PHDD

Post Hawaii Depressive Disorder

Since returning from our visit to Hawaii we are missing the island life. To console ourselves, we are watching HGTV's "Hawaii Life" and drowning our sorrows in chocolate milk. One day, we will return!

Hawaii!!

We just spent a wonderful week in paradise celebrating our 5th anniversary and visiting Brandon's brother, Josh, and his family on the island of Oahu. They greeted us at the airport with some beautiful leis, a Hawaiin tradition.

We did lots of fun activities: snorkeling (we saw sea turtles!!) surfing, and sea kayaking to name a few. We took Isabella and David with us sea kayaking out to small island off the shore of the city of Kailua. Just before we were going to head back a big rain/windstorm came through. Fortunately we decided to wait it out instead of trying to make it back and the rain went away.

We had a few rainy days so we took advantage of doing some other activities that didn't involve the beach. One stop was the Dole plantation. I had visited here with my good friends Melissa and Morgan Ethington 13 yrs ago so it brought back some fun memories.

Brandon had fun chasing the beach babes (Anabelle). She says, "uh .... no!"

And even though we were hanging out in paradise, Brandon didn't want to miss the Super Bowl. Go Seahawks! Instead of watching the game, I enjoyed sitting on the lanai with Bella and coloring. Wish I had gotten a photo of the fantastic picture she was coloring. There are a lot more photos I have of the trip but they are on my camera, not my phone. 

One fun event was watching a surf competition on the North Shore. This time of year there are pretty big waves out there-20 ft on the day of the competition. You can see  a surfer just about to start riding the wave.

We also went to the Polynesian Cultural center in Laie.  Our tour guide was from Tonga and attending BYU-Hawaii. He works about 20 hours weekly and is able to get his schooling paid for. The church has set up a really amazing program that helps students from all over the Polynesian islands to share their culture with tourists and get an education that otherwise may not be available to them. We learned about Tonga, Fiji, and Samoa before it was time to head to a Lua for dinner. We also saw their evening show which showcased all the island cultures.

 It has been a hard adjustment coming back to Washington with cold and snowy weather. We definitely appreciate Josh and Jenn being such great hosts and leaving us with big smiles!

We are scheming of ways we can move to Hawaii ourselves someday. Maybe we will just have to keep visiting!

Home sweet home

We've been in our home over a month now and there is still lots to do but we are taking it a day at a time. Brandon has been our handy man and put in our new range. Unfortunately the first one we purchased wasn't dual fuel like we expected. It was a gas stove/oven. So we decided to give up the double oven to keep the same look as the old one.

He also installed a rod to hang our clothes in the laundry room.

Christmas 2013

Merry Christmas to everyone! Brandon said to me, "we should really send out Christmas cards this year." I said, "that is a great idea honey, go ahead and do it." Well, it didn't get done. I didn't even get to send out my Christmas email this year. We were just too busy trying to get our home to a livable stage. We did manage to have some fun though at Christmas. We had Brandon's parents, Paul and Joyce Campbell here. We took them to the DAVIDSON Christmas eve party.

Always a great time, with lots of great food.

My parents joined us for Christmas dinner. And, the next day Brandon's sister JoLynn and her daughters Waleska and Roxy came to stay for a few days. We were all blessed to get some beautiful handmade quilts from Joyce.

She worked a long time making us these amazing quilts. She does all the top stitching by hand!

Brandon and his dad went shooting during our Christmas break.

I took JoLynn and Waleska on a hike up Badger Mountain. It was very cold and foggy. We didn't have any view but they were willing to make the trek with me.

We ate lots of food, played lots of fun games, had a good time relaxing and watching movies. The house feels empty without them here.

Our Home

We are in love with our home!

Brandon chose this enormous refrigerator. He could probably fit in it.

I love our big tub and see through fireplace! 

There are some unexpected findings in this house that we don't love. One of which, is that our oven is fueled by gas. We do have a gas stove top which we love but thought that we had bought a dual-fuel range/oven. We don't have natural gas here but a large propane tank to supply our gas needs. Most ovens come fitted for natural gas but whoever installed our oven only converted the stovetop, not the oven to propane. We didn't realize this until we used it and our carbon monoxide alarms went off one evening. We got a technician over to figure out what was going on and he tells us he isn't allowed to convert it to propane and we don't know where the parts are for it anyway. So just before Christmas and just before Brandon's family is coming to stay, we can't use our oven! 

Instead we are going to use the roasting oven sitting on the counter (thanks mom for lending it to us!) and are pulling out as many electric appliances we can.

Will it ever end?

Although we are close to being done, it feels like Christmas should have come a couple of months ago so don't ask me when we are moving in! 

Here are the latest photos of the house.

We have some sod in the front of the house. Because it is so late in the season, we are just going to put some kind of grass seed/groundcover mixture in the backyard for the winter. Hopefully it keeps the dust down and hopefully it will grow grass next year and not tumble weeds. I'm sure our neighbors are sick and tired of all the dust.

The mudroom is painted. We still need to put up some hooks.

The toilets are in.

We have some lovely undercounter lighting.

Here is a better look at our flooring which I love despite some of its flaws. We could host "Dancing with the Stars" in here and perfect some break dancin moves. I'm gonna moonwalk all over theses floors!

We are ready to move into this place! But it's not ready for us!!

Month #7 Building a house

I thought we would be in the house by now, but another month has gone by and we are not there yet. (Note to self, patience is a virtue).

A lot of the finishing touches are happening though and we REALLY hope this is the LAST month.

Here are the latest photos of what has been going on:

We have finally found a chandelier. I've spent hours looking at hundreds of chandeliers so this is a big deal. I wanted something unique, the right size, and not way over budget. And of course Brandon and I needed to agree on it. So this is it!

We also have this really awesome fan for our great room that is supposedly very efficient and is called "Aviation".

Our backsplash tile is up in the kitchen and bathrooms. We used glass tile, subway style.

We have our mud room designed. It still needs to be painted.

Cabinet doors are on with the hardware. It looks like it is right out of houzz.com or maybe even a parade home. These white cabinets have about 14 layers of paint/primer and look AMAZING! Thanks to Fesser cabinets for making all our cabinets look gorgeous.

Don't mind the mess on the floor. Some of the subcontractors do not know the meaning of a garbage can or cleaning up after themselves. I can't wait till they are all outa my house!!

Carpet has been laid and looks great.

Laundry room counter top is done. It is this nice "sea grass" motif which I thought would go with the very calming "Cowen Blue" paint but it is making the paint in the room look more green than blue. So I'm not sure I love it. I really loved the paint color as it looked before the counter top went on. Should we redo it?

We are still waiting for some important plumbing items to be installed. Can't move in without these!