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.

Tech School Graduation

Today Tony (finally) graduated Tech school! We are so excited! He got Distinguished Grad too! That means that he had really good grades, never got in trouble for anything and had an instructor recommendation. I'm not surprised, and I'm very proud of him! This day has been a long time in coming for us. He has already been in the Air Force for almost 8 months! It seems like forever, and not that long at the same time. The fact that it has been 8 months and he is still in training is starting to get a little old! He has another 2 week-long training class and then we are off to Hawaii! We are very anxious to get to our duty station and be able to start this new part of our lives

My parents are visiting us for a few days since we won't have time to go to Amarillo before we move. They took the girls out to eat tonight and they are spending the night at Mimi and Pawpaw's camping trailer! We have no kids for the whole evening AND night. That has never happened! It is so nice! We went out to dinner with the other married couples from Tony's class. It has been nice having some friends for our time here. We don't really do much with them since we don't have a babysitter very often, but we have a lot of fun on the rare occasions that we were able to get together. Tonight we had fun celebrating that tech school is finally over! All the couples except for us are leaving town tomorrow to go to their new stations. This was our first time to say good-bye to friends that we have met in the Air Force.(first of many I'm sure, so we will have to get used to it) :o) It is bitter sweet. We are all so excited to be going to our new places, but we will always have this common bond of surviving tech school together. I am thankful for Facebook that lets us all keep in touch. Someday our paths just might cross again!








Natalie gave herself a haircut last night. She cut the hair in the front down to the scalp, and took big chunks out of the rest of it. I took her to a salon today to get it fixed. I will admit that it could have been much worse. She looks a lot older now with her new layered hairstyle.





Natalie's version








Better

And a picture of Gabbie, so she is included. :o) Plus it is so RARE that she will actually smile for the camera! I think she is so cute in this one!

So much Happening

You may have noticed that I changed the name of my blog. I wasn't really liking the old one anymore, and I think with all the stuff that is going on with us it may not apply as well anymore also. I'm going to give this new title a chance, and see how I like it. Now we are not in Hawaii yet, but the movers come in a little less than 3 weeks, and I may not have time to make any changes to my blog between now and then.

Here are some highlights of what has been going on since my last post.

We got our tax refund (yay!)and bought our first grill! We are excited that we will be able to use it so much once we move! There will be lots of great grilling weather. We are using it a lot now, even though it's kinda cold still. We are trying to use up the bottle of gas before we move, as the movers won't move that.

We took a quick trip to Houston to see Clint and Kaleena and we took Molly to her new home. Kaleena works with a lady that wanted to adopt her when she heard that we couldn't take her to Hawaii with us. It would cost us around $1000 to get her there, and we just couldn't spend that on a dog. Molly has a GREAT new home, and even has a "brother" (they already had a dachshund) to play with. She took to her new family right away and is getting spoiled beyond belief! We keep in touch with her her family and she is still doing great! The girls hardly even noticed that she was gone, which is a huge relief. I didn't want them to miss her too bad.

Tony's grandmother from Rhode Island came to visit us last weekend. We had fun seeing her again.

We have been busy trying to get all the details lined up for our move. There are so many details too! Then the military lost some of the paperwork, so we had to repeat a step. They messed up a couple of things the first time, so we had to repeat those steps also. When they reserved the flight they only got a ticket for Tony, so he had to go back and get them to fix that too. We finally got everything that we needed to get official orders. Yay! After we got orders then we had to set up the date for the movers to come, a time to drop off the car that the military is shipping in Dallas. We are shipping our other car ourselves, so we had to set that up also. There was so many things we had to do, and we didn't have much time to do it in! I think it is all done now though!

The movers come for our main shipment of stuff on the 29th, and then our unaccompanied baggage ships out on the 30th. The unaccompanied baggage is stuff that we will need before our other shipment gets to us. (like more clothes, some toys etc.) It will take a little over a month for our household stuff to get to us. Since we are going overseas we are allowed this other shipment. They ship it quicker, so we will get it not long after we get there. That will help so much! I was wondering how I was going to fit everything in the suitcases! Tony's car will be picked up on the 18th, and it should be waiting for us on the island when we get there! It will be interesting seeing the 4 of us crammed into the tiny 2 door car, but it is better than having to rent one for a few weeks. Better money-wise anyway.

