Hawaii!

Greetings and welcome to our blog!

Wedding
We got married at Waimanalo Beach March 12th at 6:40 AM. We woke up early at the Hawaii Prince Hotel in Waikiki. Well, I woke up early because I had to put on makeup and such; Jeff doesn't have to work quite so hard to look pretty. We had a delicious and nutritious mini breakfast of chow mein noodles and kona coffee. For some reason those chow mein noodles hung out in the hotel with us, right on the coffee table, for the rest of our stay; perhaps the housekeeping staff thought we might want to revisit them after a couple days.

The drive from the hotel took something like 45 minutes, and we had to get there early for pictures, so we left around 5:20. Neither of us had a clue how to get to the H1 going east, so Jeff just started going east and hoped we'd run into it eventually. Which we did. Kind of. After we stopped to ask a gas station attendant for directions, anyway. But Jeff was headed the right way, so we would have hit it eventually. We were just running slightly late.

When we got to the park, the gate was closed and the photographer (David) was waiting outside of it in his rusty white van, so our lateness didn't count anyway!

We posed for pictures for a while (it was very windy and it rained a little) and David called Captain Howie so he could do the ceremony. Captain Howie showed up a little while later wearing a flowered sarong, a loose turquoise collared shirt, some beaded leis, and he was barefooted except a Band-aid on his right toe. His head was completely shaved bald except a little tuft of wild grey hair in the back. He blew a conch shell and did the ceremony impromptu, and really, it was perfect. I'd recommend him and David to just about anyone!

We drove back and actually noticed the scenery this time - lots of mountains on a road that curved right along the shore, completely gorgeous! We were both starving at that point and had a delicious breakfast at the hotel.

House hunt
We started looking for houses on Saturday. It was a very long day! We saw a couple that we liked, but one really stood out. It was in Mililani; a ground floor condo with a neat patio in the back where you could hear a stream running and all these birds chirping (picture of backyard view at right). It needed very minimal improvements - 2 bedrooms and 2 baths, 2 parking spots, new carpet, neat window seat in the master bedroom, and a great, open kitchen (left). The kitchen sink was a little less than ideal, but other than that, we loved it! Regardless, we saw a friend of one of his friend's place in Waikele (which is closer, but the place felt more like an apartment and didn't have the view - it was right on a golf course and near the outlet mall!), a couple more high-rises, and a very nice two-story townhouse in a golf course development. We discussed the pros and cons of each and decided on the one in Mililani. Both of us are a bit wary of the infamous traffic on the island, but a place like this is worth braving a bit of a drive. He put an offer on it, and it was accepted!

Now
I am back in Columbia until early May and he's in San Diego until the end of March when he heads to Hawaii, which is definitely interesting as a married couple. Needless to say there was a ruckus at work when I came back sporting a wedding band (and I'll give Jeff lots of credit - he picked out a really nice one)! Now I just have to get everything together and taken care for the move, including coralling two cats for interesting vet visits.

--Jess