Our 1st Family Thanksgiving

Crystal flew in on Wednesday to spend Thanksgiving with us. The kids were so excited to meet her at the airport! Ella had to color her a picture, and they were excited to help pick out a lei.

I spent all day cooking yesterday and made my first turkey. I'm so glad that it turned out okay! We had our friend, Sherry, and her daughter, Rachel, over to eat with us. Her husband left for Iraq a few weeks ago. She lives two houses down from us, and they're from NC! We're quickly becoming great friends.

Crystal, James, and the kids spent the day at the beach while I was home cooking. Here are a few photos of them in the sand. I have more pics from Thanksgiving on our Kodak gallery:


http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=14moigfq.8k6t3zim&x=0&y=-3o0igl&localeid=en_US

The Lagoons

Today I took the kids to the Lagoons at KoOlina resort. KoOlina is a vacation resort that's a 10 minute drive from our house. All beaches on the island are available to the public, so everyone likes to go to these lagoons for swimming. I like to take the kids there when I'm by myself because the water is very calm and safe for little ones. They had a blast! I only got a few pictures of them having their snack because I was busy with them in the ocean the rest of the time.
Pic of Lagoon
Benson telling me he's ready to go swimming again.

Snack time

And here's a pic of Benson playing with his dinosaurs (he decided to flush one down the toilet recently) and of Bastet relaxing.

Preschool, Park, & Pics of House

I finally found a preschool for Ella! We've had her on the wait list for the on post preschool, but it's an 8 month wait. Plus that would be a 30 minute drive from our house. This preschool is just a 10 minute walk from our house, and they have an opening in her class. We have an appointment on Monday to meet the teachers and take a tour. Ella is super excited! She's been asking me when she'll get to go to school and meet her friends since we got here. If we like it, she'll go on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.

We took the kids to the playground last night before dinner, and here's a couple of pics:



We're almost finished with our house, so I finally got around to taking some pictures. We plan on painting our bedroom this weekend, so I'll add pics of the bedrooms once we finish that. You can see the pics on our kodak gallery:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=14moigfq.3iaoy6ce&x=0&y=o1adpw&localeid=en_US

A few interesting facts about Hawaii:

1. There are no snakes or seagulls in Hawaii. (but there are tons of little lizards, all in my backyard!)
2. Hawaii is the only state that grows coffee.
3. More than 1/3 of the world's commercial supply of pineapples comes from Hawaii.
4. It takes 2-3 years for a pineapple to fully grow.
5. Hawaii has it's own time zone and doesn't observe Daylight Savings.
6. There are only 12 letters in the Hawaiian alphabet.
7. Honolulu is the largest city in the world (in reference to it's borders).
8. More than 100 world-renowned beaches ring Honolulu.
9. Average daytime temperatures range from 72'F (January) to 82'F (July).
10. The island of Oahu is made of 2 volcanoes; Waianae (close to where we live) and KoOlau.

New Hope

We tried out a new church today, and we really like it. It's called New Hope, and it's similar to the church we used to attend in Charleston. It's a huge church with lots of satellite campuses throughout the island. I think there are 10 locations, mabye more than that. There are three in our neighborhood, and the one we chose is only 10 minutes from our house. The kids really enjoyed the kid's program today, and I think Ella was excited to meet some new friends. They have a preschool program on Sunday nights, so we might start taking Ella to that next weekend. We're excited to have found a church that we like. That was one of my biggest concerns with the move because we loved being at Cascade Hills so much. It's definitely not a replacement for Cascade, but it's good.

Here's the church website if you want to check it out. http://www.newhopeleeward.org/html/Welcome.php
They're really active in the community, so I'm excited to get involved and meet people in the community.

Happy Halloween

So, Halloween is a big "to do" in our neighborhood. I bought 4 huge bags of candy and 4 medium sized bags, and we ran out at 8pm. I had to be the grouchy neighbor that turned the lights off and put a sign on the door that said, "We ran out of candy." Oh well. I thought we had big halloweens on post at Fort Benning, but this was crazy. The kids had a great time, including Benson. He kept his costume on the entire time, and he wanted to eat each piece of candy that he received. He also tried to knock on the doors, say 'trick or treat,' and told people bye bye. Ella was super excited and knew exactly what to do this year. And I think she had more fun handing out the candy and guessing the other kids' costumes. She made sure to tell everyone "happy halloween" as she handed them the candy.

Just before the craziness started, I got a chance to meet our neighbors two houses down from us. They have a three year old little girl, and they're from North Carolina and Tenessee! She was so nice, and I'm really excited to have finally met a friend/neighbor. Her husband deploys from Iraq next week, so we moved in just in time to meet him and help her out when she needs it.

Here's a link to our October pictures: http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=14moigfq.bis09nie&x=0&y=-8jaa41&localeid=en_U