The "S" Squad Chronicles

Beach Day!

In between the homelessness, visiting Scrappy in jail and looking for housing, we made a day of relaxing at Bellows AFB Beach for Memorial Day.  In my opinion this is one of the best beaches on the island is it's only available to military members.  You can even rent cabins right on the beach or camp out.  We'll be doing that in the near future.  In the meantime, I just wanted to share some pictures of Little Todd turned Sand Hammerhead Shark!  Aloha!

We have Housing!!!!

Tuesday, May 27th:  Finally!  Everything lines up today!  It's official.  Today we picked up the Jeep, moved Scrappy out of quarantine and into a kennel and (drum roll, please....) got housing!  First we checked out Hickam AFB, the base I really wanted to live on.  For those of you that didn't know, I used to live on this base many moons ago when my dad was stationed here (back in '84).  Well, lucky us, they had 3 houses for us to choose from.  Unlucky us, they were the OLD, OLD, crappy housing.  But I was willing to over look the cinder block kitchens and window air conditioners (which I would have to buy because the guy living there now was selling them) in order to live on Hickam.  One of the 3 houses is actually it's own house, not a duplex or 4 plex.  This one is located right by the commissary and is available right now, which means no more kennel for Scrappy!  It's a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom, with a yard, but like I said, it's OLD.  These houses were built back in the 70's!  They are so old and crappy that the Air Force is actually tearing them down to rebuild new homes.  The one we were really looking into is a 4 plex though, back where my old house used to be.  This is the one where the guy is moving in mid June, so the house won't be available until July 3rd.  We decided to put our name in for this one.  The yard is pretty big and has 2 plumeria trees in it.  It's set for demolition in about 1-1 1/2 years so the AF would move us into a newer home then.  So we call the housing office and leave a message that we are interested in this one.

Then it's off to the Army Housing Office located at Ft. Shafter.  These houses are also so old and crappy that they are tearing them down and building new ones.  The new ones are soooooooo nice!  I can't even describe it to you in words, you'll have to see pictures.  Below are a few from the outside.  The community we are looking at is called Aliamanu (Alley-A-Mhan-Nu).  We know chances of getting into these houses are slim to none but we give it a go anyway (hey, they were slim to none to get onto Hickam and we were offered 3 houses there....granted they were old as hell, but still).  I had a feeling they were going to offer us the old Army housing, which in my opinion, REALLY sucked, worse than Hickam.  Some didn't even have yards.  It was more like an apartment patio area.  So anyways, in the housing office we walked.  We tell Shawna (the housing lady) that we are on the list and are looking for housing.  We tell her we just left Hickam and they offered us the old stuff.  She says she probably has nothing but old housing for us too.  I already had it set in my mind, if I have to choose between old Hickam housing or old Army housing, I was going with Hickam.  But ALAS!  She checks the computer and says "Oh, you're an E7!"  Today's your lucky day!  I guess rank does have it's privileges because they had a BRAND NEW HOUSE for us available in 2 days!!!!  I am so ecstatic!   I've already seen the outside, I can't wait to see the inside!  We hop in her Army Hawaii Family Housing minivan and ride over to the available unit.  Guess what!?  It's one of the exact ones we looked at the day before!  It's 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, 1 car garage, 1600 sq. feet.  It's also 2 story, bottom floor is wood, second story is carpeted.  The yard is already fenced in and fits my new patio set!  The kitchen appliances are BRAND NEW!  I was so excited I forgot to take pictures of the inside!  But we'll be moving in on Thursday, May 29th!  Our household goods won't be in until July so we are using "loaner" furniture until it comes in.  Tomorrow we are going to check out the Aloha Stadium Swap Meet to buy some wooden (hawaiian style) plates and bowls and decor.  I've decided to decorate the house "Island Style".  I'll be sure to take plenty of pictures to show you how the process is going.  In the meantime, we have our Jeep, we have our dog, and we now have housing!  Like I said we'll be moving in on Thursday, tomorrow we'll be getting our cable, electric, internet, etc all set up, so I don't know the next time I'll have a post.  It all depends on when the people can get in and set my stuff up.  I do have a new address now.  Be sure to email me if you want it.  Keep on checking back for some updates and pictures of the inside of the house!  Click on the pictures to view a larger version.  Never mind the irrigation pipes and brown areas, remember these are brand new housing and are still in development.  All of these will be gone soon!

OUR NEW HOUSING COMMUNITY: ALIAMANU, HAWAII

***Check out the last picture, our house is the tan one on the left, directly behind the basketball court.  The tree is kind of blocking the front.***

ALOHA EVERYONE!

Aloha everyone!  We finally made it to Hawaii!  Sorry it's been so long since the last post but between our camping in the mountains and living at the Hilton, we've been internet challenged.  I do have to say it's been nice not being online for awhile.  Well, let me update you on all that's been happening.  I'll start with the last day of Todd's school up until now.  Click on the dates to check out some coordinating pictures.

Thursday May 15th: The movers showed up and packed all our household goods.  They could have done all of this in one day, but they ran out of room in the truck!  All that was left was the garage, but it had quite a few things in it (including the motorcycle!).  We started some of the clean up and painting this day also.  We wanted to try to get ahead of everything before heading out to the Sequoia's the next day.

