Monday, March 18, 2013

9 moves in 3 months and we're glad to be in our home in Hawaii!

Wow, it's been a crazy couple of weeks-some of the craziest for us ever and that's saying something considering our last few months!  I won't go through all of the details but it involved a great new place for us opening up (such a blessing!) that is much cheaper than the place we were in, getting permission from land lords to find someone to take over our lease, finding that person, not having anyone get back to me over and over, finding out we had to move everything and have our old place completely cleaned with very short notice and not knowing if we could move into the new place until the very day we had to clean and be out of the old one, quickly buying mattresses and other essentials for our new unfurnished place since we sold all of our possessions in Utah, finally getting access to move in and having no electricity or internet! So stressful and there is no way we could've done this with out amazingly kind, generous people: Geoff's sister who was visiting us for a week for a "vacation" helped out with everything immensely and a couple in our ward, the Murdock's offered to help and came to help us haul everything to the new place in their mini van and cleaned like I'd never seen anyone clean before (no wonder the cleaning company they own is so respected!) I also had a dear neighbor friend spend her precious baby's nap time cleaning my fridge!  Thank you so much to all of you!  No matter where I go I am blessed with wonderful people willing to help us out and I hope to be like you some day!  So all of that was incredibly stressful but our new place is WONDERFUL!  It is twice the size of our other place and beautiful.  It has a yard for the girls to play in, a big kitchen, 3 big bedrooms, 3 full bathrooms, a laundry room, vaulted ceiling family room...amazing!  We feel so blessed!  The crazy thing is that it is $600 cheaper a month than the place we were in!  Housing in Hawaii is pretty crazy! We moved in last Monday and Geoff had to fly to Dallas for a week to present at a conference there.  By this point I was so sick and exhausted from all the stress and moving that I could barely get up off the couch (fun chronic illness strikes again!) we didn't know what to do but we called wonderful Matty & Jess & with out any hesitation they said they would be happy to drop everything & come & help me out for several days!  Wonderful people stepping in to help us again-thanks SO much, guys!
Anyway, the girls and I miss Geoff a lot and are looking forward to having him back home with us Tuesday night.  We are a family who likes to be together pretty much all of the time and have been blessed to enjoy that so much.  Geoff said that the presentation went well and he has been able to meet a lot of great people and do some good networking at this conference so that's great.
And now after all that complaining I need to tell you some of the high lights of the past 2 weeks...

Having Rachey visit was so much fun! We really enjoyed having her here & didn't want her to ever leave!

She became an excellent golf cart driver. :)

We had the chance to tour an AMAZING Bali styled vacation home.  I'll have to write a whole post about that with  all the pictures I took!  Being the architecture/design junky that I am and this being one of my favorite styles, it was a dream come true!

Enjoying yummy shave ice from Aoki's


Doing a session at our temple in Laie with Rachey!
Another thing that I don't have pictures of yet (Rachey will be sending me some) is that Rachey and I went on a boating/snorkeling adventure that leaves here from the Ko Olina marina and it was incredible!  We saw a whale! We swam with sea turtles and tons of beautiful fish! We tried to find dolphins to swim with too but couldn't find any, however zipping along in the boat looking for them was super fun too.  I've snorkeled a few times walking in from the beach and loved that but jumping into the ocean from a boat and exploring out there was even more amazing.  I just can't seem to get enough of this ocean.
I'm too worn out to write to much more, but I wanted to let you all know that we have a wonderful place to live and are alive and well thanks to all the kindness of people around us.  We hope to never move. ever. again!  At least while we're in Hawaii.  Love you all so much!

2 comments:

  1. You are an amazing woman, Rachel. You bless the lives of all those around you, and anyone lucky enough to get to know you can't help but see your light. So it warms my heart to hear that there are good people out there helping out my wonderful Ray-chan. 頑張れ! 頑張れ!! I love you!

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  2. Thank you, K chan! You are one of those amazing people who has blessed my life forever. Hope all is well. Love you!

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