Already a wonderful visit!

Here we are on the second full day and it has already been a wonderful visit. Lauren and Kris arrived on Thursday afternoon and even after their long flight they had a lot of energy. It was short lived though. They both were dragging after dinner. They had woken up at 4 am to leave their house to make it to the airport on time. It had been a long day for them. They are slowly acclimating to the time change. We took Thursday night easy. We just walked to the beach and watched the giant waves rolling in the dark. We hit the sack shortly after the walk.

Friday morning started with Alex, a childhood friend of Kris', coming over and spending the day with us. Alex is on his way to Guam. He is a Navy pilot and we were all excited to see him. He went to high school with Lauren and I so we knew him as well. We ended up going to the local botanical gardens and walking around for a couple hours. It was really beautiful and a great morning to be out and about. After lunch, Kris and Alex went surfing while Lauren and I did grocery shopping for the week. Kris seemed to enjoy surfing, but he doesn't think he'll go again. The waves are getting a little too rough this time of year for beginners. I am not even thinking about tackling them. I like to watch though.

We came back home relaxed for a while and I had to get ready to go to the Friday performance of South Pacific. Unfortunately I did not get to go to Waikiki with them. Alex took them to a restaurant downtown and showed them around a little. I was very thankful he was able to take them around since I wasn't going to be able to spend the evening with them. They had a great time at Duke's, a casual beach-side hang-out.

Alex stayed the night and just left this morning. L&K and I are planning on some exploring today. I want them to see more of the island so I have to get off this computer and go. Just wanted to make a quick entry. I will post pictures next time.

Hope you are all well!

Big Week

It is finally the big week. I have been looking forward to this week for quite some time. Lauren and Kris are coming and with their visit, Daniel returns. I can't believe it is so close now. I am so excited to show them the island and just to see family.

I have been missing family a lot lately especially with everyone starting to talk about the holidays. It will be my first Christmas away from my parent's and my sisters. I am excited yet sad at the same time. Daniel and I get to start our own family traditions and share the time together yet, it will be bittersweet with him leaving so quickly after Christmas for another deployment. Thankfully, I have my parent's visit in late January to keep my spirits up. I miss them a lot. Unfortunately, my sister Sarah doesn't have a visit scheduled yet and I am missing out on seeing her go through her first year of college. It is such a big time for her and I am so proud of all she is doing. I love you all!

Okay, enough of the missing people stuff. I am starting to get teary. Thankfully, I have good friends here on the island already that can relate to my feelings. Amaya and I have decided to make a point to be there for each other during the rough times. I really appreciate her friendship. Another friend Jen and I can spend a good amount of time together since neither of us works, and we have several things in common. I met Jen during my Key Volunteer training and we have been getting to know each other since. She is already the type of friend to just call up and have come over for a few hours just to chat or doing something crafty with.

We both like cross-stitching and tomorrow we are going to go shopping for Christmas crafts. I am looking forward to it. I realized that Daniel and I have nothing festive for the holidays and I need to get cracking to make it a special time for us. Besides I love making Christmas ornaments and thinking of decorations. I have since I was young. One of my favorite things to do around Christmas was to look through the yearly Spirit of Christmas craft books my mom would get for the holidays and pick cross-stich patterns out that I wanted to finish for Christmas. Sometimes they would get done, sometimes not, but at least I got into the crafty spirit. :) I am excited about tomorrow.

Tonight was my Women's Bible Study. I am just loving this Beth Moore study called, The Patriarchs. Women, if you ever have the opportunity to do one of her studies please do it. They are really great. I just love the way Jesus and His coming is so evident even in the lives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The covenant made with them was such a beautiful and amazing thing. I also find that her 5 days a week structure keeps me on the ball and looking forward to the weekly time with the ladies. I am very blessed by it.

