Happy Birthday Brando!!

It's Brandon's birthday today! He turned 24. This is his fourth birthday we've spent together, and here's to many more! We already opened his presents - a Hawaiian t-shirt, a couple cat toys, and a diving knife. Tonight, we're going to get his kitten. It's a good day!

Moving Day!

We moved in today! We don't have any furniture, we're sleeping on a blow up mattress, and we have no food... but it's still nice to have our house!

In other news, we got a kitten, sorta. We're picking him up on Saturday. He's so cute. 7 weeks old, born July 29, orange and white tabby, short hair. He was the biggest out of the litter. His fur is lighter compared to the others, but I love it. Brandon wants to call him Winston. :)

We're looking for a puppy for me. It's incredibly hard here. The only dogs that they seem to have an abundance of are pit bulls. I don't want one of those, and can't have it anyway! Ugh. I want a dachshund or border collie. That's what we've been looking at. Hopefully soon...

I'm sitting at the library, as we don't have internet until Thursday. Tomorrow they're delivering our first batch of household goods. That's good at least!

Ok, I'm tired and really need to be job searching...

Hello Hawaii

This will be the last of the series of blogs following our trip. This one will be short, just saying what we've been doing and dealing with since we got here!

September 2-7

Brandon signed in off leave, but luckily we didn't have to start inprocessing right away, because we arrived on Tuesday night and they start the inprocessing on Tuesday. We had another week off! They put us up at the airport hotel (ick, but it's somewhere to sleep).

We spent the week hanging out. We went to Bellows Beach (amazing view!), snorkeling at Hanauma Bay and Electric Beach, swimming at the North Shore, looking at waves, playing in waves, window shopping in Waikiki, relaxing in the hotel room, touring Schofield Barracks, seeing the USS Arizona and Pearl Harbor memorial, eating different foods, and doing Sudoku and Crosswords. We had a very good week!

Our housing situation... well, we got so lucky. We went in to ask for a house and they had one for us right away. Today, we get to go see it and sign the lease, and Tuesday the 15th we're moving in. I couldn't believe it!

Anyway, I think I'm done with this series. I'm happy to be here. I was shocked for a moment, realizing that I was actually here, that this place wasn't somewhere I was going, it was a place I was in. It was a little jarring because I suppose it was never really reality, and now it is. But I like it!

Lovely Los Angeles

I've been procrastinating! We get to look at our house today. :)

August 30-September 1

On Sunday, after we slept in a good amount and rested, we all got ready and headed out. Our hosts brought us to Hollywood and the Star Walk, the Chinese Theatre and the Kodak Theatre. We drove down Sunset Blvd and saw different sites there. Then they took us down to the coast to Malibu. It was so pretty there! We found a parking spot and stopped at the beach and stepped in the water. It was freezing! When we got home, we made some barbecue chicken and salad. It was yummy. :)

The next day our hosts had to work, so Brandon and I were on our own. We went to the carwash to get my car ready to be shipped, and then we had lunch at In-N-Out burger. Yum! Then Brandon brought me to Universal Studios. That was fun! They had different shows and rides, we were busy all afternoon the time flew. It was a great time. My favourite part was the Studio Tour, where we got to see where they filmed shows and movies. It was really cool! That night we ate pizza, stayed up too late, and had to get up early the next morning.

We left at 7am to drop off my car at port. It didn't take too long, thank goodness the traffic wasn't bad. But then we had 5 hours to kill at the airport when we got there. It wasn't too bad though. We watched things on my computer, read, slept, and ate some really expensive food. Our time to board came, and we had another 5 and a half hours flying to Hawaii. We were tired! I didn't sleep at all on the plane. I ate some expensive food there (they didn't supply a meal for free, how dumb) and watched the movie they provided. It was a good flight, actually.

We saw Hawaii finally. It looked so pretty! We landed and we were there. How weird?

Last Leg

This is a quick one!

