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!