When in doubt, go to the beach

Our favorite piece of furniture

Moving into an unfurnished place with nothing but 4 suitcases and making it a home as quickly and cheaply as possible has been a fun challenge for me.  One thing I've learned is that stores/websites that will ship furniture to Hawaii are hard to come by!  I would finally find a piece of furniture that we really needed, passed my picky design standards (which I have learned to loosen!) and was an amazing deal only to find that when I put it into my cart on the website and went to check out they wouldn't ship to my zip code aka the middle of the Pacific!  Sigh...someone really needs to add a "will ship to Hawaii" filter to store websites.  Anyway, I tell you all this so you can understand how thrilled I was when I found a patio swing that could be mailed to us and was on a really good sale!  I've always wanted a patio swing since enjoying them with several of my cousins on my Great Gramma T's patio.  And since we live outside as much as in I decided to buy it.

Geoff put it together for us when it arrived...

 it and it's been the hit of the neighborhood ever since!

We love visitors!

Things are going well here, on the west side of our little island and we are loving our new home!  The best part is that we have a guest room for all of you to stay in when you come visit!  Speaking of visitors we were very sad when we had to say goodbye to Matty & Jess as they are headed to the next adventure in life...graduate school and moved back to the mainland.  :(  We already miss them terribly.  The good thing about all of this though was that my fun aunt and uncle (Matty's parents) came out for a week to spend time here and enjoying some diving and help them move back.  We got to have them join us for church (http://mormon.org/eng/) and dinner after at our home and then we all braved the pouring rain to walk around the amazing Disney Aulani resort just down the road from us, here in Ko Olina and to meet up a few other times while they were here.  So fun!

in the Disney Aulani resort 

The grounds outside at Aulani

Cute couples :)

We also enjoyed a nice visit from my friend, Christine and her husband and twin boys.  We went on study abroad together to Japan and had a great time together.  She is an amazing person.  So fun to catch up a little.


And a few other random cute pictures to add from our little shopping trip to the Ala Moana shopping center with our neighbor friends...

The Hello Kitty (Sanrio) store-a dream come true! 

Aya in Disney stuffed animal snuggly heaven

3 lovely princesses At the Disney store

Valley of the Temples

Last week we went on a fun, family adventure to a place called Valley of the Temples.  It's on the rain forest/jungle side of the island so it's always exciting to explore over there since our side is so different.  We had passed this place the first time we drove up to North Shore and driven around it a little bit and decided that we needed to come back.  It's a magical, reverent place that feels like you've stepped back in time and stepped into Japan because the main place there is a beautiful Buddhist temple (Byodo-in) tucked in a little valley in a bamboo thicket.  Here is a description from their website:

The Byodo-In Temple is located at the foot of the Ko'olau Mountains in Valley of the Temples Memorial Park. It was established on June 7, 1968, to commemorate the 100 year anniversary of the first Japanese immigrants to Hawaii. The Byodo-In Temple in O'ahu is a smaller-scale replica of the over 950-year-old Byodo-in Temple, a United Nations World Heritage Site in Uji, Japan.
http://www.byodo-in.com/

Pretty amazing place and very nostalgic of our visits to Buddhist temples in Japan too so we loved it.

Here are some of my favorite pictures that we took...

The girls thought that ringing this huge bell on the way in was really great.

Inside Byodo-in

Hana & I liked this moss covered frog statue :)

The cool bamboo thicket

Aya assumed that a panda must be near by because there was bamboo!

Lots of neat wildlife here. I loved these cute turtles, sunning themselves on the rocks in the middle of the temple pond

Aya is gathering bamboo pieces to feed the panda that she was still sure would appear.

I love the mist on the mountains on this side of the island!

 This weekend we've really enjoyed watching General Conference yesterday and today. (http://www.lds.org/general-conference/sessions/2013/04?lang=eng) So many wonderful messages!  Our Father in Heaven truly does live and loves each of us and will help us through all our trials and to become who He wants us to be if we turn to Him.  So good to know and be reminded of when we live in such a crazy world sometimes.

I was quite homesick today for the first time in awhile.  Love and miss you all!