in 5th grade!

There's been ups and downs to our first year in Hawaii and I will say that the transition here has been harder than any other move in the past. Maybe it's a good thing I haven't written much this past year so we can forget the hard parts and move on to enjoying the next two years here!