Geoff takes me to Hawaii for our anniversary

I told Geoff that it was so nice to take me to Hawaii for our wedding anniversary. ;)

 Happy 8th Anniversary to us!

We had a nice dinner at the Ushio Tei Japanese restaurant at the Marriott Ihilani Hotel

I'm getting to this blog post late so it will be a quick one.  I'm enjoying listening to the wind rush through the Travelers Palm outside my window and just happy with all that Heavenly Father has blessed me with.  Yesterday was Geoff and my 8th wedding anniversary.  All of you who know Geoff know that I am extremely blessed to be married to him and he has blessed me so much.  We come as a package deal and do everything together and are a perfect match for each other.

We were a little disappointed in the Japanese food.  It was good just not what you would hope for at a nice and some what expensive place like this.  Someone really needs to start up an amazing Japanese restaurant on the Leeward side of the island where we are!  We've tried 3 and this one was the best but still not quite up to par with our particular Japanese tastes.

What we saw after dinner was simply amazing though!...

These aren't very good pictures due to the low lightening, but at the Ihilani hotel they have hammer head sharks swimming around in little ponds you can walk around!  We were so surprised!

There were sting rays, star fish and other cool sea creatures too! We're excited to go back when it's sunny & take the girls to show them!
After that we walked along the beach & listened to the waves & looked at the stars & agreed that we are very blessed to have each other for eternity :)

We found somewhere to live & we love it!

After a lovely 10 days of unexpected vacation at the lovely Marriott Beach Club resort...

Aya & I made these leis together

A hide-a-bed that was actually comfortable!  Who knew they existed?!

Hawaiian shaved ice!

 we finally were able to move into our new home and we're so glad to be here!  It's in the same complex as the vacation rental we stayed in from December 29th to January 29th (don't worry if you're confused, we are too!) here in the Ko Olina resort in the Hillside complex.  This place has 3 bedrooms though, instead of 2 and is also an end unit so we have tons of windows!  It's furnished very nicely with almost everything we need (I still need to get a crock pot, wheat grinder etc for cooking/baking) so that is lovely.  Through all of this I've been amazed at how much we don't miss our stuff!  We sold or gave away pretty much everything we had in our home in Utah and came here with 4 suitcases and it's been great!  I find I'm hesitant to buy any more stuff because it's so nice to not have much.  It's kind of amazing how much stress, time, energy & money we can devote to stuff-buying it, cleaning it, organizing it, finding somewhere to put it etc-1st world problem for sure that I hope to be better about!  I hope to not let material possessions distract me away from what matters most so often.

Our front door

Our new place: back & side angle-love all those windows!

Anyway, back to our home...it's right across the street from our new friends (who have helped us out so many times with all this craziness-Thanks Diana & Conway!!!) and next door to some other new friends (the wife happens to be Japanese, so it's a lot of fun to chat with her. The whole family is so sweet & really watch out for our girls) so our location couldn't be better!  Such a blessing.  The girls run around with their friends and they all have a great time playing together and watch out for each other really well.  Hana's good friend has a bedroom window facing her's so they yell goodnight to each other every night.  So fun to be a little kid :)  I haven't met all of the rest of the people on our street yet but the one's I have met are so nice and friendly.  I love that we have a whole melting pot of cultures, countries, skin color, languages,religions etc, right here in our neighborhood.  We really feel like this is where we were supposed to be because when plan A and plan B fell through we looked all over the island and this place, very close to where we started, is what opened up and worked out.  Heavenly Father is mindful of us and truly does direct our lives, doesn't He?

A lot of people here have golf carts and drive them everywhere in the resort.  So much fun!  I totally have to figure out a way to get one too.  The girls ride around with our friends all the time and think riding in a car is so not fun now ;)

Anyway, thank you for all the prayers, we are very blessed and happy to be settled here, at least for a few months.  Our contract is until June and the plan is to figure out a way to buy a place, somewhere close by, if at all possible, so we don't have to keep spending ridiculous amounts of money on rent.

And, since we have a 3rd bedroom that means we have a lovely guest room just waiting for you to come visit!  (The girls share a room.)  It has a lovely, comfortable double bed, TV, closet and beautiful view of our palm trees & plumeria tree out the window so come on over!  Love and miss you all!

Forced Vacation

So last time I left you we still didn't have somewhere to live when our lease at our vacation home ended on January 29th.  Not 1 but 2 places had fallen through at the last moment!  Stress!  However, a new place popped up on craigslist that fit our current needs (not a zillion dollars, not require a year lease (since we REALLY want to buy something in the next few months if at all possible) and close enough that Hana can stay at the same school if possible) I instantly got in contact with the owner & basically kept bugging her until she emailed me a contract & let me pay her my money!  (Yes, that's how renting works here, on Oahu!)  She wasn't sure if the place would be available on February 1st or the 9th and we hoped for the 1st!  Meanwhile we had to find somewhere to live from Jan 29th until Feb 1st and after searching all over the entire island, pricing everything out, weighing out the pros and cons of driving, Hana perhaps missing school etc we finally ended up taking a forced vacation, here at the Marriott Ko Olina Beach Club resort!  It's just down the road about 1/2 mile from Hillside where our vacation home was and where our new home will also be.  After getting a discount from a lovely friend who works for Marriott (THANK YOU, KATHY!!!) it ended up being the cheapest option available AKA not that cheap.  But on this side of the island they don't have cheap motels or even hotels only 3 resorts.  So here, we are at the lovely resort now!  Of course we were told on the 31st that we couldn't move in on the 1st and had to wait until the 9th so we had to book another room here at the resort for an additional 9 days. But, as our luck would have it, our room category was completely booked so we had to move rooms, to a higher floor (more expensive) and that was only available until the 8th!  The moral of the story here is, own a vacation home on Oahu because you will never have any trouble renting it our for ridiculously expensive rates whenever you want to!  Our dear neighbor friends have offered to let us sleep on the floor at their condo for the last night before we can move into our semi-permanent home.  So the grand total of the places we've lived in the past 2 months goes up to 9!  Red house in South Jordan to the Sanderson's to Mom & Dad's to the Hyatt hotel in Waikiki to vacation rental for a month to the Marriott Beach Club resort room 1 & 2, the neighbors and finally our home for the next 4 months...phew!  No wonder Aya is confused and keeps asking "so is THIS our home?" whenever we go anywhere.  All in all though, we've been extremely blessed by all of you, kind friends and family, who have and keep helping us out so THANK YOU!  We also can't complain because we're having a forced vacation at a lovely resort, which is the nicest place I've ever stayed!  Here are some pictures of this amazing place:

So nice to have a full kitchen & washer & dryer!

Amazing view from our lanai (balcony)!

And a few other fun things from this week...

Hana & Aya were thrilled when a mermaid came & visited our hotel pool & told them stories!

The mermaid arriving via golf cart (that's the preferred form of transportation here at Ko Olina & I want one!)

Making huge bubbles on the hotel lawn

Beautiful sunset tonight

Daddy & Hana enjoying the beach

Poor Aya was sick with a fever today :(

So it's been an interesting week of being stressed out to the max while staying at a lovely resort & making the most of it.  It's been a very interesting thing to think about.  Sometimes we just have to enjoy life regardless of the stress we can't avoid.

Love you all!