today although was not really my first day of work was the first day with the kids. it was really good. CRAZY but good. I guess that can be expected for the first day with 24 4yrs. We went down to the apt today and some guy caught us on the way out of the leasing office and asked us if we wanted a tv for free. we were kinda shocked and then he said he had a flat screen tv he wanted to get rid of for free and we could have it if wanted to. ummm duh of course we’ll take it!!! Its like a 30 inch flat screen tv. its sweet! lucky us

i just cant get enough of these pineapple burgers…

i got burnt today.

here are some videos you should watch…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVWl0uzoXs4&search=fraud%20in%20the%2080s

and i guess nbc had a contest for an “office” commerical and our friend tony and his friend paul sent in this entry which is awesome and i guess they are in the top 10 finalist.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWQ-HFL2CY8

i havent been feeling homesick lately, which i was very proud of but i do very much so right now. it usually starts off small, like over something that you liked. Today it was the craft room. I was feeling like a wanted to do something fun or creative or something but i dont have anything with me. nothing. I didnt even know if they had craft stores around here. I knew there were no michaels or ac moores. I found one eventually they have ben franklins here, it wasnt too shabby either but i walk around there and i realize how fortunate i was to have all these resourcses at my fingertips at home. I bought some stuff to make some kind of cross stitch. I needed something it makes me feel at home to do stuff like that i guess. I think im going to make a hawaiian welcome sign for our new apartment.

so i guess its hurricane season here??? There is one coming this way i think. Its really dark out and very very windy, you cant see the mountains from the porch they are all covered in fog.
Also there was a earthquake yesterday… dont get all worried though haha. It was in maui, but you could feel it here. I didnt feel it but nice girl, karmin and kev all felt it. weird huh?
next thing i hope there is a volcanic eruption. now that would be sweet. It would be good to see one here because they arent part of the ring of fire volcanoes that are dangerous like mt. st. helens. They arent explosive. they are slow moving in comparison. Hmm at least geology class come in handy somewhere.

me and kev got our VERY FIRST APARTMENT TODAY!!!!!! We are so excited!!! We applied for it almost 2 weeks ago and we final got it today. We found out yesterday that the reason it was taking so long was because they had put our application on hold because… they said kev had a criminal record here in Hawaii. WHAT???? We couldnt believe it, the lady on the phone said that it showed that he or should we say “kevin richardson” was arrested 2 times in 2001 in Hawaii. To make a long story kinda short it was this huge ordeal which should never have happened but… we thought we were going to have to go down to the court house so kev could get finger printed and then investigated so we could prove that this wasnt him. They said it would take 10 days which we knew meant we would lose the apt. but the we talked to another lady at the court house and she couldn’t understand how the realtor had confused kev with this kevin richardson, all they had to do was look at the birth date or ss#. I mean come on we paid an application fee for them to figure this all out and then they expected us to go down to the court house and pay 10 more dollars just to get a piece of paper that said that that wasnt kev. ughhhh huge hassel but kev did it anyways. He took care of it all. I had to work but when he picked me up he had cleared his name and already had put our deposit on the place. YIPPPIE!!!! I guess the convicted kevin richardson was some old black man. ???

today was also goood because i got to ride in my very first CONVERTIBLE!!! it was so fun. Its like being on a rollercoaster kinda, or maybe a boat but just on land not water. “nice girl” came to pick me and kev up at the car rental place because we changed car rentals because alamo was screwing us over and our car has yet to be shipped from CA still. (thats a whole other hassel) but anyways she had rented a car today too and her car was a convertible. If you come to hawaii thats the way to get around, its so awesome seeing the mountains with no roof blocking your view. We are all going to go up to the north shore on saturday in it.

also today we were at the book store and all the sudden kev was like “WHOOA look… how perfect it this?” There was some photo magazine (a real thick one) that was called “lula” and underneath that in the only other words on the cover said “the perfect girl for me” haha isnt that so funny. I looked thru the book which was pretty cool – it had a story on jenny lewis a singer I really like and then some photo section that was titled “the mini pony club camp” Ummm that was just freaky cause the magazine is already called LULA but then has a story about mini pony’s. hehe

it is also lauras b-day
Happy birthday

those are my snip its for july 27th 2006

so i started working yesterday. its going pretty good. everyone is really nice. Me and the otehr teacher for my class have 24 students. Today i got certified in cpr and first aid today. so now if anyone is not breathing they can come to hawaii and i can do mouth to mouth and save you. I think that being able to live is well worth the trip to hawaii. so remember that!

so we started our tradition here. we decided that everysunday after church we would go on the many hikes around the island. Today we went to monoa falls. It is sooo jungley it really is a real rainforest. It was so amazing. The waterfall wasnt that impressive i guess there hasnt been much rain so the normally full waterfall was more trinkling than anything. We got some bug spray because the trail guide said that “jungle juice” is a must. So i sprayed my body before we left and of course the mixture of intense bug spray and sweat caused me to break out in a rash all over. ughh. The beauty helped take my m ind of how itchy i was. im a mess i know.

the view from the pali highway

these trees are everywhere, they are so crazy

before we started

i wanted to see the raptors

this looked alittle to much like leprosy to us

so last night kev come into the room and said he had to show me something in the bathroom. I went in and there was a huge freakin cockroach in the tub. It was so big!! After being freaked out I stepped up to the plate to get rid of it. I got a zip lock bag and after some fighting with it got it into the bag. I let it go outside.

