1st Day of School

"I LOVE SCHOOL MOM! I want to go here forever!" Those were Jenna's first words to me when I picked her up after school today. She loves it! She said all of the kids were very nice and everyone wanted to show her where to put her stuff and be in her group. She has 15 kids in her class - 4 boys and 11 girls. The teacher is very nice. She has been teaching a long time and I'm told she is very good. And from what I observed, she is. Jenna says she is better than good, she's "Awesome!" I was a little surprised at the amount of homework that she had tonight. I don't know what other 2nd grade classes have for homework, but it seemed like a lot to me. She had to read from her book, write a sentence about the story she read, write long vowel words, and write each spelling word twice. She hasn't had to do anything for so long, it was hard to get her to sit still to read. Once she got going, she did fine. It will just take some time to get into a routine again. Her school day runs from 8:15-2:30. On Wednesdays she gets out at 1:30. It's a Hawaii thing; all schools get out an hour early on Wednesday. I'm not sure why. AJ says maybe they play football and don't have lights. Oh wait! That's only in Darlington! :) I met with the realtor and signed the contract. We plan to move in on October 1. We could move in now if we want, but we decided to wait until we have some furniture. We can save a little money this way too. I plan to look for furniture tomorrow. Hopefully I find something! I need to go check out the yellow pages, so until next time...aloha!

Football in Hawaii

We went to the Kona Baptist Church today. It's a nice church that we have gone to in the past when we've been here. We're told that more families are starting to attend, so we'll probably give it a try for a while. So far I really like it. It reminds me a bit of our church in Darlington, with really friendly people with a dedication to serve. I feel very blessed that all of our prayers for the major decisions have been answered. Now we can work on getting furniture for the house and get prepared to move. After church we went to Costco. It's a warehouse like Sam's. I was pleasantly surprised that the prices for groceries are much, much better here than in the regular grocery stores. A gallon of milk is only $4.83 for skim milk, and $5.11 for 2%. I'm not sure why there is a difference. We got home in time to see all of the highlights of the football games. Because of the time difference, the games start over here at 7am. We knew the Packers were winning before we left for church! We were able to watch "Sunday Night Football" at 2:30 this afternoon!! I told AJ it will be nice to be able to watch the whole game instead of falling asleep trying to stay up until 11pm. I'm glad to see that the Pack is 2-0. Rodgers is doing pretty good! And I'm sooooo sad that the Bears lost!!! (come from behind victory, I believe...way to go Panthers!) Anyway...tomorrow is Jenna's first day of school. She is very excited! Please pray that it goes well for her. I'll give you the scoop tomorrow night. By the way, it may look like I'm up at 12:30 or 1am writing this, but I'm not. For some reason, the time on the blog is about 3 hours ahead of me. It's usually between 9-10:30pm when I'm doing it. I do get some sleep! So until next time...aloha!

Quiet day

Not much to report on today. AJ worked half a day. Jenna and I were at home cleaning and doing laundry. When we registered Jenna for school, the teacher gave her a little homework to do, so she worked on that today. Gus's landscaper came and did some work. He gave us fresh bananas off of his banana tree and some papayas off of Gus's trees. I can't wait to try TRULY fresh fruit! This afternoon, we went to the fair. I don't think it was the county fair. It was pretty small, but it had the typical fair stuff...expensive rides, expensive food, and expensive games. There was a trapeze show...that was pretty cool to see at a fair. We went on the ferris wheel. It was neat to be at the top and see the ocean on one side and the mountain on the other! Well, not much more to say tonight. I'm tired, so until next time...aloha!

It's not that bad!

