Whirlwind of craziness!

It's been a crazy whirlwind of selling all of our possessions (again!) in Hawaii, saying goodbye to all of our ohana there (so hard!) and taking the flight back over the ocean with 13 pieces of luggage and 2 exhausted girls, then being welcomed back to Utah by awesome family and friends, having a huge climate shock to the wintery cold which included the worst cold/cough/sore throat I've ever had last for 4 weeks, celebrating a wonderful Christmas with family (SO loving living close to family!), finding and moving into a lovely yellow town house back in Daybreak right across from the lake, (2 blocks from our red Victorian house that we sold last year), being welcomed back by our neighbors and friends in Daybreak, buying winter wardrobes for all 4 of us, and then buying all of the essentials for a new house (again!)getting Hana enrolled in an awesome 2nd grade class at the school a few blocks away, finding a preschool for Aya and  looking for and finding a job for Geoff!...Phew!  Can I just say that it's been a crazy roller coaster!  So many highs and lows and stresses and gratefulness and learning and growing.  We miss Hawaii terribly!  We miss the sunshine, we miss the clean air, we miss the ocean and we especially miss our wonderful friends there.  But we also love being close to family and Utah friends and are thrilled to move back into our old neighborhood in Daybreak with all of the wonderful people here.   (Hawaii friends, Daybreak is pretty much the Ko Olina of Utah.  Check it out:  http://www.daybreakutah.com/community-story/)  It was great to have a white Christmas too and I still go into a happy shock about how cheap everything is when I go to the grocery store or buy gas or look at house prices. 

Anyway, if you're still with me you must really love us so thank you, thank you so much for all of the love, support, aloha, prayers, hugs and helping hands during our whirlwind of craziness!  I have so many fun pictures and stories to share so I think I'll back up a bit and start with our last few weeks in Hawaii celebrating the Christmas season island style...

We celebrate St. Nicholas Day every Dec. 6th to celebrate our German heritage and this was the first time St. Nicholas left surprises in "slippahs" instead of shoes!

We had a yummy German breakfast too with our friends who lived in Germany for several years.

We took the kids from our church to sing Christmas songs and bring some cheer to a local retirement home and they were so cute!  I love these kids!

Greeting the tutus around the room

All decked out!

The cutest reindeer in Hawaii

We were accompanied by our favorite ukulele and guitar players

Christmas lights on palm trees!  This is at Paradise Cove in Ko Olina on the way to our house.

We had a really fun church Christmas party and the kids performed again

After a yummy traditional Hawaiian dinner (best Kalua pig I've ever had!) a special visitor arrived!

Notice the jingle bells on Santa's slippahs!

Enjoying the Christmas decorations in the neighborhood

 Well I better wrap up as this post is getting long but I can't resist adding two more pictures

I passed this every morning on my walk to the gym!

I love Hana's pose in this one ;)

More pictures and blog posts to follow soon!