Its awesome to be able to go swimming everyday. We love it. I think we have only not gone swimming one day since we’ve been here. We are getting better at booogie boarding, well thats a lie. Kev is getting way way better I just cant do it yet. Its hard when you dont have a good board or your own flippers. Its almost impossible to catch the wave without the flippers. We also foudn out the body boarding is awesome too, but thats still in beginning stages. We’ll be experts before you know it.

I cut up my very first pineapple yesterday. Mmmm they are so good here. Ive eaten the whole thing already. I feel like we are becoming very hawaiian in the sense of pineapples because the other night at dinner we had burgers that had teryiki sauce with grilled pineapple on them (at a restaurant) and then last night here we grilled steak and also grilled pineapple on the bbq.

We went to the swap meat yesterday, it was kinda what i didnt want it to be. I wanted it to be people selling there junk from there houses, but it was more like the flea market i went to once in California. Every is just selling touristy things but it was still cool. Tons of fresh fruit and nut stands.

i told him the moomoo looked good

so i have a few things to write and post, they will prbably take up the next couple posts. ( I will break them down into small posts instead of one giagantic one. Where we are staying right now in right on Kaneohe bay and if you look at a map you will realize that on the top edge of the bay is a marine corps base. You can see it very clearly from the porch here. Its really cool cause we see alot of helicopters that fly out over the bay and hoover over the water and you can see them jumping out of the helicopter into the water and then you see them climb up ropes back in. They must be doing training, its cool to see. Also sometimes (sometimes even a couple times a day) you see fighter planes taking off from the base too, its awesome cause the jets will come flying out 2 at a time and come out over the bay and and the sweep around and then out into the sky. It reminds me of my dad cause he use to take us to air shows when i was little. Also every morning ang night we here the trumpet plaing over there. Its cool.

The other night I had a dream about pirate (our cat). I dreamt that my mom gave her away to some rich older snooby lady and when i went to get her back the lady had her in this vacumn sucked clear bag cat suit that only had little slits for her mouth and nose and eyes. She said she put her animals in these little suits so their hair didnt get everywhere. I was so mad in my dream.

Here are some pictures from the other night in waikiki…

all the sidewalks are lined with tiki torchs that burn at night

so i was sitting down yesterday watching tv (boy meets world) with kev and eating a healthy little snack of frosted flakes when i notice that there is a very large gathering of ants inside the bag. Then I notice that the outside is covered with ants. Ugghhhh. It was disgusting. I was grossed out and very disappointed I couldnt eat more frosted flakes.
There are ants everywhere here. They are just these tiny little ones, but they are annoying.

We saw are first cockroach the other night. It was in the parking lot of borders. It was huge. Kev spit on it and those suckers can move fast! It was a little terrifying.

There is a a girl that is living here for a month and a half from california. She is 29 and a high school teacher. At first I would see her arond the house an wave to be friendly and then I would see her in the kitchen and just small talk as we crossed paths. But know I see her all the time and we talk alot and I dont know her name and its too late to ask. Me and kev just call her “nice girl” to each other because she is just so nice. She just made us french toast for breakfast with hawaiian bread because I had mentioned the other day that we were sick of eating toast and jam for breakfast. milk is like 6 dollars and something cents here.

we are off to a swap meet (with “nice girl) and some garage sales. I have decided that my goal or should I say my prize i want to find is a sewing machine. Laura got me thinking cause she said she asked for one for her birthday, and i dont have one cause im not home (sniff sniff) so now i want one too!
I want to learn how to make hawaiian quilts there just so pretty but tooo too expensive.

p.s more pictures to come soon. I just dont have time right now to put them up

did i say that everyone should check out kevs website?
oooh i did. well ill just write it again then

www.encourageothers.com

there are a few bugs still, dont worry though its still amazing. isnt he talented?
for some reason when you click on any one of the photo print sketch links the 6th image shows up first instead of the first so it doesnt match the type. but just click on the first white box below to fix it to the first image!
GO LOOK

we went running at the beach today, which we have been trying to do everyday but havent been so successful. Anyways after a nice refreshing swim after the run we were walking back and passed a guy that was fishing who looked like he had caught something. We stopped cause we wanted to see what he got and were very surprised when then guy reeled in a baby hammerhead shark!!!!!! It was awesome, it was about 2.5-3 feet long. They are so crazy looking with their eyes on the side of their hammers. We got to touch it and everything!!!! it was sweet.