August 29

We left Las Vegas in the early afternoon, on our way to Los Angeles, our last stop on the mainland. It was a very hot trip, so thank goodness we have air conditioning. It was a long drive for being so short. We could taste the end of driving. The scenery consisted of dirt, sand, cactus, and some small hills. It was a desert, it is a desert. There were glimmers of hope in the casinos we saw through Nevada, and the small towns we encountered on our way through Los Angeles. It didn't even feel like we hit Los Angeles when we did. As we turned towards my friends house where we were staying, we saw the fire burning on our right, to the east. The world was on fire. I even saw flames at one point. The smoke clouds were a constant reminder during our stay in L.A. of the fire to the east.

We arrived at our friends house by dinner time, and they took us to an Italian restaurant, where we met some of their friends, who also happened to be Canadian. They were very nice! We saw Sean Astin there, the guy who plays Samwise in LOTR. Needless to say, I was ecstatic at the fact of seeing a famous person. We had desert at a yogurt shop before crashing for the night.

It was a good trip through the United States. From Georgia we went through Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee (if only for a moment), Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado (for a long moment), Utah, Arizona (also for a brief glimpse), Nevada, and California. I don't know the exact mileage, even though we calculated it, but it was over 3000 miles after it was all said and done!

Next blog will be about our time in L.A. Right now, it's job searching time.

Viva Las Vegas

August 27-29

We had two and a half days in Las Vegas. We slept in on Thursday and had an easy morning. We decided to hit up the aquarium at Mandalay Bay first, so that's where we headed. Then we walked through the casino, since Brandon had never been to one. He had such fun! After Mandalay Bay we went to Excalibur, where we gambled some more, and got sucked into a timeshare presentation. And we ended up buying one!

Huh?

The timeshare actually had a great deal. I won't mention the price, but it was unbelievable. On top of that, we don't even ever have to go to the one in Las Vegas, which was beautiful in its own right. The way this works, we now have access to over 4200 timeshares, hotels and resorts all over the world. We can stay at any of those hotels for one 189 for the whole week. That's for a whole villa-type thing! 1, 2, 3, 4 bedrooms, with a kitchen, and bathrooms! It's great. We can stay at any of the hotels owned by the company for 139 a week, too. We plan on using it all the time and going all kinds of places. Right now - all over Hawaii and maybe even New Zealand and Australia.

Anyway, back on track. That took all afternoon! We got very cheap tickets to The Tournament of Kings though. It was a great show! We had fun! We were tired, so we went to bed.

The next day we went to see Hoover Dam. We really enjoyed that! We took a tour down into the dam to see the generators, and the inner workings. Brandon really enjoyed it. Then wee went on a hike through Las Vegas, gambling and checking out hotels. We had lunch on the strip. We saw free shows that they have. We took pictures. We gambled. We laughed. It was a good day overall. We saw the show at Fremont Street at the end.

Saturday we were heading to Los Angeles, but since it was less than 5 hours away, we had some time to see Las Vegas. We went to see Caesar's Palace and the shopping area around there. Very cool! Then we were off to L.A. :)

Relaxing Road-Trip

August 26

Much to my step-mother's surprise, we got up at 5:15 am and left their house at 6 am. We woke Dad and Kat up to say our goodbyes before we left. She didn't really believe us when we said we were leaving at 6! It was a quick goodbye, and we were on the road.

We had gotten gas and ice the night before, so all we had to do was head out. Brandon started the driving, since I don't like driving through the mountains. It was beautiful. I'll miss Colorado just for it's beauty and splendor. Poems about the mountains coursed through my mind! I was also tired from not sleeping very well that night on Dad's spare bed. The drive through Colorado was fast, and we stopped in Grand Junction for some gas. I started driving from there.

On our way through Utah we decided to take a little detour to Moab. It was so beautiful! We took this back road through the canyons and along this river. I couldn't believe how wonderful it was. I was so glad that we decided to take that route. We stopped in pretty Moab for lunch at a local restaurant. Then we were off again through the Utah desert!

Utah was fairly boring. We switched drivers once we switched highways. Brandon drove the rest of the way to Las Vegas. It got prettier for a moment in the corner of Arizona. There were tall canyons there as well. Then another desert on the way to Las Vegas. We got to Vegas as the sun was setting, pulling into Nellis AFB, where we were staying for the night.

We had dinner at the Officer's Club. It was cook-your-own-steak night, and so we did! Then we decided to drive down the strip at night. It was really cool. We were dead tired, though, so we headed back to the hotel for some much needed sleep.