Well, I am going to leave you with a picture of Meli. She is just as sweet as ever and doing a great job of keeping me company. She is doing her job so well that I have to close part of the house with her in it at night so I can get some sleep. She loves to nestle in my neck and sleep, of course for only 20 minutes at a time, if that. Then she shifts and wakes me up. I decided I didn't want to get in the habit of waking up with kitten every 20 minutes, no matter how cute she is, and I know Daniel wouldn't like that either. This is her second favorite place to sleep (after my neck) between the cushions of our soft love seat. She just stretches out like she owns the place. I love it!

Goodnight All!

Week with No Rehearsals

One would think that because I didn't have rehearsal this week I would have updated on the blog sooner. Sorry for my laziness. I have quite a few things this week I am excited to share.

First of all, Daniel is doing well. Luckily, Thursday evening of his birthday they were having a little party for the officers and Staff NCOs. Apparently they were celebrating a certain part of training that ended. I was glad he was able to relax for some part of his day. He seemed to be thankful for not having to work that evening.
He is ready to be home as well. We are both counting down the days and looking forward to the two months we have together before he is off again. His cellphone coverage remains to be bad so we communicate mostly through email. He did say when he was able to check his voicemails that he was happy to hear all the loving birthday messages from family. So thank you for calling him on that day even though you didn't get to chat with him. It made the day special.

After the weekend of shows, I rested up and I decided that I had to tackle the yard. Our lawn had grown quite long since Daniel left and I want it to look nice for Lolly and Kris's visit as well as keep the street looking nice. So this meant that I had to mow for the first time in my life. Military bases are a wonderful thing. There is a place called self-help on base that you can go and borrow all kinds of household up-keep items. They have mowers, drills, paint pans, weed-wackers, well just about everything you could need to keep the base housing look good. The best part about it is borrowing means completely free!

So I made my way over on Tuesday to borrow a mower. I had asked several questions of my Dad, the one who never let me mow; he enjoyed it too much. I felt pretty confident about the mowing job. I started and got the hang of it quickly. We have a couple difficult slopes on our side yard so I had to tug and push quite a bit, resulting in sore arm muscles the next day, but the lawn was mowed!

I realized around noon that I needed to edge the sides as well because we had weeds that were starting to crawl over the sidewalk and driveway. They looked quite bad. So I returned the mower that day and decided to weed-wack the next day. I am a weakling when it comes to doing work in the hot sun. I get bad headaches so I thought it was best to tackle the rest of the yard work the next day. I was already getting a headache by that point.

Tuesday evening I had Amaya over for dinner. We decided that we do not cook good food when our husbands are gone. (I have been eating salads and sandwiches due to my laziness in the evenings.) We are going to trade off some nights in the week to fix food at each others house so we can try new recipes and we are at least preparing for two. Tuesday night we had breakfast for dinner and I was able to use our waffle iron for the first time. Blueberry waffles...mmm.

Wednesday I wrapped up the yard work with weed-wacking and pruning the crazy ti bush in the front yard that was trying to hide our front door. In the afternoon I had AWANA. I was glad to be back with the kids. I had missed the week before due to rehearsals. I love hearing their progress and encouraging them in their memorization. After AWANA I went home ate dinner(leftovers) and went to see Wallace and Gromit, the movie, with some friends from the musical. It was a cute film. It had to have taken countless hours; it is all claymation.

Thursday started with a nice visit with Justin, Diane and Hailey stopping by the house for a little over an hour. It was great to be able to chat with them and hear about their stay in Hawaii. We all enjoyed playing with Meli and we made sure to get a picture of us before they left.

Thursday evening I went over to Amaya's for dinner. We made Thai food. We have a great picture of us making it in her kitchen. We enjoyed ourselves and I learned a new recipe.

I had a Key Volunteer meeting after dinner with Amaya. I was glad to be able to go to it because originally I was supposed to have rehearsal that evening but our director canceled it due to the excellent opening weekend. The meeting was great because I was able to meet a new wife that Amaya knows. Her husband is in 1/3 with Daniel. If that made any sense, basically we are going to be KVs together and she is a fun person to spend time with.

