Hilo Farmer's Market rocks

Twice a week there is an awe inspiring market in Hilo. See for yourself....




All of the merchants are very friendly and most are willing to bargain a little.



We love it!

Our time on O'ahu

After a great stay in LA we flew to Honolulu, on the island of O'ahu, and stayed a few days. Mark spent many of his childhood days enjoying this beautiful island, so he had a great time showing us his old stompin grounds.
Here are a few pics from our time there.


Gotta have shave ice.


Overlooking Honolulu.



Waimea Bay, crystal clear water.

Let us rewind for a moment

We drove across the country(from Birmingham to LA) and saw many things and stayed in many different places. But here are a few pics from our travels.

Here is a picture of Lucy in Albuquerque, NM.


We ended up in Los Angeles and stayed with Mark's daughter and son-in-law, Ellen and Matt.
Lucy enjoying Disneyland.


Ella and SJ outside of a fun mall in LA.


Ella and I walking around Ellen and Matt's neighborhood in LA.


Ella and SJ watching the skateboaders in LA at Venice Beach.

Ella and St. John wanted me to post more pics of our pups

Kahiki with the kids.



Indy with the kids.



All of the puppies, including David's two named, Hachiko and Bolik.

Pics of Our Yard

The three smaller trees in the front are 3 of the lemon trees that we found.




The palm tree:



Here is Ella standing beside one of our BIG ferns, with a grapefruit tree to the right.




This is a picture of some macadamia nuts growing on one of our nut trees:

Our pups

Thought I would post some more pics our our puppies.

And also a picture of Ella wearing her first lei. We bought it while on Oahu.

We are connected!!

I have so much catching up to do here on our blog. I may wait until this weekend to do it when Mark is gone.

So until then I will share some fun stuff. Last week while wandering around our property I noticed a tree that looked like it had been planted and wasn't a native tree or weed. After much exploring and clearing and chopping I have found 57!!! different fruit and nut trees on our land. I have identified some of them, including macadamia nut, tangerine, valencia orange, grapefruit, lime, lemon, mango, and avocado. There are still some that we haven't identified but hope to with some more research.

And finally a picture!
Here is a pic of the kids eating malasadas in our front yard with the pups hoping to catch a crumb.
Malasadas are Hawaii's version of the doughnut without the hole in the middle and instead of icing they are tossed in sugar and cinnamon. Mark and the kids LOVE them!!

Still no internet

As of now, we still do not have wifi Internet, so I can't post photos to the blog. We are hoping that we will have Internet access by late next week. We finally have our tv hooked up to satellite, and just in time for Mark to watch the Celtics play in the final finals.
Yesterday after going to a small Episcopal church in Hilo, we headed to a place called Coconut Island. It's really just as beautiful as you would imagine! It's an island about 100 yards across with many coconut trees growing on it. We had a picnic lunch and then the kids swam and attempted to snorkel in the shallow waters surrounding the island. It was fun, fun!

Other news.... Abby and Mason will be here in about 2 weeks! The only down side is that Mark has to fly to Bham to pick them up and will be gone for about 4 days. At least I have some guard dogs to protect me and the kids. Okay, the dogs are still only puppies and are way too cute and cuddly to be guard dogs but at least I'll have some company.

Busy, busy!

We have been going non-stop(well, except while we were sick from food poisoning) since arriving at our new home. We've painted, cleaned, cleared the yard, and much more.
On memorial day, as we were sitting on the lanai, or porch, a stray puppy wandered into our yard. Then a few minutes later another one was found at the end of our drive way. We were planning on adopting a couple of dogs in a few weeks anyway, so we thought, "perfect here are our 2 dogs". Then while driving home later that day we spotted 2 more puppies of the same litter wandering our road, so of course, we picked them up. After some deliberation we have decided to keep 2 of them and David, Mark's son, is keeping 2. After taking them to the vet today we know they are about 8 weeks old, have worms and are malnourished. All of the pups are male and have friendly personalities. We, especially, the kids, are excited about giving these little doggies a good home!

On another subject, we picked up our cars today, and the rest of our things should be arriving by the 7th.
I'm looking forward to being able to post pics from all of our adventures when our laptop arrives!