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Dave checked into his first day of work yesterday (see nice new outfit above!) and really enjoyed meeting everyone in the office. He is excited to be involved in important, challenging work. While Dave was on his adventure, Sam and I went on one of our own – we walked to Lanikai beach to watch Angel paddle with her team. It was great to see her paddling hard toward the shore with the beautiful backdrop of the Mokalua islands behind her. The water was incredible – so many hues of blue and warm. Sam and I took a dip after our long walk. Then we stopped by a bakery to try malassadas – a very Hawaiian donut treat – hot out of the oven! We all went to the swap meet – a huge open air flea market with an equally vast array of aloha-wear. Sam and I got really uncomfortably hot after only covering stalls in the areas A-D (the swap meet circles the stadium and runs through the alphabet twice!). I was so hot, in fact, that I managed to lock my keys in the trunk. First time ever. So Dave and I had to come back and get the dumb car! Oh well – I did get lots of great board shorts and bikinis 🙂

Today we began our househunting in earnest. We met with a real estate agent in Honolulu (a woman my mom met on a plane 3 yrs ago named Lee!). She is just incredible. We really enjoyed meeting her and totally trust her judgment. We took a look at a couple houses in Kaneohe today, and saw one real possibility, which was encouraging. Tomorrow we are lined up with appointments to see many others homes in Kailua as well. We are enjoying this process immensely, but Sam isn’t so sure it’s much fun tooling around in the car for drive-bys. He likes going into the homes and checking them out, though 🙂

Funny story – I did a breath-hold swim down a length of Mike and Angel’s pool and was so determined to reach the other side that I managed to run my head right into the concrete (I wasn’t wearing goggles, so I couldn’t see out or I’d lose my lenses). Dave was laughing – he heard it at the other end of the pool. I thought it was pretty funny – it felt good in a rattle-your-cage kinda way.

Thanks for the great notes you’ve been sending in response to these posts – it’s so fun to wake up in the morning and check in with you virtually 🙂 Aloha!