Well that's some of the main stuff that has been keeping us busy. Of course we have all the daily stuff that doesn't stop to allow time for all the extra stuff we have to do! I have 2 weeks to have the house spotless, and deep cleaned and ready for housing to look it over. It would be sooo nice if the messes could stop for a bit to allow me to do this extra cleaning, but that's not how it works with 2 toddlers! I'm going to have to work super hard!

Tony has his last day of classroom instruction today! Yay! Next he has about a week of mock deployment work to do. He will be doing hands on stuff like he would doing on a deployment. He will get to put to use (on a pretend scenario) some of this stuff that he has been learning the last 6 months! He graduates Tech school on March 18th! FINALLY! He has to take an additional class before we move. It starts on the 22nd, and runs through the 6th of April. April 7th he will have final paperwork and out-processing to do and then we will drive to Dallas that evening. We drop the car off for shipment the next day, and then fly out on the 9th!

As you can see, we have lots to do in the next 4 weeks! I don't know if I will be able to check back in and update before the move or not. I will try, but no promises.

Happy Spring everybody! I for one am very glad to see the weather getting warmer. Spring is my favorite season! (Now I better get back to that To Do list.)

Too young to be a tooth fairy!

Sometimes being a parent is no fun at all. Don't get me wrong, I love my babies and I can't imagine my life with out them.

Before we got to the story behind the title, you need a little background information.

Because our upcoming move is considered an Overseas location, we have to be medically cleared to move. The Military wants to make sure that you don't have any conditions, or need to see any specialists that may not be available to you at your next location. It's not a big deal, especially for Hawaii. There is pretty much any kind of Dr. one would need over there, but regardless there is a lot of paperwork and hassle that you have to do anyway. Fun, fun. So this month I have been busy getting the medical clearance paperwork together for the three of us girls. This involves trips to the dentist and the clinic for checkups. After that we have to meet with some medical people and a "mental health" specialist so they can finish clearing us. I have been busy and exhausted, but I am almost done with my part! After this it is up to the military, and we are back to waiting. (The story of my life lately) We are hoping for orders soon, so we will have a date for our move. The next few weeks are big ones for us as far as moving plans go.

When I took Natalie to the dentist for her check-up they discovered that she has something known as External Resorption in her two front top teeth. Basically the roots and teeth are being resorbed. Like dissolved or eaten away. Anyway...this could have been caused from a trama to her teeth sometime in the past, like if she fell and hit them pretty bad. The dentist said that if we didn't have her teeth pulled, then it would spread to her other teeth and even damage her permanent teeth. Yipes!
So sitting in the dentist office I was in shock, and to clarify I asked,

"So you want to take those two teeth out?"

Yes

"And leave a HOLE in her mouth for a year or two??"

Yes

"And it's ok to do this??"

Yes

I had to come home and talk to Tony about it, do some research on our own, and make myself be ok with doing this. For some reason I had the hardest time making the decision to do it! How could I take the front teeth out of my baby's head way before it was time?? She would have trouble eating, and talking, and lets face it I was concerned with how she would look. I know kids are cute with missing teeth, but teeth that are missing for 2 years?! I was devastated. However the thought of damaging her permanent teeth, just to save these for a couple more years was stupid.

So we decided to have it done. Today I took my beautiful little girl to the dentist and had her teeth pulled. She's probably young enough that she doesn't know to care about how she looks with missing teeth. (Although the first thing she said to me when she got done was that she wanted to see in the mirror) :o) I think because her mouth was so numb she had no idea what had happened to her! She had to see that she was ok. She says that her mouth is "dizzy".

I got to thinking about how awful this was for me-and I realized that it really wasn't awful at all. So many parents are told so many things that are so much worse! What they wouldn't give to only have to have their kids teeth pulled instead of surgery, or chemo, or whatever other truly terrible thing their child is faced with.

It's not even as bad as when she was 2 days old and the Dr. told me there was a hole in her tiny heart....

So I will put on my big girl panties, a brave smile, and keep telling my little girl that she is a beautiful princess. (Because she still is!) I will put on my tooth fairy hat tonight and remember this milestone in my child's life even if it did come too early! I am thankful that she is healthy and whole, and we caught this before it was too late!

Now I have to go wake up both of my princesses, so I can go get my check-up. After this I am turning in paperwork and we are back to more waiting. I am DONE with Dr visits for awhile I hope!