Feeling Full of Aloha

We love Hawaii! We're making friends, enjoying the beach every chance we get, and relishing daily life in t-shirts and sandals. Ko Olina is a lovely community. We hope to sign the papers for our future house on Friday. We'll be staying in the neighborhood of Coconut Plantation, which is the most "neighborhood-ish" of the five neighborhoods in Ko Olina.

An open invite to all. We'd love to have you come swim with us.

Home sweet Home

Tan lines are starting to spring up! Caleb has a line on his back and Leah is getting brown on her legs (but you can only tell when her swimsuit comes off). While Sara doesn't swim, I think her face is getting darker. I'm a bit worried about all that future skin damage and wrinkling. Kids don't care, though, and I have a royal battle every time I try to lotion them up. I've settled for sunscreen when we go to the beach to swim. As for me, I'm coated in sunscreen 24/7.

A lot has happened in a week. I feel substantially more connected to the area and to our ward. I've chatted up three women at the lagoons when I guessed that they lived here full time. (No husband? You're a regular.) I've been introduced to Stroller Strides and I plan on attending my first class tomorrow, which I have been informed is a mecca for Ko Olina SAHMs. And I hunted down all the ladies in the ward who live in Ko Olina. (I literally grabbed a notebook and pen and roamed the halls after Sacrament Meeting.) There are five although one is moving back to the mainland in early summer. One woman, K, lives just up the road from the house we expect to rent. In fact, she goes jogging with the owner! She told me that the owners hope we don't disappear since it's taking so long, and that they're also amazed that we have three kids.

Ko Olina has been buzzing this week. Police set up a roadblock outside the Ihilani resort and checked the IDs of everyone trying to approach the hotel. We finally figured out that both football leagues for the Pro Bowl were staying at Ko Olina. I saw two potential safeties walking down the boardwalk on Saturday, but that was it for possible football player sightings. We did get a good look at lots and lots of limos zooming by.

We got absolutely soaked on our walk home from the beach on Saturday. It had been a gorgeous morning, as always, but we noticed some super dark clouds to the north and figured we had better go home early. We'd just arrived at our development's front gate when it absolutely started chucking it down. I've never been so wet in so little time. Sara sobbed and I ran up the street in my flip flops and nearly lost a contact from all the rain. Coming home to our warm house and taking a hot bath felt pretty cozy, though.

It's funny to walk down the boardwalk and pass by a Japanese wedding just about every day. There's a small chapel at the first lagoon and they must hold dozens of weddings there daily. We often pass by a Japanese bride coming down the stairs while a photographer captures every moment, or maybe she's standing on the sand with the lagoon in the background. Her groom always looks old, typically wears a white or ivory suit, and she's always in strapless. It's like being in Groundhog Day.

Leah attended her first ballet class on Saturday and she was absolutely thrilled. It was a real kick for me to watch her as she oh-so-carefully put her feet into first position or tried her hardest to copy the teacher. At one point, Miss Natasha told the girls to simply dance and most of them ran around like chickens. Leah looked perplexed and then did a little jump with her hands in the air, followed by a pirouette. She told me later, "I did real dancing." I met another mom at ballet and Leah hit it off with her daughter, so I've made a casual invitation for them to come over one day and go swimming with us. Her kids are 4 and 9 months, so not a perfect match, but her youngest was a home birth on Maui, so we've definitely got something in common.

Caleb has been an amazing potty-er. We had an accident Monday and I can't really think of any other mishaps. He runs around naked all day because he can't figure out his briefs and he does seem to use the toilet an awful lot. I'm just thrilled that he's willing to do it and that he's taken to it so quickly. ("Like a duck to water!") I'm contemplating only training my children at age 3 and up from now on. This has been so easy.