OK. I think I need to clarify a few things from last night's blog. I have recieved several responses and emails about the bugs!! Gee, nothing like scaring people away before they even get here!! All of the critters that I talked about are here and you will see them from time to time, but it's not like you're stepping on them all of the time. The ants, yes, unfortunately they are always around and you do step on them. At least I try to, just to kill a few! :) The ants are harmless, just a pain. The geckos are harmless. They're more afraid of you than anything. The rest of the bugs I talked about, you don't really see too much unless you have a lot of vegetation around, especially the spiders. We're staying at Gus's right now and he has A LOT of vegetation! He has lots of plants and flowers and fruit trees...the perfect habitat for spiders and millipeds. The house that we will be living in (the realtor called today and we were approved! More about that later.) has rocks for grass and just a few trees. I don't think we will have as many critters there as we see here. Besides when you all come and visit we won't be sitting around that much, so you probably won't even notice! One person asked if there are exterminators here. Yes, there are and some people have there houses "bombed" on a regular basis. I think that is mostly the older buildings. Our house is really nice and not that old. I hope that I have been able to calm some fears. I REALLY want you all to come and visit!! The beauty of the island totally outweighs a few bugs! OK, so on to the latest update. We were approved for the house. We decided to wait until October 1 to move in. I really want our own place, but we are living at Gus's for free and we can save half a month's rent if we stay here, so that's what we decided to do. In the mean time, we will look for furniture and have stuff ready to move in, instead of paying to live in an empty house. I went to an estate sale today, but didn't find much. We're planning to do some looking around this weekend to see what's out there. We got everything taken care of at school today and Jenna will start on Monday. That's a relief. She's ready to be in school and is excited to start. She met her classmates a few days ago and saw a few again today. She can't wait until Monday! We're planning to go to the fair this weekend. Should be fun! So, until next time...aloha!

Creepy, crawly critters and other observations

Well, we have officially been here for one week. It feels MUCH longer than that! I'm actually surprised and quite pleased with all that we have accomplished in one week. We heard back from the realtor and it looks like we were approved for the house! She is just contacting the owner about a few things. We will probably be able to move in soon. We enrolled Jenna in school today too. She will start on Monday. It feels good to have those things taken care of. Now, we just need to get the house settled and then I can get my resume updated and start looking for jobs! The fun never ends! :) One thing that I have noticed is all of the critters roaming about. I guess in the past I was always gone somewhere so I didn't notice all of them. There are chickens everywhere! They love to cackle or crow or whatever it is that they do...VERY early in the morning! It's very annoying! There are geckos everywhere too. They're kind of cute and I don't think that they do any harm. They just startle you every once in a while when they dart across the wall. I'm told that the tan colored ones are native to Hawaii and they are being "attacked" by the green colored ones. The green ones were brought into Hawaii from Bangledesh, and they are aggressive towards the tan ones. They don't hurt humans though, so I guess I won't worry about it. There are a lot of creepy, crawly critters that I could do without! There are ants, millipeds, ants, fruit flies, ants, roaches, ants, and really big, ugly spiders all over the place!! Mom, it would drive you crazy! The ants are always, always everywhere you look! In the kitchen of course, but also in the bathroom, living room, and bedroom. I'm not sure why, but they are everywhere!!! It's a very good incentive to always have the kitchen cleaned up, or else you risk having the entire colony in your house! The spiders are huge and creepy! There are lots of the yellow and black garden spiders that spin HUGE webs. The webs are actually kind of cool to see, except of course when you WALK into it and it gets in your face! I'm learning to pay attention to where I'm going when I walk through Gus's plants in the backyard. The absolute worst ones are the BIG, really BIG, really fast, black spiders that move so fast you'd think they have a hundred legs!! Fortunately I've only seen one so far, but I've seen them other times when we have been here and it still creeps me out!! OK, enough about the critters! On to other things. In case you were wondering, a gallon of gas is about $4.50 a gallon. I've seen it a little less than that a few times. A gallon of milk costs...ready for this?...$7.00 a gallon!!! Isn't that crazy?? Groceries definately cost A LOT more here than in Wisconsin. I'm hoping to shop at local farmer's markets and buy in bulk to save a little money. Unfortunately, it's just something that we are going to have to get used to. The sun sets at about 6:30 or 7pm and it is completely dark soon after that. That's kind of hard to get used to, but we also have beautiful sunsets over the ocean every night too. It's a trade off, I guess. I love reading your comments and emails. Thanks for your interest in my babbling about our lives. It makes us feel closer to everyone, even though there are many miles between us. So until next time...aloha!

