Life Is Good!

We absolutely love where we live and we feel so lucky and happy we made our dream of living close to the ocean come true! This evening I went for a walk and on my way back I turned the corner and the ocean was right there facing me. It brought a sense of calmness over me and I couldn't help but smile. It's weird, but sometimes we forget we are living in Hawaii, we get caught up in other things but then we look out our kitchen window and see the ocean or drive 10 minutes to an awesome beach and we say, "wow, we live here and love it!" My walk was definitely one of those ah-ha moments. I sat and watched as the outrigger canoes were speeding by. We truly love being here.

One of the things we've been doing in the mornings together before one of us heads off to work has been exploring. We love hopping on the scoot or boot scoot (it's official name) and finding beach access through some incredible residential areas. We can't believe some of the houses we've seen with the ocean as their back yards. The picture below is an example of that, homes are inches away from those palm trees. And that big building in the background is just a few blocks from our apartment. Also we've started a collection of sea glass so it's been fun walking along the beach finding pieces.

One of our explorations was to find Dog The Bounty Hunter's home. Zach knew the street to look down and he was told he wouldn't miss it. We definitely didn't miss it since his face is plastered to his gate. Zach was beyond thrilled.

Where we live there's also a lot of marinas and canals, which I think is awesome! I love seeing all the boats, kayaks, and paddle boards out in the water. The other morning on our way to the beach we stopped to watch a little Christmas parade and we're hoping we'll get to see the Christmas light boat parade in a few weekends. We are getting pretty excited for Christmas, we can't wait to decorate our apartment!

One different thing about living on the island is at the end of each month people put their "junk" out on the curb to be collected on trash day. But before trash day people are welcome to take all they want and all they can carry. We talked about maybe getting some things if we saw something we needed and in okay condition. One night I came home from work and saw a yellow shoe rack sitting out front our front door with our shoes in it. Then a few nights later Zach had lunch with me at work and he was so excited because on his drive over to meet me he saw a leather chair on the side of the road. He told me he was going to check it out on his way home. When I got home that night I was greeted with a "new" brown leather chair in our living room. Then Zach flopped onto it and pushed it into its reclined position. He loves it. At first I wasn't too fond of it but now I'm glad we have it. I just can't believe he walked home with it over his back. And the other morning we picked up wooden dinning table chair that I hope to sand and paint. 

Zach loves kickin' back in his leather-bound scholarly chair.

We are still working on setting up our home. We are hoping to get our bed situation figured out and a sofa soon. But we love our apartment. It's so nice to come home to something that is ours. This is our table and 2 plates. It's not much but we are happy.

Now we can't wait to have visitors to share this awesome place with!

Thanksgiving

This was my 3rd Thanksgiving away from home and missing out on the fall season. But I am extremely thankful for where I am right now and that Zach and I have embarked on this new journey together. We both have so much to be thankful for…each other, our friends and family, our health, our jobs, our apartment, and of course living in Hawaii. 

 This was our first Thanksgiving together in a long time and the day was perfect! Zach had to work 5 hours but gets double time pay, which is sweet. I had Wednesday and Thursday off so I baked pies and walked to explore our area a little more…we live so close to the ocean, however it’s not the beach, you can’t go swimming because it’s designated for launching boats and jet skis—now if only we had some water toys.. Our plan was to try and squeeze in a beach trip, seeing as we’ve never been to the beach on Thanksgiving so when Zach got off of work he met me at the farm and we headed to the beach it was nice to get in the water and Zach caught some barrels, which he loved. 

 Thanksgiving on the farm was great, we got to hangout out with our farmily and meet new people. But the best part was seeing how they cooked the food, it was very Hawaiian style. They made an emu, basically it’s an under ground oven. They dug a pit in the ground then placed fire wood with rocks over the wood. They lit the wood on fire to get the rocks nice and hot and when the rocks were hot enough they placed banana leaves over the rocks and placed all the food wrapped in tinfoil on top of the banana leaves and placed more banana leaves on top of the food and then covered everything with burlap sacs and left it to cook pretty much all day. They ended up cooking 3 turkeys and 4 chickens along with a lot of cassava, breadfruit, and sweet potato, all harvested from the farm. 

 We enjoyed all the fixings and the turkey was delicious. My favorite part of the day was spending it with 3 WWOOFers from Sweden, who never experienced Thanksgiving before. One of the girls kept saying, “I want to do it how the Americans do it” so she became the turkey baster despite being a vegetarian and not eating any. And she kept saying she was so full but still wanted pie, we highly encouraged her…she was so funny.

The newest member of the farmily

The emu pit

My baked pies. I was a little worried they wouldn't taste good or there wouldn't be enough so I asked Zach to bring a pie from work and when it was pie time he realized his pie had to be cooked. Needless to say we now have a fresh berry pie in our freezer. Luckily my pies were a hit and there was plenty of dessert.

It was a great Thanksgiving! 

We are very grateful for all our family and friends and hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving!

Apartment!!!

Just a few days short of living in a tent on the farm for two months we found and moved into our very own apartment and it's a great feeling. We love our new apartment! It's an unfurnished studio, which leaves us with a lot of possibilities about the lay-out and decorating! We love the location, it's close to everything we need: shops, restaurants, grocery stores (Costco is about 5 blocks away), the beach, and my work is about a 10-15 minute scooter ride or a 25 minute bus ride. Zach's work is about a 40 minute scooter ride, I'm grateful he doesn't mind his commute. The apartment gets great breeze and it's full of natural light.  Oh, and the best part...we have an ocean view. The ocean is just straight down the road so we are able to look out our kitchen and bathroom window and see the ocean through the tops of the trees. We are loving it!

We are both so happy!

Our bathroom has lots of storage space including a full sized closet.

The only thing we don't totally like about the apartment is the shower--it's really small and the shower head faces the opening of the shower so water tends to get all over the floor if the shower curtain isn't placed properly. But we love the ocean view!

Lots of built-in shelving and storage!

Bathroom through the door on the right and the kitchen is through the door on the left.

Our huge walk-in closet. Zach is thinking about turning this into the bedroom to maximize the rest of the living space. I'm not so sure about that.

Our kitchen is full with lots of cupboards, a stove/oven, and a full sized fridge. 

More shelving, which is currently being used as our dresser for the time being.

We decided the best and fastest way for not sleeping on the floor was to get a nice air mattress until we can get a real bed, it works well for now. 

So, the last couple of days we have been getting house wares and groceries. Things are coming along and we are just so happy!