Carpe Diem

Daisy Mae the Chevrolet has arrived back in her home town of Jeff City! It was rather facinating to watch them build a bridge from the moving truck to the tow truck...and then the tow truck lowered her safely to the ground!

Minha casa nova! My new house! Can you tell which door is mine? (you might have to enlarge the picture to see the details more closely).

Here's the view of my house from the back. I'm VERY happy to have a garage again!

My street...

My "neighborhood." This is the view from my balcony. I can look out and drool over all of the big houses! There are some beauties back in this area! Maybe one day...

My parents found this frog for me at a garage sale and I think he's absolutely perfect! He's so terribly ugly that he's so terribly cute!

This is the very first pic taken of me in my house. I only included it here because I like seeing how tanned I was as I mourn the fact that I'm growing ever more pale each day I'm here... :(

All of that paper came out of one box!

The view as you walk into the kitchen.

The dining area of the kitchen.

The counters still need to be tidied up, but you get the idea of what it will look like!

My brand new washer and dryer! Makes laundry so much more fun! (well, not really...but it helps!). A certain friend (who will remain nameless) was laughing at me because I chose a color instead of plain boring white. I've come to realize just how much I love color...makes life so much more interesting and fun! While I will always love purple, you can see from my pictures that I enjoy a variety of different colors in my life to try to make my house cheery.

My tiny little balcony.

My little "purple" downstairs bathroom. Really hard to capture in a photograph!

My living room...
This was the ONLY workable floor plan Sarah and I could come up with! Now...where am I going to put the Christmas tree next month???

My sofa was finally reunited with its cushions after 3.5 years!!!

Close-ups of certain areas of my living room.

My tiles and hydrangeas line the stairwell.

Close-up of my beautiful Azorean tiles.

Wall o' flowers up the stairs...

...and down the stairs!

This is not a very good picture of the upstairs bathroom. It is long and narrow, so it is hard to capture. But I have a lot of counter space (perfect for all of my hair products!) and I have some of my favorite ocean and dolphin pictures in here! :) This room also features a nice, big linen closet!

The end of the hallway. The hall is just short enough that it is hard to really capture. But you can see my very big bull fighting shadow box displayed here!

Welcome to the Master Bedroom!

More views of the Master Bedroom...

The spare bedroom (for all of my visitors!!!). This room is the least "finished" off all of them. I still have a map that I'm going to put on the wall and mark all the countries I've visited! I have a few other things to sort through in this room...but don't worry, I will finish before anyone comes to stay with me! :)

My little tribute to the Azores and to my travels!

My little office nook.

Welcome to the garage/basement. Daisy Mae really likes sleeping indoors again!

All the boxes that I have left to unpack...though most of them are Christmas decorations, so I've done pretty well!

On Halloween my friend Michelle invited me to go trick-or-treating with her two little boys. It was a lot of fun to experience Halloween through the eyes of a child again!

Here I am posing with little Henry before he got his costume on! He thought I was the funniest thing ever. I made him laugh so hard just by talking that he got the hiccups! I guess I have a funny-sounding voice!

Big brother, Harrison, was Buzz Lightyear (from Toy Story).

Sarah joined the trick-or-treating crew as well!

And Henry finally got his costume on. He was the world's cutest polar bear.

The trick-or-treating crew!

And we're off!

One house had dressed up their dog and I thought it was just too cute! I had to take a picture!

Heading back home with all of the loot!

Little Bear fell asleep! What a precious little face!

Half the fun of Halloween is sorting the candy afterwards!

This past Sunday I went to a corn maze with my parents and some youth from church. It was fun. We got hopelessly lost and were not very good at finding the check points! The mud made it an even greater adventure!

Here's what the corn looked like from the top of the bridge.

See what I mean about the mud!

As some of you may already know, I had the opportunity to go back to Hawaii a couple of weeks ago to visit some friends I made at Lajes who are now stationed at Hickam Air Force Base on Oahu. And as you will soon see from the pictures, I had a wonderful time!

