I'm baaaack!

Well, in case you've been wondering, yes, we made it to Honolulu and it is amazing and beautiful and we love it :) We are in the Army's Hale Koa on Waikiki and have hit the beach daily, it's amazing! We are still sort of half in vacation mode and half in work/new routine/find a house/buy a car mode. There are a lot of choices to make, especially about housing! On post or off, we just don't know what to do. In the meantime, the kids and I go to the beach as often as possible and yesterday I took my camera (the beach is not the safest place for a DSLR, ha!)

For my Colorado peeps who are experiencing snow today, I apologize in advance :-/

 A crab! It's so cute how they pop their little eyes up and swim sideways.

 We caught the lunar eclipse. Pretty cool.

So, we did find a car, a minivan, which we, like many hip young marrieds swore we'd never own, haha! But, they sure are practical for an area like we're in now. Easy in and out for the kids and easy for me to drive and park in crowded Honolulu. We pick it up tomorrow.

We were offered housing on Fort Shafter. It shares wall on both sides and has no sidewalks and no yard (like zero yard--there's a raised lanai in back and then a drop off into a jungly hill.) To play outside, the kids would be playing in the driveway, which is shared with three more houses, so them playing out there doesn't feel safe to me at all. But, the house is new and way bigger than they come here off post. And there's plenty of kids to play with. And we'd get to keep the money we've been saving for first month's rent and security deposit (which in Hawaii, is a LOT of money!) And Casey wouldn't have a grueling commute, which is rare here. Agh, but no yard! And shared walls, after what we had in Denver, that would be an adjustment. Zero privacy, really. We seriously do not know what to do. Do you share walls with neighbors?? If so, how do you make the most of it?? 

ALSO, eating is becoming a frustration. We have two mini fridges in our adjoining rooms. No meals are complimentary. Two of us don't eat gluten. I'm thinking about getting a blender (mine broke right before we moved anyway) so I can at least make a smoothie for breakfast (seriously, for all five of us to go to the breakfast buffet is over $40 per day. And that's just breakfast. We get per diem for food, but still...) There are a bazillion Asian food places at the mall food court, but most of the sauces contain gluten at those types of places. We had that today and now Natalie's stomach hurts. I need to go make a grocery list. Your thoughts and ideas would be appreciated, as we have at least three more weeks here in the hotel :)