Hawaii!!!!!!!

Well, we have finally arrived to our new temporary home, HAWAII!!!!!! I've never been here so this is a real treat for me! It is so beautiful! We arrived in Oahu on the 19th and were there until the 22nd and then we headed over to the Big Island were we will be staying. We were able to see the beach, the temple, Pearl Harbor, and some other things while in Oahu, so scroll down and I'll explain the pics:)
This was at Pearl Harbor, there was a cute little girl who came prepared to honor the fallen soldiers with some beautiful fresh flowers. I had to take a picture because it was such a beautiful sight!

The memorial wall with all the names of the fallen soldiers.

The oil that still rises to the surface from the sunken ship. Amazing.

Part of the ship that is still under water.

This was a submarine that was made a year after Pearl Harbor, she was know for her mass destruction.

This pic was at the Polynesian Culteral Center. I ended up with this beautiful flower headband, because we happen to be walking by this shop around closing time, they were getting rid of their things from that day, so she just gave me the headband! The lady told me that when the floweres die, the grass headband will stay good for a really long time, like years, and that I would just gather new flowers and put them in the headband again:)

This is a pic of my view out our apartment.........well our temporary apartment, we are now in a different one, which I will post more pics of. This is the spot were I saw a guy climb some of these coconut trees and get the coconuts to sell at the farmers market in town. (Big Island)

This pic was on the north shore of Oahu, before we got to the Big Island. I love the sandy beaches! So beautiful!

Kade is just having a ball! He was trying to swim with the waves, so they would carry him!

What a silly boy! So cute out there having so much fun!

Just a scenic shot that I liked:)

Oh boy, I debated on putting a picture of me in my swimsuit on here, but then I thought, "ah, what the heck! Its Hawaii!"

I told Kade to jump off the rock to so I could snap a funny pic of him:) and I think it turned out pretty funny:)

Another Scenic one.

I thought this view was so pretty out the window of the visitors center.

I LOVE the flowers here! There are so many and they are all different!

Out front at the temple.

This tree was so huge and so amazing, and had so many vines! Very cool!

A view of the Ocean and the flowers.

My mom and dad stood here back in 1968 when my dad was on his R n R from Vietnam. He got to go to Hawaii, for one week and meet my mom there after 6 months of being in Vietnam. Then he had to go back to Vietnam for another 6 months. They are coming out to visit Kade and I and we are going to go to the temple again, only this time, they are excited because they won't have to part again, they will get to relax and enjoy! It will be so awesome!

Another angle of the temple. The temple was so amazing, seriously my favorite part of our whole trip! Such a beautiful place! If you go to the Hawaii temple, make sure you walk around the back of the temple and see the landscaping, the trees and flowers!

House: Befores and Afters

OK, so this post is way overdue!........But our computer has been giving us fits and every attempt I made at this post was unsucessful! So finally here it is! This is our house, we made lots of changes to it before we moved in. And there's still lots that we want to do with the house, but all in due time:)

We did so much work in such a short amount of time (just over 30 days) that it was kinda stressful but its so worth it now! We love it! This top pic is obviously the before. We replaced flooring, textured, painted, stained, painted cupboards, knocked out a wall, replaced lights.......and did I say paint................Oh, did I mention paint? hehe! It seemed as if the painting would never end!

Living room before

Living room after

Kitchen/Dining before

Kitchen/Dining After

Happy Birthday Kade!

Today it was Kades birthday! And we had a great day! We just hung out all day and did things that Kade wanted to do. I made him one of his favorite breakfasts, poached eggs. I also made him an oatmeal cake, again, his favorite, and then we went fishing. I even caught a fish. We were catching them right and left! It was a fun day! Happy Happy Birthday Kade! I love you!
It was such a nice day today, but still really cold. But at least the sun was shining!

We caught about 8 fish today, in about an hour and a half! It was fun!

I think the fish are ready for spring so they have lots of yummy bugs to eat!

Hawaii!!!!!

