a perfect Sunday

Saturday Night S and I tossed around the idea of going to breakfast Sunday morning. We aren't BIG breakfast people but I had a craving for pancakes, french toast or waffles...I wasn't being picky! Just something that I didn't have to make to be honest. We looked up a few places and believe me there are some GOOD places for breakfast on the island like:

*Boots and Kimos in Kailua, where the pancakes with macadamia nut syrup are to die for! (haven't tried them yet, but have been told by countless people)
http://www.yelp.com/biz/boots-and-kimos-homestyle-kitchen-kailua

*Cinnamons in Kailua, Red Velvet Pancakes anyone?
http://www.cinnamonsrestaurant.com/

*Mac 24/7 for pancakes the size of manhole covers. This place was featured on Man V Food...one of my favorite shows!
http://www.mac247waikiki.com/

All of these places sounded perfect..other than we would have to drive to get to them. I said to S wouldn't it be fun to go with some friends, because well everything is better with friends! So I texted JBake and after some back and forth we settled on.......Brunch at the O CLUB! Hahaa! Yes I know that wasn't on our list but hey it is right down the road and convenient and well good!

We get there and have an 10-15 minute wait, guess that was "island time" estimation. We waited an hour! We sit down and well I think they were just overwhelmed with people coming for VDay or they were understaffed because service was horrible. We finally tracked down a waiter, got our coffee, orange juice and Champagne and dug into the food. It was actually really good. The kids enjoyed it and were very well behaved. I think we put them in a sugar coma with the whip cream/syrup combo on the waffles. We spent a total of about 90 minutes at Brunch which was actually more like lunch because we didn't sit down till noon. We closed the place down.

After we stuffed ourselves silly we went outside to take a few pictures. We still had no picture of the 4 of us together in Hawaii! Blasphemy! JBake helped us out and snapped a few pictures for us just to prove that we are actually here. We headed back inside to go out to the car and only the girls made it outside. Somewhere walking through the club the boys got sidetracked. We found them about 30 minutes later in the bar looking at old photos and drinking a bottle of champagne they found out of coffee cups. Hey we paid for it, it had to be left over from Brunch! We said our good byes and headed back to the room. It was a great outing with friends, but wait what to do with the rest of the day?

easy peasy lemon squeezy...BEACH!! We got back to the room and started to change and pack up the necessities of going to the beach, when my phone rings and it is our lovely friends wondering if we wanted to go to the beach! Why yes of course since that is where we are headed anyhow! We met down at the base beach and sat back, watched the kids play, drank lava flows and Bloody Mary's and chatted the afternoon away. Then the kids realized it was dinner time and wanted to eat. I did have dinner bubbling away on the crock pot in the room, but it was just too easy to say sure lets go eat at the beach shack place right there. So we walked over and eat a decent meal. Took the kiddies home, put them to bed and we followed quickly behind them.

It was a PERFECT day with family and great friends. It made up for the horrible day on Friday which I have now put behind me. I am blessed to be here. I will wait until the time is right to get the house that is meant to be ours. My kids are healthy and happy, I am in love with the perfect man, and I am rocking a decent tan :) Life is good. This is just a little hiccup in the grand scheme of things.
DISCLAIMER: this in no way means that I won't complain about the house issue in the future...just not today :)

I want to go HOME!

So yeah I am going to vent, since my husband is on a mission and can't answer his phone, my mom is not answering hers and no one else will pick up I am turning to the blog world to VENT!

I want to go home. I mean my home, my things, my place to call my own. Not my parents house or really the house in Charleston. I just want to go to someplace that is mine. I thought, stupidly, that this move wouldn't be so bad. I could handle living in a hotel for 2 months with 2 kids. Well it hasn't been terrible. The kids have adjusted and call the hotel home. But today I go to the housing office and they tell me that the houses we were slated for won't open until April/May and that sorry you are probably too far back on the list to get one now. What happened is the people that were in 6 month leases will be in front of you. So I say "well what does that mean for a move date?" Maybe in June or July when the other renovated houses open up. WHAT THE F#*K! Where the hell am I supposed to live until then?

