We are slowly getting settled. Since we decided to sell or give away all of our furniture, the first night we all slept on the floor. And we ate on the floor (for several days actually.)
The next day we found this guy in our house... He's about 3 inches long.
So we were slightly more motivated to find beds and get up off the floor!
We spent (and continue to spend) a lot of time looking for great deals on Craig's List. Cliff bought a nice (expensive) queen size bed for us and continued to sleep on the floor, so kids could rotate and take turns kicking me and sleeping on my chest... oh, and getting a good night's sleep off of the floor.
We found a couch that we really liked!
And then we found a set of couches (3) for insanely cheap...
which lead us to sell the first couch for the same price that we purchased it for, a few days later. AND now we have some new friends who want to do anything for us because Cliff delivered it to their house :)
And as you can see, we also found a great patio table with 6 chairs that we really like for the lanai, so Lochlan can finally have milk in his cereal... it's a big deal.
We're still looking for bunk beds, but the pressure's off now that everyone has a couch to sleep on :)
The kids and I have been enjoying the critters (not the mosquitos... those are eating us alive and we will have to find a solution to that soon)! But here are some fun ones:
They've also been having fun with the new kinds of plants and trees:
Here, the kids are playing with sensitive plants that close up like a venus fly trap when touched.
There are a lot of huge trees perfect for climbing. Of course. Mason is all over that. See him?
And we don't know what this is yet, but Lochlan likes to pick them, and I'm sure we'll figure it out soon as we are doing Botany this year for science!
We've either hit the beach or the pool every. single. day since we've been here and that is appropriate considering Cliff has this week mostly off before starting work next week... but I've never done so much towel laundry! It's either salty or chloriney and then they need a clean towel after getting washed with soap. I'm still trying to figure out a better way... I'm thinking it must involve the line drying method for sure.
We tried to get into a routine as quickly as possible, so we started school three days after we arrived and they have already been to their first Awana. It went pretty well! And today the rest of their school curriculum arrived, so we are ready next week to start it all back up. (We had packed on the plane only the core curriculum.)
Every time a box arrives in the mail, it feels like Christmas! Towards the end, we just started throwing stuff in boxes and we weren't quite as organized as the weeks before, so it really is a surprise when we open them to see what's in there :)
We're getting settled. It will take a little while, some more Craig's Listing, and a whole lot of Garage Sales, but we'll get there. We are anxious to find a home church as well, but don't want to rush it as this is one of the most important decisions we will make here. The first church we tried was so small, we made up a third of the congregation! More people trickled in, however, because we were about 15-20 minutes ahead of "Hawaii Time."
Next up: House Tour!
