Sunday, April 24, 2011

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter yall! I hope everyone had a great holiday! I woke up to a wonderful Easter basket and then had to find 54 eggs full of candy hidden all around our house. And let me just say, Corey's pretty creative with a little less than 1,000 square feet! He had eggs in every nook and cranny of our living room, kitchen, foyer and stairs. All of which he did after getting back from a 6am trip to Walmart. Needless to say, I've got a pretty fun and thoughtful husband. 


But by far the best part of the basket were my bubble gun and bubble wand. About a month ago, I saw the commercials for the new Crayola colored bubbles that they make now and thought they were just about the best invention ever! I would have flipped over those as a kid, heck, I'm flipping over them now! And then on top of it, those colored bubbles come out of a cool new bubble gun that shoots out about a thousand bubbles in a minute! Kids these days, don't have to work for anything. Why in my day, we could only blow out one tiny bubble at a time through a little tiny wand, dip it and start all over again. Ha ha, but anyway. So Corey tried to find the colored bubbles, but apparently the Walmart across the street isn't cool enough to have them, so I got an awesome bubble gun with regular bubbles instead. Still totally awesome! So I went out in our back yard to play with them while Corey decided to water the lawn. Now, I'm not saying he is so malicious as to plan out what happened next, but if you know my husband, you wouldn't put it past him. I am still betting that it was his own stroke of genius on the spot though. You might be able to imagine where this is going. I had to go out into the yard to get the bubbles to hit the wind and not come floating back on me, putting me in perfect range of the garden hose. Correction...Corey with a garden hose in his hand :) It was fun though! Had flashbacks of running through the sprinklers on Mama and Daddy's driveway as a little girl...that is until I had to come back in my house in completely drenched clothes. We laughed and got the dog next door barking, to which his owner came out to quiet him. I can imagine he's thankful for such crazy neighbors!  The Hendrick household it nothing if not full of laughter! :)


I realize we haven't blogged lately. It's quite the process for us to transfer pictures from Corey's phone, to my email, to uploading them on the computer and then to Blogspot so I have to be extremely motivated to do it all and Corey has to be accessible and willing to send countless pictures one at a time. Well folks, today is that day.

We took another hike a few weekends ago on the Ka'ena Point Trail which takes you to the westernmost point of O'ahu. It was a lot of fun and intense for an out of shape girl like myself. We got to see some really wonderful things while we were there! 
This is before we started out. I had to show off my new Oakleys that Corey got me. My big bug sunglasses weren't working for hiking.




I loved all of the black lava rock. 
We decided we should have gotten married under this archway and made all of you hike to the ceremony. Or enlisted the help of our great friend Michael Salter and his huge, jacked up F150 to shuttle you there.




The trail was a railroad that ran from the west side of the island up to North Shore. These are the railroad ties left behind.

We made it to the end of the trail which is a protected wildlife area that is nesting grounds for Seabirds and you can often see whales from the point in season and Monk Seals, who are native to the Hawaiian islands, sunbathing on the rocks when they make their way to O'ahu. We didn't expect to see any because they aren't always around our island. They stick to the others mostly. They are also endangered and there are only about 1,200 left in the world. But, it was out lucky day!




Meet Rocky! Corey lovingly named him that :)
We spent about 45 minutes with this Monk Seal. We won't lie, at first we weren't sure if he was alive. He wasn't moving and didn't seem to be breathing, thankfully I was not traumatized because he was alive and well! We thought he might be stuck until the tide came in and got him past the rocks. We just hung out with him from about 5 feet away (we're going to forget that the sign up there says anything to the contrary) and talked with him and about him. After a while we think he picked up on it cause he started to sit up and look around at us, then he'd turn his head and stare right at me as I talked and waved to him. He was a sweetie! His tail was tagged with number 738 so we contemplated calling someone about him being stuck, but as we started heading back up to the trail, he started turning over and moving. We were able to watch him get himself off the rocks and head back out into the ocean. It was such a wonderful experience! He's out new best friend! 




A Seabird nesting


This was some sort of ceremonial thing on the rocks at the shore.
It was really neat because the waves were coming in from the right and the left to the point of the island.


We slept soundly that night. It took about 3 hours to hike there and back. Quite lengthy, but definitely worth it! 

 Corey's been doing some training courses this week and I'm getting ansy at home. I'm going to be checking to see if there's anything I can do on those countless DON applications I put in a few weeks ago, and I'm gonna go knocking on some doors with my resume this week. I enjoy being able to keep the house up and laundry clean all the time, but we won't make any friends unless we start working! Ha ha. I'll also be glad when Corey gets out of this holding period and he starts doing his job. I think that will make us feel a bit more normal here. 


We miss everyone and hope you're all well! Take care till next time!



Monday, April 4, 2011

A hiking we will go!

Yesterday, PEACH and I played tourist and did a Hawaiian hike! Now, if you're thinking we went all 127 Hours on ya'll, you'll be sadly disappointed. Although about halfway through I may have considered cutting off my little toe just to take my attention off the humidity of the jungle. I'm from Georgia, I should be accustomed to not being able to breath in the heat! Twenty five years of living in the South should have prepared me for just this occasion! But we hung in there! You know, for the wimpy mile and a half hike. We're novices, okay? Don't judge. Besides, it's more about the atmosphere right! 

So we drove out to Monoa Falls, which is actually in the direction of Honolulu. So I'm thinking, okay...we're driving towards these skyscrapers and we're gonna go hiking? But all of a sudden...you're in the jungle! I think that's pretty amazing. 

Now, this isn't a regular activity thing for us, so we're not really equipped with the proper gear, but we did the best with our every day sneakers and comfortable clothes. But, before we go again we're gonna be taking a nice little trip down to Sports Authority. But it's probably our own fault that we feel it necessary to spend money on all of the hiking accoutrements. I guess it slipped our minds that it had rained the day before and rain + dirt = mud. In case you didn't know. But, we managed to make it all the way up and back down without falling once! Quite the feat for me, if I do say so myself. 
By the way...this is what happens when we go to Sports Authority without a goal in mind.
 Anyway, we had a great time on the hike and took some pictures for your viewing pleasure.





Danger Will Robinson, Danger!

These makeshift stairs look way more intimidating from the bottom when you're about to have to climb them.

Pretty/scary flower


Oh no! PEACH is in Bamboo Prison!

We can see our destination!

Really instills confidence


Let's not judge our athleticism based on my red face.


Corey's been in "holding" at his command and was the lucky lad chosen to drive the shuttle between bases. But so far, it's been pretty great because he's been home by 12:30 every day. Don't want to get my hopes up for too long though. It definitely won't last forever. 

I've put in about 14 applications to some government jobs and a couple resorts on the island. Of course now it's a waiting game. No one actually wants to talk to you before they choose you for an interview or dismiss you because you're resume isn't exactly what they want. Don't they know I'm a good person who would do really well?!?! :) 

The house really looks great! I've attempted some pictures but none have turned out very well. But I'll try again soon. I'm ready to get some patio furniture for our lanai, but haven't been able to find anything that isn't astronomical in price. But that's nothing new for Hawaii. Although I have been pleasantly surprised with gas prices in comparison to stateside. We did hit $4.00 on base yesterday, but I just assumed we'd be at least a full dollar over Georgia gas prices. We'll hit it though, I'm sure. They say it gets up over $5 in the summer. Something to look forward to...


Hope everyone is well! We miss everyone a lot and hope that time flies until we get to see everyone again!


Lots of love and hugs! Take care!