Sara is starting to talk. She uses words appropriately and frequently enough that I notice. So far, we've got bye-bye, no, mama, daddy, poo poo poo, and baby. All children are baby. Both Jeff and I were "mama" until I noticed today and taught her that Jeff is daddy. Now she seems happy to distinguish between the two of us. (I only caught it when Jeff went up to the stand today to give his talk and she began to wail "mama!").

The rhythm of our weekends has definitely changed. We sleep in Saturday till 8 and then I take Leah to ballet. We come home by 9:30 and all of us get ready to go swimming at the lagoons. We hang at the beach until everyone's had their fill and we're hungry. Home to eat, Sara down for a nap, and the rest of the day is open. We don't have church till 1 o'clock on Sundays, so more sleeping in, a walk down by the water, brunch, and then church for the rest of the afternoon, followed by an early dinner and bedtime. It's a good routine and I hope it survives any future callings we might be given. I'm glad to see that my image of Hawaiian living with children is coming true. They love being outdoors every day, getting to run on the grass or the sand, and just generally having lots of lazy family time together. Living here might be expensive, but our daily activity is not.

Meet "Chicken of the Sea"

Sara is afraid of the ocean and the sand. We're having a lot of fun asking her, "Sara, do you want to go swimming?!" because she is so emphatic that no, she does not. (And stop asking.) Her favorite thing to do at the beach is crawl into her stroller to keep her feet from the sand. We keep telling her that she's a Hawaii baby now and so she needs to start enjoying the beach, but we're afraid she will tenaciously insist on remaining an England baby.

We're slowly settling into a routine. My mom left on Thursday (wah! I'm all alone now) and I spent all Friday sketching out ideas for how I'll arrange our days and fit in Leah's homeschooling. (It's fun to see how Caleb hangs around us while we work on letters and how much he seems to be learning.) The kids are getting to bed around 7, 7:30, and we're working towards a 10-6 routine for us. Out here, it feels imperative that Jeff get into work as early as he can. Part of it is the time difference (he needs to coordinate with mainland coworkers), and then there's traffic. Earlier is better.

Caleb is finally being potty trained! We bought him a Cushie Tushie -- he adores saying that -- and 12 pairs of briefs. He's had a smattering of accidents but he's also taken himself to the toilet several times, including three #2s. It must be the beauty of potty training when the kid has been ready for nearly 6 months. This is easy! I love that our house has tile floors on the first level and so I really don't have to worry about any accidents. Just stay off the couch, Caleb!

I took Leah to observe a ballet class on Saturday. I think she'll start classes either this Thursday or Saturday -- whenever her clothes arrive in the mail. She is terribly excited (though it's mostly about the clothes, not the class). The teacher wanted to watch her move since she is between two class levels but Leah refused to budge. She told me later that she didn't want to get hurt. "I can't dance in sandals! You need pink shoes to dance!" Nevermind that her prospective teacher simply wanted her to bend her knees and do a little shuffle. I hope ballet teaches her some focus and let's her spend some time with kids her age.

I went snorkeling for the first time on Saturday. Jeff had been at the beach for over an hour when Leah and I finally returned from our ballet scouting mission. I found snorkeling to be a bit panic-inducing. I kept wanting to let the tube go and breathe with my mouth. It felt so odd to be breathing while underwater. I'll keep working at it and maybe one day I'll paddle along in the lagoon, all three feet of it!

And finally, I think we have our house. The owners are moving to another neighborhood in Ko Olina because they want a yard. They would have sold except that the market is so soft -- and they love us because we want to rent for just under three years, long enough for them to avoid capital gains and (hopefully) then be selling in a stronger market. It's a good fit for all of us. The house is really well priced and it has more than we ever dreamed we'd get in Hawaii: two walk-in closets in the master bedroom suite (we've decided that one could be a future nursery), and a computer desk built into the upstairs landing. Voila! The house has suddenly become a 4 bedroom. As soon as we saw it, we both knew that this was where we wanted to live. Now we're just waiting for the paperwork on their new house to go through and we'll be able to sign a lease.