Next when we were swimming again i noticed that on top of the waves kinda far out in the distance there looked to be a dog. The dog wasnt swimming though it looked like it was just standing on top of the water. It was so funny looking. We saw after that there was a guy swimming and he must have had his boogie board tied to his hand or something and pulling it behind him with his little dog standing on top of it. They werent anywhere near the shore so it looked really funny like that dog was just floating on by.

everyone check out kevs website its awesome…
www.encourageothers.com

For those of you that havent seen wedding pictures yet, here ya go!

this was taped up to a pole and there were still a ton of people in the water surfing…

the view from atop diamond head crater

you had to climb up thru tunnels that all use to be for the military base to get to the top of the crater

this is the cave I wrote about a couple days ago

this is where we saw the turtles

So we found an apt. that we really really like, we filled out an application and are just waiting to see if we get it. Its in an apt. village called Hibiscus Hills. We hopefully will find out tomorrow if we got it. Today was a good day we found a craft store, it was no ac moore but it was at least something. Kev found a job and applied to be a photographer in a studio. We found a pet store which helped with our homesick feeling from missing our cats. They had all these puppies and one of them was a mini pom. it was so small and fluffy. It was crackin me up cause it looked like those wind up dogs in the front of kb toys that yelp and then do a little flip. We also saw about 7 hang gliders, coming over the mountains and out over the ocean. It was so cool looking. I want to do it. We also climed up diamond head to see the crater. The views from up there were awesome. It was extremely hot though. A huge shaved ice helped though. Its very popular here. Its the some thing as a snowcone just with better flavors. THE COOLEST thing though was that we climed down into this little bay area today and we saw SEA TURTLES!!!!! They were right in front of us in the water. Its one thing to see them when they are in an aquarium but in real life its amazing. One guy in the water that was snorkling was grabbing onto one of them and swimming along side of it. We opened our new bank account with the bank of hawaii yesterday and our new checks have the hawaiian islands on them, they are very pretty and our cards have turtles on them.

the weather has been weird here the last two days. Its like rainy but not at the same time. Its still warm just not great beach weather. Our hunt for an apt has begun. Its going to be harder than we thought and more expensive. We have already skipped out on two appointments because just by driving by there is NO WAY we would ever live in the area they were. Alittle to ghetttto for us and scary. We saw a nice one this morning. It was high up on a hill over looking honolulu and the ocean, it was a def. possibility. Im going to say sorry to everyone who reads these for my poor grammer and typing skills. I usually think way faster than my typing skills and I know i mis spell alot of thing. I just heard a noise outside the window and for a second i thought it was gully but then i realized that it couldnt be. its sad. I miss my kitties. We found this really crazy cave on the side of the road today, it was really awesome but it was kinda in a part of the island that has alot of homeless people and some guy warned us not to go to far in because people live in it. Two things that I think will make it hard to adjust here is that 1.you are always aware that your not from the island. Like today in Mcdonalds we were def, the only white people. 2. The town names and street names I cant pronounce, its not that i just cant pronouce them, I dont even know where to start to try to pronouce them, how can a word have 3 a’s in a row?

this entry is just for some pictures.
well write more soon about it here.
the mtns always make you feel like dinosaurs are around because we are in jurassic park.
the first 3 our of where we are staying, the porch, the view from the porch and the kitchen. pictures dont do it justice

We arrived in cali on friday and had veau pick us up at the car shipping place in long beach. It was good to see veau and emily. They took us to sunset blvd for dinner to some trendy hotel. It was cool, it was called the standard. We stayed at veaus friday nite and then my parents came and got us on saturday night. We went down to newport beach for dinner and took the ferry to balboa island and walked around as the sunset. It was so pretty. The next day we went to saddle back, that place is crazy. now thats a mega church. For lunch we went down to laugna beach and walked around. california is beautiful but i cant really stand the attitude of everyone. Its just way to much about an image. It was great to be able to spend some time with my parents before we had to leave. We went and saw pirates of the carribean at disney on sunday nite. I was confused the whole movie and so was kev. Our flights and everything went smoothly except for the fact that I forgot that my back pack had been used to carry art supplies all school year and didnt carefully check all pockets for things you cant take on airplanes. Which I found out by a security guard having to tear apart my bag and finding a 4 inch pair of scissors. I freaked out and started crying, they guy yelled at me cause he told me not to touch my bag and i of course did without thinking, I was trying to help him. ughhh anyways it turned out ok. funny now of course. The plane movie was of course 8 below again.

hi everyone!
We wanted to share some pictures with you all, so where better to start than with the road trip.
It was awesome. We had so much fun. There was just so much to see!!! Our favorite part was st. louis because of all the old factories and then of course driving thru the rockies and utah.
Las Vagas was fun, but there was just way to much to see in one day and it was way to hot. The pool at the mirage where we were staying was awesome, theres a picture here of it with its crazy waterfalls. We loved seeing the white tigers and I loved all the white tiger gear you could buy! I wanted it all.

so we made it, we’re here. can you believe it? we def. can’t.
anyways here is our new livejournal so all you guys can feel like you know what we are up to here in hawaii.