So as you all know, Kade now works for APX which is the new VIVINT and we move during the summer months so he can work. Last year we went to Arkansas, and this year we found out that we get to go to Hawaii!!!! I'm am so stoked! I can't believe that I get to live in Hawaii for 4 months! So our office had a party to celebrate going to Hawaii, and this is what took place! :) It was so much fun to watch everyone do the limbo! Mel and Hilary definately stole the show! Those girls can bend! Lots of yummy food and lots of fun! Yipee!!!! And I won the grand prize which was a mens blue Hawaiian shirt! Yeah! Kade actually had cocconuts that he wore over his shirt but they ended up coming off during the night:)

Go Mel!

Go Hilary!

Ooops, Kade's to big, he didn't make it, and he's very upset as you can see!

Updates with the Church's

I think its been over a month since I've posted, but life has been so crazy for us! We have been moving into a house but the house needed some major updates before we could move in so we were working on the updates for quite a while, over a month straight! I will definately have to post some before and after pics! But the pic above is the living room/dining area, and of course still not finished:) And the white stuff that you can see stuck to the door....ya that is snow! This is in the church parking lot, they had to start piling the snow up in the middle because there was no where else to put it!

And this was one of the many snow piles around town that are gigantic! Yes there is a tree behind the snow pile!

This was a guys truck and trailer that had been burried with the snow! Crazy!

This is our new house! And thats our Christmas tree outside. Kade thougt he would make it look like it was growing out of the ground to get out of taking it to the dump:)

We had a wonderful Christmas as always, and we got a little crazy! My mom gave all the girls these cute scarves and one thing led to another............and we decided that we looked like some of the ten virgins! :) And then we decided to throw my dad in there to spice things up a bit.....Hmmm:) LOL

We had to get a pic by the ten virgin pics just to show how real we looked!

And there is Kade plowing snow, plowing snow, and plowing snow! Literally he did plow snow all day that day! It just kept coming!

We had been working on the house so much and thought there was no way that we would be in by Christmas but a miracle happend and we decorated our tree Christmas EVE! And that was our first night in our new home! I have to thank everyone who helped us! There is no way we could have done it without our families and friends! We feel so loved by eveyone! THANKYOU! We LOVE you!

Thanksgiving Weekend!

Kade and I had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend, fun filled with lots of family involved! I hope all of you did as well! We went and cut ourselves a cute, short, fat Christmas tree! I love it! It has so much personality! And I can't wait to decorate it! What a great time of year, I love Christmas and all the holidays! And I love being with family!

This is the bottom of our cute, fat, short tree! :)

Camie made this teeny tiny snowman and gave him a spike for hair. It was awesome.

This was one of the tree being cut, we had to shake the snow off. Fun times!

Church News:)

So here's the latest news with the Church's. Its been a while since I've posted, and a lot of these pictures are even from a few weeks ago:) but, life gets busy as we all know:) So the above pic is of Kade and I on our way home from Arkansas, when we went up over the mountain, to go down into Fairview! It was definately a beautiful view that I will never take for granted! We love Love LOVE our mountains!!!!! The fall colors were a wonderful welcome home, thats for sure! And we decided we'd better sport the good ol Arkansas Razorbacks shirts!
Our family happen to have our sheduled turn at the Cook family cabin so we were able to go and stay a week up there, and that was so much fun! We went for a fun hike to see the Elk up on the side hill:) As we were walking back to the truck from our hike, I told Kade to pose for the camera......so this is what I got.

The girls and I were able to go to the gem fair, which is always a hit! The gem fair comes 3 times a year so we all try to get together and go:) Lots of fun jewelry and fun times with the gals!

More pics of, up at the cabin. We had lots of yummy breakfasts! MM MM!

So my mom told us to each write our name on our cup so we wouldn't be going through a million cups. My dad wrote"vip cup, no exceptions" on his and I did'nt think that was very true so I decided to one up him:)

This was a beautiful view of the cabin from on our hike.

I love the fall colors! They are my favorite.

Kade was able to take a little Moab trip with a bunch of buddies from APX and...........yes they had lots of fun! When there is motorized vehicles and dirt involved, they are bound to have some fun!