Friday morning Amaya, Jo ( the woman I had met at KVs) and I went shopping in Honolulu for Marine Corps Birthday Ball gowns. I am still searching for the right dress. I tried on about 50 dresses. It was exhausting but very fun. We went to several sweet boutiques and everything was ridiculously expensive. I am used to shopping for formal wear and getting great discounts. My Momma and I always found deals in Maryland for dance wear and all my formal recitals. I just have to keep looking. Despite the fact that I am a bargain hunter and we exhausted our time that day looking for a dress for me, we had a wonderful time! It is always great spending time with Amaya and getting to know Jo better was so much fun. Of course it was a beautiful day and that made it even nicer shopping.

Last night I returned to the musical life. Apparently there were two reviews that came out last week. One of them was completely negative except for a few comments about the singing and one was very pleasing. Thankfully I didn't read the negative article until after the musical. I had several people come up to me afterward in the lobby telling me the article was wrong, so I had to go and read it. Indeed it was negative about every person. The reviewer bashed my acting, he bashed the dance choreography, the energy of the show, and several voice of the leads. He must have been having a crummy day. The performance he came to was our best and he just may have fallen asleep or something. We have a great show going! The other review, like I said, had only positive things to say. He said we all were blessed with above-average singing capablilities, the acting was believable and the entire show was entertaining. It was funny to read such completely opposite reviews. Now we just have to prove the negative guy wrong in every show!

Here is a quick picture from last night's show. I am wearing my favorite costume. We have so much fun backstage! This is Tina and Lydia. They are ridiculously helpful backstage. I have one break, a matter of three scenes, where I have to change costumes, dry my incredibly wet hair, try to make it look decent, and get back on stage in party attire. It is a rush. Usually they both have hair dryers on my head while I am dressing. It is crazy! They are both dolls.

Here I am on Saturday morning looking forward to finishing the weekend and welcoming my sister and Kris on Thursday. I can't believe it is almost time for their visit. That means it is almost time for Daniel to be back. I am so excited!

Thanks for reading this whole thing if you did...

Love Ya'll!

Opening Weekend

Well, this weekend has been very eventful. I am thankful it is over. Now that we have started the musical and gotten some of the bugs out with the sound the run should go smoothly.

I was delighted to have Amaya and her friend come on Friday evening to the musical. I have a wonderful picture she took that night. Unfortunately she wasn't feeling so good that evening. They had spent most of the day in the sun, but the picture still came out wonderful.
I am still in my nurse costume that I wear as the end of the musical, and several dear people gave me leis, including Amaya. They smell so amazing. You never want to take them off.

As I alluded to, we had problems with the microphones the first two performances. It was never anything terrible just a few scratches and light pops. Today for the matinee it was perfect. The audience was receptive to everything, the humor and the tears. At one point in the musical when the audience just finds out a character dies, there were audible sighs and gasps. I love it when people really get into the show they are watching. I always do, so it is nice to put on a show good enough to get lost in.

My favorite thing about the weekend was my husband's way of saying "break a leg". When I got into the dressing room for the opening night, these were waiting for me. I was so happy I started crying in front of the girls in the dressing room. Of course it was a big girly time. There were plenty of AWWWWs and "that is soo sweet". So I called him up right then and had all the girls yell Mahalo on the phone. The card said "break a leg" to the entire cast. Daniel has a nice voicemail waiting for him. :) Thank you husband!

A highlight of today was seeing Diane B.(no last names here...) at the show. (For all my MD fam and friends, Diane is Daniels cousin.) She came with a friend that lives on the island, and she is only staying for a week. I was so happy and flattered that she decided to come to the show. It was a joy to chat with her for a while after the show. I feel so stupid for not getting a picture. I hope she calls me up this week to just say hello or meet up sometime. I would love it!

Well, I am going to read a little then go to bed. It has been a long day. I went to the early service at church today. I am so happy I did. The pastor was on fire today. Every word he spoke was so full of truth and love. I was very encouraged by the message and the entire worship time. I am truly blessed in this church...

Much Love!

Opening Night

It has been over a week since I last wrote. A lot has happened since then.

