HaPPY 14TH BIRTHDAY MADDIE!!!
Maddie has a Lei around her neck which is given to anyone who is having a special day. Lei's can be worn for a retirement, anniversarys, graduations,etc.


Lei's can be made from many different materials including shells, seeds and leaves.

We celebrated Maddie's big day at dinner at our favorite outdoor Italian Cafe called Zia's.

 

This past Sunday we took a trip around the SE side of the island
(we are on Oahu)
and saw many beautiful sites. These sites are within 15 miles of where we live Kailua.  The island is so
amazing for so many reasons, but one thing about it is that
the terraine changes very
quickly as you go along the shore.
 There are no rocky cliffs on
the shore where we live but just
 15-some miles away the rocky
cliffs are enormous.
As you drive south and
west from where we are, the land becomes very arrid and  desert-like. 
 

We climbed down the cliffs
and found a little cove to swim in and some fun caves to explore!

The waves at this beach were pretty big and we all took a good a few good tumbles!
RUN MOLLY!

Who says the old lady can't body surf?!
The only problem is that body surfing causes sand to be in places it should definitely NOT be!!

Can you find us?

The picture below is the Halona Blowhole.When the waves are big they go under the cliff and blow out the hole. 



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We made a visit to China town in Honolulu. We ate lunch at their version of the food court. It was very interesting food-not sure we will be back to the food court any time soon!

Minnows for lunch anyone? I didn't have any takers!



The girls' new friends have taught us about crab catching. It is a fun thing to do after dark on the beach. They are little sand crabs that come out at night (there are tons of them!) but are fun to try and catch because they are so fast. They can't outrun our girls:)



The girls (and usually Paul) love to go and snorkel at our beach. They have seen many different fish, eel, blow fish and sea turtles!

As you can see, it is evening and they are still swimming. The neat thing about the ocean here is that the water is nice and warm! The breeze at the beach is very warm this time of year so its even comfortable to swim in the evening or early morning.

It is the warmest time of the year here right now. The weather is pretty much the same every day. The high is about 87 or so and the low at night is around 74. We hear the beach and ocean are cooler in the winter but the temps only vary slightly from season to season so we will see what "winter" in Hawaii brings!

Thanks so much to all of you for all your thoughts and prayers! We have found a long term rental place and it is going to be GREAT.

God continues to be so kind and faithful to us. We will be moving into our place (and getting all of our stuff from the ship) in a week!

We continue to adjust to life here on the island are enjoying it very much. We miss you all at home terribly and pray for your well being also.

May the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

Aloha!



God's beauty, creativity and faithfulness continues to amaze us

Its so hard to imagine that we have been in Hawaii 3 weeks already. We have seen God answer many, many prayers for our transition here. Thank you so much to all of you who have prayed for us!


This first picture is of the 3 younger girls on their first day of school.
This is in our front yard in front of a Plumeria tree. Below in Maddies flower photo gallery you will see a pic of a Plumeria. They are some of our favorite not only for their beauty but also their wonderful fragrance! They are often worn in behind the ear like the girls are wearing them. We have learned that if you wear your Plumeria on the left it means your taken, if on the right you are available. All of the girls will be checked regularly to make sure their Plumeria is on the left!

Maddie, Isabel and Molly are attending a school called Trinity Christian. It is much like Bethany (where they went in Minnesota) in that it is a small, tight nit community. We have all felt so welcome and the girls all have made many friends already.




This is the picture of the back of the campus at Trinity. Its hard to tell from the picture, but those mountains are big!






 Out door lockers, hallways and lunchrooms are the norm here with such mild weather year round:)

.

Oliva started school before the other girls and is now almost done with her 3rd week of school. She is at a private school called LeJardin Academy. This is her on her first day in her uniform. Uniform? Yes it is a -t-shirt and shorts or jeans!

LeJardin is a K-12 school that averages about 50 kids per grade. Olivia is doing great at her school too. Once again, the kids have been very kind and welcoming and she has made a lot of sweet friends already! We had some girls from her class for a sleepover last weekend:)

Once again, outdoor hallways and lockers.

We feel so blessed and fortunate that we can have our girls in such wonderful schools. The public schools in Hawaii are well known  for falling short of the standards we are used to- especially in Minnesota.

As you can see, Olivia's school has quite a beautiful setting also. It is high up on a hill surrounded by the Ko'olau mountains.

Below is Kailua Beach Park that is the center of the community here in Kailua. The culture here is very family oriented so the park is a very busy place. On the weekends, large Hawaiian ohana (families) regularly gather and barbecue and hang out.

A very popular sport for men and women is called paddling. Next to our pink cottage is a community center where the canoe teams meet and head out to this beach across the street to train for the races which happen on the weekend. I took this pic Sunday morning. There were about 25 canoes heading out for the race that would take them around the islands across from our beach.

This market has been here since 1930 and is one of my favorite places in our new home. They have some groceries and wonderful gourmet coffee and yummy deli. It is in walking distance from Kailua Beach Park. Paulie says hang loose!

               

This is Molly's new neighbor friend Emilia!



The next several pics below are taken by Maddie!

Our tangerine tree in our front yard

We call these "Lord of the Rings' trees

This is just a part of the bush outside our front door. Most of the trees and bushes have some sort of flower or other sort of funky thing growing on it!

There are lots of these fellows running around! The girls love the challenge of trying to catch them- they are fast:) Its not all fun and games when they get in the cottage, though!

One of our favorites- Plumeria

The pic above is the marker that we pass each day going from Lanikai into Kailua. Lanikai is a small part of Kailua that our pink cottage is located.

The girls and I had a blast at the farmers market. Molly is holding some flowers and Isa is holding sugar cane. You can cut the hard bark off the outside of the sugar cane and cut apart the inside and chew on it. We decided it was fun to try once but it really is like chewing on a piece of bark. There are many vegetables and fruits we did not recognize. Many of the vendors are Japanese. I tried to ask what things were called but couldn't understand what they were saying!

This is our new favorite after school snack. Shaved ice is big here. They put a scoop of ice cream at the bottom of your ice. If you are really brave, you can order your shaved ice Japanese style which includes beans in your shaved ice! Yikes!
We haven't been brave enough to try that yet but we have been trying lots of different fish. Olivia even tried sushi the other night when she was out with her friends. The younger girls are still getting used to their classmates pulling out their seaweed for snack time!

Well, that's it for now!
Thanks again for the prayers, notes, texts, calls and well wishes. Please continue to pray for us as we still don't know where we will be renting a home once we have to leave the pink cottage at the end of October. 
 We love you and miss you!
Blessings-
Paul and Cindy and the girls:)