The base hotel we are in will only let us stay till the end of March...and even that is on a space available basis. We thought we had a reservation in April but they said that isn't because it is all Space A because we exceed what they have for PCS moves. HOLY SHIT...so where do we go after March? I have no idea. A hotel I guess where we pay 200 a night out of our own pocket to live.

Get a rental house you say. Oh we have thought of that. We only brought one car because we were told 2 months for a house. S can ride his bike from anywhere on base to the squadron. No need for 2 cars. Plus now we don't have a car payment, gas, insurance of maintenance to budget for. If we move off base he would have to have his own mode of transportation. He alerted at 4:45 this morning. You think I would be getting up with 2 kids to take him 20 minutes to the base and then drive back. He couldn't just take the car because well I have 2 kids to get to school. Not to mention that if we move off base we would have to switch schools again and we just got them settled in their new schools. So that isn't going to happen.

So yeah I am pissed and have no one to talk to, so I came on here and vented. I really don't feel any better and I still want to go home. Oh and on top of that the poor dog is with my parents and losing weight because she is depressed and needs to come out here because we feel bad taking advantage of my parents generosity in keeping her. They signed up for 2 months of dog sitting, not 6.

So if anyone has any great ideas on what we should do, let me know. That doesn't involve moving off base and paying out the ying yang for rent, buying a car and having payments, insurance, gas and maintenance to worry about, making the kids switch school again, I am open to them all. Maybe I can pitch a tent on the beach or on the side of the road like the other homeless people do.

Bottom Line: I WANT TO GO HOME.

back from "Vacation"...

So we have spent the last 10 days in 2 different hotels. We first stayed at the Embassy Suites in downtown Waikiki...fun you say? Well it was for the most part. The bad part is having to drive (well to be honest S had to drive) Big A and little A all the way to school which is 30 minutes away in traffic. So it was early mornings, but that was made better by the awesome Embassy breakfast buffet! Big A was in heaven getting to have eggs and fruit every morning. The kids have also become fans of POG juice. (Papaya, Orange, Guava) We just call it pink juice and little A just drinks it up thinking it is princess juice.
Our week there went quickly. We walked around the mall, the main streets of Waikiki, went to the zoo and ate every meal out (YUCK)! It gets very tiresome deciding which place the kids will eat chicken fingers or mac and cheese at. They saw a vegetable and gobbled them down...I think they were a bit deprived of vitamins!

The second hotel we stayed at was the Turtle Bay Resort. I highly recommend it! It was beautiful and the people we super nice, the rooms was clean and big. Breakfast was tasty but expensive and dinner was good but we had to eat the same place both nights because it was the only place to get something for the kids to eat. Dessert was fantastic though!
We only spent 1 full day at the resort. We arrived Friday afternoon and played at the pool and watched the sunset. Saturday we got up had breakfast...mmmmm good, and then went to the beach. You get one hour of snorkeling included with your room. So S and big A set off to explore and see what they could find. A seemed to enjoy it and could actually do it. He now insists that we buy him his own "gear" so we can snorkel anywhere at anytime. I went out for a few minutes after the boys came back in. Lots of fish out and the water is pretty clear. The surf was rough so it was a little cloudier than I think it usually is.

Speaking of the surf....WOW...it wasn't even as big most winter storms make it. The waves were amazing to watch. The resort was hosting a paddle boarding world tour so there were guys out there giving the guests a preview of the event. They are so crazy! They basically surf of the waves while paddling to keep themselves going. INSANE!!!

Sunday we got up to a rainy morning but that didn't deter the boys from using their free hour of snorkeling. They headed out while little A and I sat under and umbrella on a lounge chair. They didn't last as long this morning but S said they saw a lot more fish, still no turtles but we will come back to find them!

So now we are happily back at TLF on base. (never thought I would say happily!) It really is nice to know that we don't have to pack everything up for a long while. That is the bad part too...we don't have to pack for a long while because it doesn't look like we will have a house for a while still. Hopefully the end of March or early April. Trying to no think about it to much. The kids are happily adapted to staying here and they are glad to have beds to themselves again. It is also nice to not have to play the where are we going to eat game...we are going to eat right here in the room!!!!

here are a few pictures of the Resort.