Daniel has called several times. The place he is now has good cell phone coverage and he is basically delivering supplies for guys in training so he has a few breaks to give me a quick call. It is nice to be able to chat with him even briefly. It feels more normal. He is healthy, busy, and looking forward to coming home. I like to hear that he is all three of those things because it will make the time pass quickly. I know I am beyond ready for him to come home.

This last week has been filled with rehearsal every night. I usually leave the house at 4:45 to get to the theatre on time for notes, make-up, costume organization and all the other prep stuff. I like to be early so that things aren't rushed come time for the show to start. Any little thing can get me worked up and my butterflies rumbling in my tummy. Of course those happen anyways, but when they happen an hour before curtain is up I have a hard time calming down.

This week has been a beautiful week, We have only had passing storms and I was able to make it to the beach one morning. I walked all of 4 minutes up our street to this...

This is the beach on base. I hung out at the rocky part because I didn't do much swimming. Further up the beach is where most people swim. It was about 9:30 when I took this picture and I just felt like reading in the morning sun. It was an amazingly clear day and just windy enough to cover everything I had in sand. I was glad I walked to the beach because it would have taken me forever to get the sand off of me to get into the car. Daniel started off being very particular about the car getting sandy and now I am just as particular. It is annoying to have a sandy car...Even in Hawaii, but sometimes it can't be helped. It doesn't ruin the beach experience though.

So basically, all the people coming to visit in the next few months have amazing places to go even in walking distance of our home.

This is another beach I visited with my friend last week. It was voted best beach in the world in 2000. It is about 10 minutes from base and a beautiful drive at that. This beach is known for its sea turtles. We saw about 10 in the hour and a half I was there and we weren't even looking that hard. This is the perfect swimming beach. It is in the Kailua Bay so it is a little warmer, very few if any rocks, and of course, turtles.

Baby cat, Meli, is doing well. She is just as playful and sweet as any kitten could be. Very rarely do I have to get after her for jumping on things or trying to bite at the shaking curtains in the breeze. She seems to understand she shouldn't do it. I am glad she is picking up on the rules quickly... Here she is with her latest toy.

I went to the thrift store yesterday with the costume manager for the show and when we walked in I saw this toy. I have a small scratching pad for Meli but this looked like fun. I asked the clerk and she said $2. I was surprised and got it right away. The pet store sells similar toys and scratching post combos for $40. I brought it home and placed it on the floor and Meli played with it for an hour and a half straight. She didn't even come running when I refilled her food bowl. I am happy she likes it so much. It saved a bunch of money and she is getting her kitty exercise.

Oh I forgot...Her name is Meli. Meli means "honey" in Hawaiian. It is Meli pronounced like the word "belly". It seemed to fit her because she is a sweet cat, not too naughty, not too lazy. Perfect for a baby cat. I am glad I finally found a name I liked. I know she will still be called baby cat as well as Meli. She is too cute.

Like the title states, it is opening night tonight. Last night we had an audience of about 150 or so. It was the Community College's way of giving the students a break. They could come see it without charge since most of them weren't going to pay $26. The tickets are ridiculously expensive, but once you see the show you understand the money has gone into costumes, scenery and props.

This is a pic of where I get to park every night for rehearsal. I had to take this the other night as I was getting out of the car. No joke. I was standing right next to the Grand Prix when I took this!The pink and orange of the setting sun behind the Ko'olau mountains was breathtaking. I still can't believe I get to see these things everyday!

The show is great and I am partial, but the things people were saying about it last night were good. There were a lot of theatre students with very critical tastes. There was some negative feedback but mostly positive. It should be a great run.

My friend Amaya is coming tonight with a girlfriend, so it will be nice to think of someone in the crowd I know. I am still meeting so many new people all the time. It is funny; last night I met someone that looked so much like friend of mine in Maryland from my church. It was rather odd. I felt like I wanted to give him a hug , but I knew it wasn't him. Sometimes when I pass someone who looks familiar I have to remind myself that I live in Hawaii now. It is an unusual feeling.

Count down until my sister and brother-in-law's visit: 13 days (Can you believe it Lolly?!)

Everyone have a splendid weekend!