This is Eric now. After a while scouting for mopeds in the area, I found this baby in Honolulu and bought from a guy who was moving back to the mainland in a few weeks. It goes almost 40 mph and can probably get up to 60 on a good hill. This is mainly for me driving to work and back which is only about a 5 minute drive, so it will save quite a bit of gas since it gets between 80-100 miles per gallon. It will also be perfect for going to northern beaches which are closer and I don't have to drive on the freeway to get there. It has a push button start but also a kick start in case I feel like a cool biker guy sometimes. The second picture is of me getting ready to roll out of the parking lot, peeling out because it has so much torque (49cc engine).

On Saturday we headed out on a search for furniture. We went by Walmart and Kmart just to see what they have and then continued on to the Navy Exchange at Pearl Harbor. As we were walking in, we spotted this beautiful brown leather sectional for $1000. We couldn't pass it up and had it delivered this morning. Eric has already found his favorite spot to watch The O'Reilly Factor.

In case I didn't say it before, the Navy Exchange at Pearl Harbor is huge. By far one of the largest I've seen. I thought the one in Japan that I went to was large, but it doesn't even compare to this exchange. I could easily spend all day there. After buying this couch, we headed to Costco for our first big grocery trip. That was fun.

On Sunday, we finally went to the beach. Sort of. We were originally on a trip to look for Mopeds for Eric, and when we realized all of the stores were closed, we ended up at the Hale Koa. For those of you that don't know, the Hale Koa is an all military hotel on Waikiki. It's right next door to the Hilton Hawaiian Village at the far west end of Waikiki, so it's a pretty secluded portion of the beach. The great thing about the Hale Koa is that any DoD personnel can use their facilities, even if they're not staying in the hotel. I showed Eric around the property and got to see the additions they've made since I was there last and then we headed to the pool. We spent about an hour there, we didn't want to get burnt on our first trip to the beach, and then headed home. So we didn't really spend any time on the beach, but it sure felt good to be out in the sun at the pool. Sorry, we don't have any pictures, we completely forgot to bring the camera until we got there. We're hoping to get to the beach again this weekend, so we should have some pictures soon.

Pictures!!

We finally have pictures of our house. I promise it looks smaller in the pictures than it really is. No, there are no pictures of my belly as I'm not showing yet. So here's the front of the house.

This is the view from our front door. Doesn't look like much, but helicopters take off from that vicinity all day. That's kind of fun to watch, but gets really annoying at night when you're trying to sleep. It's not like a commercial airport that shuts down at night.

This is the view to the west looking at the mountain range you have to cross to get to the private army resort on the west coast. We're actually surrounded by mountains, so it's kind of like being back in the Willamette Valley.

For some reason, whenever people take pictures of me I'm eating something. Eric is no different, he thought it would be funny to take a picture of me being lazy on the couch watching TV and eating chips and salsa. Oh well, at least I have an excuse now. So this is our living room with loaner furniture and our brand new TV on the floor. It's actually quite large and behind the built-in bookcase behind me is the dining room which is larger than it looks as well.

This is another view of the living room, this time from the dining room. In the picture above, you can see the sliding door that leads to the back lanai.

What follows are a few pictures of the back lanai which we're thinking about making into a guest room. It's even larger than the second bedroom, which will be the guest room until the baby gets here. There is also a front lanai, but it's not as big and you can't see out of it because of the type of screen they used.

This is the view of the backyard from the back lanai. It's pretty large and unlike most bases, we don't have to mow it ourselves. There's an avocado tree back there and across the parking lot is a mango tree. There's no fruit right now, but it's supposed to be really good when there is.

This is the second bedroom, pretty basic, just a bedroom. It does have a walk-in closet which is more than I can say for the master bedroom.

Here's our teeny-tiny bathroom, yes, only one. But who spends all day in the bathroom anyway?

The next few pictures are of our messy bedroom since somebody doesn't like to pick up his things.

The next two pictures are the kitchen. They don't do it justice. It's not huge, but it's much larger than the pictures show and it's larger than any kitchen I've had in a rental before.

This is the view from the kitchen into the walk-in pantry. The pantry is about the size of all of my previous kitchens. Through the door in the center of the picture is the laundry room.

That's our house. It's only a two bedroom, but it has storage everywhere. There are two closets in the hallway between the two bedrooms, three built in bookcases, a large storage area where the water heater is, and a shed outside.

Well, we've been here a week and so far we've found a place to live (we move in tomorrow) and have bought a new TV and camera/camcorder. We're still looking for furniture, but we have loaners from the base for now so we at least have something to sleep and sit on.

We're excited to move into our own house as this will be the first time we've lived together in almost a year. It's only a two bedroom, but the living areas are large and the built-in lanai's make it seem a lot bigger than a two bedroom. We'll take pictures as soon as we move in so you can all see what a base house looks like here in Hawaii. I'm just glad that the kitchen is larger than a closet, which is what I've been dealing with for the last two years, and that the house has a washer and dryer.

We aren't getting cable set up in our house until Thursday, so it's going to be a long week without anything to do. Maybe we'll go bowling a lot. Or go to the beach.


Normally, you'd think: "You're in Hawaii, go to the beach." But it's been raining the entire time we've been here so being outside isn't that appealing. It's supposed to be done raining for a while as we got the same storm that Oregon got, but we're not so sure about that. The good news is that even though it's raining, it's still warm.


Eric had to work this morning, which he wasn't happy about, but he's "volunteering" at a charity motorcycle ride for military families so at least it's a good cause. He's pretty anxious to get a moped, so we'll probably have to go shopping for that next. Eventually he'll have a breakdown from all of the money we're spending, but he's okay for now. I'm still working for three more months, so that's easing the blow a little.

Ok, I promise the next post will have pictures of our house.