ALOHA! We have arrived!

Well as most of you know we successfully arrived on the beautiful island of Oahu. Saying good-bye is never easy...even when it is for a move we wanted. Saying good-bye in Charleston to our family and friends was hard, saying good-bye to our parents was quick, like pulling off a band-aid. It wasn't planned that way.

We boarded the plane, after standing in the mile long security check point. The kids and I got to go through the regular and scanner and S being so super scary and all was told to go through the full body scanner. I watched from the other side and I saw nothing on the screen. It just says pass or fail, so not really sure what the big concern of privacy is. Once happily in our first class seats (yeah we did that and so worth it) the drinks started coming. Mimosa for take off and then I think a total of 5 Mai Tais for the duration of the flight. The kids were actually quite pleasant on the flight with all the free movies and games to play on the tv's.

We landed a bit early under some cloud cover to be welcomed by the smell and warmth of Hawaii. If you have never "smelled" Hawaii it is kind of hard to describe. It is a tropical, floral, warm, beachy sandy smell. Every time we are outside little A tells us she likes the smell. Maybe she is a beach girl :)
As we grabbed all 8 plus 2 carseats, of checked baggage our wonderful friends started to show up. We had arrived about 20 minutes early so everyone got there at different times. I had always said it wouldn't feel real until I saw JBake there waiting for us and the first person I saw....you guessed it. It was real we were here! We also met our new squadron commander and his family, our friends from pilot training who I hadn't seen in the past 5 years and our other friends from Charleston who now call Hickam home. It was so great to be welcomed by familiar faces!

After some puzzle work to get all the before mentioned luggage in the car or rather cars, plus 2 adults and 2 kids in car seats we were off to....pick up our car!!! Yeah it had arrived the day before and ready for us to get it. I was so glad to have our own vehicle back!

We came straight to the base and made it with some time to spare to the housing office. We are hoping to get a house by April, but no promises were made. We will take what we can get and I think I may prefer the older homes. They have a bit more character than the new. But the new are nice and well NEW!

Our first day on base consisted of S getting up and putting his flight suit on...yes he was already in his flight suit. He headed out to some appts while the kiddos and I stayed in the room and watched a movie. When he got back we ran a few more errands mainly finding out how we get the car its "rainbow" plates, so that we don't stick out like a sore thumb! In the two days of driving here I have only seen one, just one other out of state plate. In case you are curious it was a Texas plate.
We also went down to Waikiki to eat lunch at Moose McGillicuddy's. The vibe is different when there isn't a bunch of drunk crazy people hanging around but still the food was alright.
We had dinner at a great place on the harbor called Schooners...it was great!

No pictures yet, the weather has been kinda cloudy and drizzly, and well nothing exciting has really happened yet. Not sure you (the blogger world) want to see pictures of the kids and I waiting in the car while S runs in to various uninteresting visually buildings. Sorry this was so long. Just wanted to catch up on everything. Hopefully something exciting will happen this weekend!

XO