We're here...a travel log of the past 24 hours.

We made it to Honolulu last night.  We got on the airplane around 8am in Juneau, flew two hours to Seattle, wondered around the Seattle airport for nearly six hours (it was a long layover, but the airport there has more stores than Juneau so we had fun window shopping), boarded the plane for Hawaii at 4:30 pm and flew for nearly six hours to Honolulu.  We landed in Honolulu at 7:30 pm, found all 12 of our checked bags (plus we each had a rolling carry-on and a backpack...making a grand total of 24 bags!!) and then started the hunt for the paperwork with the name of the hotel we would be staying at on it.  That took at least 45 minutes.  I guess we both forgot to print off the reservation and neither of us knew the name of the hotel!  oops!  We headed over to the USO to see if they could help us (and so we could get a snack and use the restrooms).  While Darwin was going through a list of hotel names to see if he recognized one, I pulled out my laptop to see if I could find the email Darwin sent me with the reservation on it.  I prayed for wireless service...and it worked!  We found the reservation details!!  We took a breather and then realized that I didn't print off the car reservation paper either!  (Man were we not prepared or what!?)  I took the laptop out again, sorted through more old emails, and came up with the reservation...I am so thankful for yahoo email and for free wireless service!!

We got on the shuttle to the car rental place and got our rental van without a hitch.  The best thing was that the van they gave us fit all six of us and our 24 bags!  We couldn't see out any of the windows, but we didn't have to leave anyone behind with bags!  The other gadget I am extremely grateful for is our TomTom.  It is a little talking GPS that told us every turn to make and what lane to be in.  We drove straight to our hotel and were able to check in by 10pm.

This morning we got up and ate at Denny's.  Then we took Dar to his new office so he could get our check in stuff started.   After I had a slight freak-out moment (I misunderstood what was going to happen and felt at a complete loss about where I was supposed to be and what I was supposed to be doing...and Darwin was late for work and grumpy at me for freaking out) we all went in and met some of the people he would be working with.  I took the kids back to the hotel for the rest of the morning and spent the day calling about rental houses.  We went back to pick up Darwin from work at 3pm and went up to Tripler to get our medical stuff in order.  (On a side note...we haven't had to use military doctors for 10 years and we were really ok with that.  We'll see how this all goes...I am just really grateful that we have medical coverage).  We ate a yummy (extremely overpriced) dinner at Chili's and then went to the biggest Borders Bookstore we have ever seen!  It was gigantic and was two levels!  Brooklin thought she was in heaven...hehe.

I don't love the traffic or trying to park in parking garages, but I am so excited to be here.  I hope we can find a place to live soon and I really hope our car gets here FAST!  Sorry this was kind of boring...but I just want it recorded and had a few minutes to hurry and type it out.  I'll try to write a better post (with pictures) soon.