Top Ten Tuesday: Hawaii

When I found out we were moving to Hawaii, I was beyond excited.  I didn't want anyone to pinch me in case I was dreaming.  When I got there, I found that it was all I had imagined it to be and more!  We loved every minute of living in paradise and everything about it suited us just right.
Well, almost everything...

Now that we've moved away here is a list of ten things I do and do NOT miss about Hawaii.

I do NOT miss:

1. The cockroaches
 
Need I explain?  EEW!

2. Geckos and gecko poop
Now I don't have a problem with critters.  In fact, we caught a few lizards in the yard and kept them as pets.  One mother laid an egg that hatched and we enjoyed watching the little baby grow up.  I was so super sad when a gust of wind knocked the cage off the porch into a nest of fire ants and they all died from the bites.  But the geckos, they come out at night and 'chirp,' and the noise really bugged me.  And the poop!  They poop on everything and it is SO hard to scrub off.  EEW!

3. The fly poop
During the rainy season, the flies migrate indoors by the hordes.  They leave little clusters of brown poop 'spots' on random places on the walls (just out of reach but right within eyesight) and in the corners of the windows and it is hard to scrub them off!  Plus, just EEW!

4. The smell of mildew on the towels

If you don't move the clothes from the washer to the dryer within like an hour of the end of the cycle, your clothes will smell like mildew.  Its hard to get the smell out and it really gets fragrant when you sweat.  Eew!

5. The red dirt

I know it made a lot of money for the Dirt Shirt company, but it cost me a lot of money replacing all the the clothes that got stained with it because it does NOT come out.

I DO miss:

1. The sun
The first two weeks here in Korea were monsoon.  There was a blanket of gray clouds that hung just over our heads and blocked out any hint of the sun.  We've have many sunny days now, but it is just not the same.

2. The rainbows
The sun is always shining in Hawaii, even when it rains.  This makes for the most beautiful rainbows!  They never got old for me.

3. The air
Hawaii is listed among the best air quality in the world.  It is not just the quality though, it was the smell of plumerias and other flowering plants and trees that always perfumed the air.

4.  The beaches
We didn't go very often, which is especially sad because we lived 5 minutes from a great one.  But just being near them, knowing that we COULD go, and seeing them everywhere we drove, was perfect.

5. The color

Ahh, the color.  So vibrant, so beautiful, so plentiful!  The plants, the trees, the sunsets, the sky... 

Eye candy, no, soul candy.

This alone would have been paradise enough for me.

Social Butterfly

Today is my daughter's first day of kindergarten.

 She went to kindergarten last year too,
but technically she was a jr. kindergartener.

 She could not have been more excited for today to come.

 I'm pretty sure she asked one or more times a day for the last
two months if she got to go to her new school 'today.'

She's a social butterfly and she can't wait

to be surrounded by friends all day!

 

"See my new lunch box and water cup?"

She's not even to her classroom yet and already she's socializing.

Spread your wings, Sweet Girl.

You are beautiful when you fly.

What do you do all day?

A hour after I had scrubbed the kids' bathroom from top to bottom, I returned to find it covered with a whole tube of toothpaste.  The counter had the most, but the walls, the floor, the bathmat, the mirror...they were all covered too.

My friend told me the other day, that the question was posed, What does a stay at home mom do all day?  and the answer was that they spend most of their day just trying to keep the children alive.

As I stood there in the bathroom that I had already cleaned three times that day, I thought to myself, She is so right!  The portion of the day that I do not spend trying to keep them from killing themselves or each other, I spend trying not to kill them myself.