Friday, May 16th: We take Little Todd to school and get ready to watch his skit on Rome/Gladiators.  Today is his last day plus the class was doing a program called "A Walk Through Ancient Civilizations".  Each student has a line that they must memorize and recite when their "word" was said.  Little Todd's word was Spartacus and he dressed as a gladiator.  He looked pretty good in his little skirt! 

Friday, May 16th-Sunday, May 18th: After the movers finished up our household goods, we packed up our stuff, got Little Todd from school and headed out to camp.  We finally got to the mountains around 10PM (traffic sucked!) and after some carsickness from Little Todd we set up camp.  While there we saw some cool animals including a baby rattlesnake, a coyote (he wanted to play with Scrappy), squirrels, chipmunks and deer.  We were in Bear Country, but didn't get to see any of them. 

Monday, May 19th-Saturday, May 24th:  Now that we are officially homeless we moved out to L.A. to stay at the Hilton near the airport.  I finally realized why I never leave Orange County.  LAX is such a hole.  There were homeless people, nudie bars and ghettoness everywhere.  Then to top it off, the pool was closed from May 19th until May 24th for renovations.  Just our luck!  It worked out I guess because the temps stayed in the low 60's the entire time.  Plus it rained on the last two days we were there.  I couldn't wait to go!

Saturday, May 24th:  My birthday and HAWAII!  We made it in and were hanging loose by 12PM Cali time!  After prepping Scrappy's kennel the night before we sent him off with the luggage.  We caught a glimpse of him after our flight landed and we got our luggage.  He was MAD!  Barking up a storm.  They carted him off to quarantine and we wouldn't get to see him until about 2PM later that day.  Todd's coworker (Pottsy) helped us out and picked us up in his new F150.  It really saved us time because now we didn't have to take two trips to get our car rental.  He drove us over to Hickam AFB and gave us some helpful info about housing and Todd's work.  His work seems pretty laid back and cool.  He said work is usually 6:30AM-2:30PM, Monday thru Friday.  Pretty nice!  :)  They gave Todd 10 days house hunting leave and said not to worry about work, take care of the fam and check in later.  After saying goodbye to Pottsy, getting our rental car and some food, we headed over to see Scrappy.  He was in quarantine due to a date conflict between the vet and Kansas State University.  The vet administered Scrappy's vaccine on Jan. 24, 2008, but KSU didn't log it until Jan 27, 2008.  Meaning Scrappy couldn't come into the state of Hawaii until May 27th!  I guess that worked out too, because it was Memorial Day weekend and all the housing offices were closed until Tuesday, the day he can get released.  He seemed okay when we visited his "cell".  Click here to check out some pics of his jail stay. 

Now that you're almost caught up, our next post will tell you about our NEW HOUSE!!!!  I'm so excited!  I'll save it for the next post though!  Keep checking back folks!  Mahalo!

Don't worry Fans!

Tomorrow is packing day!  Our house is completely destroyed right now.  Things are laying around everywhere.  We have to tip toe around or jump over piles laid throughout the house.  I took everything out of all the closets and placed them in corners of the rooms.  All the beds and tables are broken down and leaning against walls.  The fridges (all 3 of them) are cleaned out and unplugged.  We are ready for the movers.  It BETTER only take 1 day to pack and load this stuff in the truck.  It's not like we have a lot of stuff.  They are scheduled to come tomorrow (Thursday) and Friday, but I see them outta here on Thursday.  Everything is pretty much done for them, all they have to do is put them in boxes.  I even took everything out of the kitchen cabinets and put them on the counters. 

Hopefully, if they are done Thursday, then Friday afternoon we are going camping at the Sequoia National Park (about 4 hours from here).  We'll be there until Monday when we have to check into the Hilton in L.A.  We'll totally be roughing it, no tv, no internet, no cell phones...NOTHING!  Not even beds (okay, we'll be on the Aerobed).  But other than that, in a tent!  Living off of the wild hot dogs.  I'll take lots of pictures but they won't be posted until late Monday night or even Tuesday morning.  So don't fret faithful readers (Dad), there will be NO POSTS this weekend.  It's going to be nice to get away even if it's just for a few days.  The weather is supposed to be SUPER HOT, like 97 degrees hot.  I look forward to it though.

Friday is also Little Todd's last day of school.  He's REALLY happy about that.  He's doing a gladiator speech in full costume.  I can't wait to show you those pictures...next week!!!  Anyways, have a good weekend everyone and see you on Monday (or Tuesday)!

Little Todd's Ancient India Project

Sunday was Mother's Day, but it was also project day for us.  Little Todd has a project on Ancient India due on May 27th.  Yeah, I know, his last day of school is May 16th, but this project weighs heavily on his grade so we were determined to finish and turn it in before we left.  So Sunday we went to Micheal's and got everything we needed for his Ancient India diorama.  Little Todd and I love doing dioramas (we did a Peeps diorama during Easter) for fun.  Todd found a box in the trash (it was an empty beer box) and we spray painted it to start off the project.  Then we built the houses.  Todd worked on the animal pen while I did the farmer's market (you know how I like farmer's markets!).  I even used real bread for the bread stand.  The bananas and apples were made out of play doh and the veggies were just cut up leaves.  I put real salt in the barrel I made.  Little Todd put everything together and hot glued them to the box.  On the outside of the box he glued a time line, information about what the Ancient Indians ate, their weather, and their government.  He just turned it in today, so hopefully we'll get a grade before he leaves school on Friday.  I think it deserves an A+! Click on the picture of the final product to view the rest of the photo album.