Life is good in Ko Olina!

One of our gorgeous beaches here in Ko Olina

Picnic at the beach with Momma

Exhausted after playing at the beach with Momma most of the day

The condo complex that we live in called "Hillside"

Hello everyone!  I'm so sorry to hear that for many of you the temperatures have been ridiculously cold!  We are loving the weather here.  It's just about perfect every day, not too cold, not too hot, sometimes a little rain or wind but nothing you would miss the beach over.  Coming from Utah, this is absolutely amazing to us and we've loved it.

I've discovered that I love the beach.  I have always liked it, the times I was fortunate enough to go there on vacations but having it a 10 minute stroll down the road is amazing!  Aya and I seem to love it the most out of the 4 of us and I find myself wanting to go there every day.  The water is so clean and clear and the sand so nice at our beaches here at Ko Olina that it's hard to want to be anywhere else!  On Thursday Aya and I spent several hours there playing in the water, building sand castles and making new friends and it was just perfect.  Hana and Geoff were at school.  And speaking of school, Geoff has really been enjoying UH, even though it is quite the culture shock from his past 3 degrees at BYU.  The faculty he has met in his department are really nice and very accomplished researchers and such.  We feel very blessed that he has the chance to study here.  The drive from our vacation home, here on the west side of the island (leeward side), to UH takes Geoff about 35 minutes but he has to park at a lot down the road to school (where we had to buy a pass for the semester because parking around that area is crazy & expensive!) and walk up to campus and then through the quite large campus to get to his building so all said and done he says his commute takes about 1hr 15min, so not bad at all.  He only has to go to campus Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and doesn't have to leave until after the crazy traffic into town (that's what everyone here calls Honolulu) has cleared so that's a pretty great schedule.

We have absolutely loved having all things Japanese available to us here!  We love that we can buy Japanese food ingredients at Costco or go to one of the many all Japanese grocery stores whenever we want!  On Saturday we went exploring in Honolulu and made a stop at Marukai, which is the equivalent of a Japanese Costco and then a smaller Japanese grocery store called Nijiya which is very close to where Geoff parks for school.  Right next door we found this restaurant, CoCo's Curry, which is one of our favorites in Japan and had to stop for dinner.  Yum!

We all enjoyed a delicious dinner  and felt like we were in Japan!

We have been very blessed to be able to spend some time with some of my favorite people, my cousin Matt & his wife Jess.  They live "way" up in Laie (about 1 hour drive, which is really far for islanders) and we've been able to hang out several times.  So great to have them here to help us out and show us around the island.  They actually had never been to our side of the island the first time they came out though!  We all went to the beach and it was hilarious that the girls and I were wearing swimming suites and getting in the water while Jess was wearing a coat, gloves and hat sitting on the beach!  Let's just say the 70s and 80s feels pretty warm compared to what we left in Utah!

Love you Matty!

Love you, Jes!

They live in the most adorable, robin egg blue, tiny little house right on the beach in Laie.  Hana was absolutely amazed by that and I admit I am too!

Hana started at her new school too, Barbers Point Elementary, in Kapolei, which is the city that the bubble of resort, Ko Olina is officially part of.  Her teacher is a nice, young, good teacher and made Hana feel welcomed right away so that was a huge relief for me!  As we were walking to her classroom a cute little girl walked up and said  enthusiastically "Are you the new girl named Hana?  My name's Katelyn and I'll be showing you around!" and stuck out her hand to shake Hana's hand.  Shy Hana wasn't quite sure what to do but was glad to have a friend.  The schools here are very different than the ones in Utah but we're learning that most of the time different is just fine!  Your child's education is very important here and many parents pay $20,000 or more a year to send their children to private schools.  Our realtor told us in no uncertain terms that we had to chose a home that was in one of the two best elementary school boundaries on the island (1 of which President Obama attended as a child) or send Hana to private school.  He repeated several times that "Your child's education has to come first."  However, we are considering some other areas as well, like right here since we like it here so much and the real estate is a lot more reasonable than in Honolulu and after talking to several parents with children in Hana's current school we feel fine about the school here.  Which reminds me that I have to let you all know that our home in Utah is now under contract!  Another blessing!  We're scheduled to close Feb. 6th.  We hope to find something here, in our price range soon, even if it's not in an area that President Obama grew up in. ;)

 Love you all and miss you!  Please comment if you can, as we would love to hear anything from any and all of you!