More progress

Today was a little less hectic than the past few days. AJ went to work. His day went well. He's trying to blend in and learn everyone's name. Jenna and I went to town to take care of a few things. We turned in the rental application. Hopefully we will know by the end of the week or early next if we get the house. It would be great if we did. I'm anxious to get our stuff moved and start getting things settled into our own house. I know Gus doesn't mind that we are here, but sometimes I feel like we are invading his space. Our pallets should arrive next week and I'm planning to go to an estate sale this weekend. Hopefully I can get some nice furniture for not a lot of money. We visited the Christian school again and decided to send Jenna there. They have smaller class sizes and academically they are way ahead of the public schools. They score above the national average in all subjects. Plus, she'll be getting a Christian education, so how could we go wrong with that? She won't be able to start until next week though because the state of Hawaii requires that all new students have a TB skin test done prior to starting school. The local health department only does TB skin tests on Friday, from 2-4pm. It has to be read on Monday during the same time, so it will likely be Tuesday before she can start school. It might take that long to do all of the admission requirements anyway. We have an application to fill out and she has to be tested to see where she is academically. After this, our application has to be approved by the superintendent. I don't think we will have any trouble getting accepted; I'm just getting anxious to get her in school! She's ready to be in school. She's already bored with me, unless she's at the beach! I don't have as much to babble on about tonight, so until next time...aloha!

successful day!

Today we made some decisions. We bought a car for me. It's a 2005 Toyota Corrola. It's champagne in color (goldish) with tan interior. It's really nice. Jenna likes it because the interior reminds her of sand and it is a perfect match to her booster seat! :) We found a house that we really like. It's a big house with three bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. It has a huge living room area and a nice kitchen. In the basement, there is a big family room, a bedroom and bathroom. It's probably bigger than we need, but the cost of it is about the same as everything else that we have looked at and it's a lot nicer. We're filling out the rental application and will hopefully know soon whether we will be able to rent it. The only drawback that I can think of is that the yard is all gravel. There is absolutely NO grass! There are a few trees, but there is no grass. The yard is nice sized and would be nice if it had grass but I guess the owners didn't want to deal with mowing the lawn. Oh well, we like it anyway. Now the only decision to make is a school for Jenna. We looked at another public school today. We liked it and are debating between this one and the Christian school. The problem with the public school is that we can't enroll her until we have a physical mailing address and we're not sure where we will be living. Plus, the public school started at the beginning of August so she has already missed more than a month of school. The other thing that bothers me about public school is that after elementary school, the public schools are not that great, so we would probably move her to a private school. The Christian school (which is a private school) is nice because where we live doesn't matter, and they started 2 weeks ago so she won't have missed as much. We could start her right away. The Christian school is smaller and real family focused, and we wouldn't have to change schools when she gets into Jr. High (IF we are still here. Please don't panic!) The only drawback is that we have to pay for her to attend there. We hope to have a decision made tomorrow. After we did all of these things we took Jenna to a beach in town. It's a great beach for snorkeling, called Keiki Beach. Keiki (pronounced kay-key) is Hawaiian for child. The beach is great for kids because the water is shallow and sheltered by rocks. We went snorkeling here a few times when we were in Hawaii in 2007. We saw 3 sea turtles at this beach today, one was about 18 inches across. I didn't have my camera, but I'll send pictures some other time. The turtles like this beach and are frequently there. Today we watched one eating moss and some other stuff off of the rocks. It was pretty cool to see! AJ plans to start work tomorrow. I will finish researching the schools and try to get Jenna enrolled so she can start this week. Hopefully we can get the house and I can start getting things settled. Our pallets should arrive next week. Things are coming together nicely! Praise God for that!! Until next time...aloha!