Lanikai Beach

We wanted to find a beach that had calmer waves to take the girls to. They love the waves, but its easier for us if the waves are a little more gentle. :o) This beach was nice. You can see all the plants and coral in the water close to the shore. This broke up the waves, but it also made it hard to go very far out into the water. We saw several people snorkeling there, so we may have to try it sometime! The nice thing about Hawaii, it's a state law that every beach (except for the ones on military bases) have public access. It was pretty cloudy the day we went here so it was a little cool when we got wet. The water was nice, about 78 degrees. We about decided to call it an early day since it was chilly when some clouds blew in and we got rained on. So our trip to that beach was cut short.

Somewhere along the North Shore...

We went to Haleiwa on the North Shore. We didn't see any turtles on the beach like we were hoping, but we did see some playing in the waves on the shore.








If you look really closely you can kinda see the turtle in the water. It didn't show up on the camera very well.


My first Hawaii Shave Ice. This one was a pineapple bowl. Pineapple ice cream under the pineapple flavored shave ice. Yummy! Gabbie is all ready for the first bite!

Bellows Air Force Station

The day after we arrived we went to the beach at Bellows AFS.




The views on the drive to that side of the island...




Natalie in a big hole!

Gabbie loves playing in the sand!



The girls absolutely LOVED the beach!! I think that we will have a couple of beach babies in no time at all!

Aloha from Hawaii!

Well, we have finally made it to Hawaii! Our flight was a little over 8 hours long. We had to be at the airport 4 hours before our flight. The girls did fantastic!I can't believe how well they did. All the prayers that people were praying for us were definitely answered! It was nothing short of a miracle. Gabbie started getting restless the last 30 min or so of the flight, but I'll admit that I was too! I don't blame her in the least! We landed at 4:45 Hawaii time, which was 9:45 according to our bodies!

We had quite an adventure the night we got here. We had reservations on an Army base close to Hickam for our lodging. Hickam was full. We got to the lodging place and found that it was filthy! It was too dirty for us to stay there, so Tony's sponsor started looking for us another place to stay. All military lodging in the area was full, so my friend Jennifer helped us get a room at a Best Western. So by the time we got all our stuff hauled over there, rented a car, had supper...it was after 10:00 Hawaii time before we all made it to bed.(3am according to our bodies.) Gabbie was up at 4:30am the next morning. (9:30 according to her body) Ugh. We have been here just over a week and have managed to get her sleeping in until 6:30 every morning. The sun comes up here around 6:00, so this may be our new wake-up time.
We were at the Best Western until Monday, when we got lucky and a room on base opened up. We can only stay here until the 8th of May. But this place has a living room and 2 bedrooms as opposed to just 2 beds in a room like the hotel. We don't have a kitchen, but we do have a small fridge and microwave.

We were here for a week before we were offered a house. Hickam didn't have a house for us, and all they would tell us is that it would be 2-3 months wait. So we applied for Army and Navy housing. The Army is who finally offered us a house. We can't move in until JUNE 11th, but at least they were willing to give us top priority and at least offer us one. It is REALLY nice too! I am so super excited! It is a little over 1600sq feet, 3bedroom, 2.5 bath. Its less than 5 years old too. The neighborhood is beautiful also. God has really blessed us! It will be worth the wait...I hope! ha ha I am praying hard that it doesn't fall through. It shouldn't, but it could still be a possibility I suppose. If another house in that same neighborhood happened to open up sooner, that would be ok though. By the time we finally get into our house we will have been living out of a suitcase and eating out for 10 weeks! Yipes! Please pray for us...we're going to need it! I'm already missing being able to cook a meal, and I'm very tired of living out of a suitcase! I still have a LONG time to go to! There is only one good thing about waiting so long. The military gives us a per diem everyday that we are homeless. So we should profit nicely for being homeless for a little over 2 months. At times though, I still wonder if it's worth it. :o) If things go as planned, we will be moving into yet ANOTHER hotel next month, when they run out of room for us here. That hotel is a very nice Air Force hotel resort right on Waikiki Beach. Hopefully that will help to make up for the fact that we won't have a fridge, microwave or anything. We will be eating out a LOT then.


Our Future House

The view from our front yard one direction...

And the other direction

We really like being here, homelessness and all! The base is very laid back. Tony is still doing inprocessing and other stuff so he hasn't started work yet, but he really likes what he has seen of his shop so far. They gave him the afternoon off the other day because it was my birthday! It looks like it is going to be a great place for him to work! The base is right on the coast, and Tony got to see a submarine coming in the other day! So cool! I hope I get to see one sometime too. We get to see, (and hear) the fighter jets coming and going all the time too.
We haven't been able to go out and do a whole lot yet. We have done a few things though. I will post about that soon.