One of the first orders of buisness was for me to hike Diamond Head Crater, since I didn't get the chance to do that last time!

Here I am with my friend Kelvin's daughter, Alyannah. We are ready to roll! She's such a sweetheart and I enjoyed hanging out with her as much as possible.

Up we went!

Going up the crater! We not only zig-zagged up the hill...but we also had to climb a ridiculous amount of steps to get to the top! And can you believe it...Alyannah made it all by herself without having to be carried?

Here I am...I at least made it half way by this point!

Besides the stairs, we also had to go through a tunnel. Here you see Kelvin and Alyannah.

My turn to pose with Alyannah!

More views from the hike up the crater

What? More stairs???

Alyannah and Kelvin show off their muscles!

Honolulu

Alyannah and I survived the hike! Whoo-hoo!

Alyannah liked to pose like the statues...

...so I joined her!

One of the employees saw us and talked Kelvin into joining the picture as well. He wasn't thrilled. I think he looks like he's about ready to run away!

We tried to visit some botanical garden in the middle of the city (my bad idea). It was a flop. No flowers. But it did have one pretty, photogenic spot.

Little hula girl!

Not sure what kind of trees these are, but I found them to be very cool!

Love these flowers!

Alyannah and I with flowers in our hair!

Kelvin really resisted having a flower put in his hair! I don't know why!

The Hawai'i Supreme Court Building...the honorable Judge Scheperle presiding...

Alyannah was called to the witness stand!

You know me and rainbows...almost as bad as me and my flower pics!

This is my friend, Sgt Rosario and me! Rosario had been stationed at Lajes while I was there and recently moved to Hawaii. Rough life!

This is Cassaundra, Alivia, and Elijah...they used to go to my Playgroup at Lajes and now are stationed in Hawaii as well! We got to meet up for lunch one day on the base.

This is the beach on Hickam Air Force Base. Yes, the base has its own beach! These photos do not do the beach and water justice! I can't describe to you the wonderful turquoise color of the water! It was amazing!

My friend, Rosario, took me to Turtle Beach where I actually got to see sea turtles swimming around! Only one washed up on shore for a second for me to try to get a photo...

These are the only two photos where you can kind of see a turtle! No, they aren't rocks...I promise!

Here are some views form the botanical garden where Rosario and I went to go see a waterfall.

Rosario and I at a waterfall.

Here I am waiting in line to paddle out to the fall.

Here I am paddling out to the waterfall.

I made it! But I didn't want to get too close because I didn't want my hair to get messed up! :) I'm a silly girl sometimes!

I typically would be scared to eat something that is cooked in a short bus...but Rosario reassured me it was safe and that she had eaten here before.

This was the best shrimp I've ever eaten in my life! Wow! Makes me hungry for more!

Should it be "Ice" or "Iced?" Something didn't sound right. Anyway, no matter what it is, I had fabulous pineapple from this stand! It was to die for!

Rosario had some "Iced" cold coconut!

I can't decide which picture I like better, so I'm going to put them both up!

Kelvin took me to what has to be one of the golf courses with the most beautiful views in the world! Especially the back 9 holes! And while I may not make it into the LPGA with my golfing skills, at least I looked the part, right? :)

Who could possibly aim correctly at the pin when distracted by this view on your right side? At least that was my excuse...haha!

This golf course was on a Marine base. And while we were golfing, a plane kept dropping off paratroopers! It was rather cool!

Pro golfers in action! :)

I think I played the worst game of golf that I've ever played...but the beautiful course and views made up for my rather terrible shots!

What beautiful views!

After getting delayed in Houston due to thunderstorms on the way to Hawaii, my plans got shifted a little. I was supposed to go to the Big Island the first weekend I was in Hawaii but I missed that flight. So, Kelvin was nice enough to change my trip to the next weekend, even though I lost a day of vacation on the Big Island. Oh, well. At least I still got to go and experience a little of it's beauty!

Here Alyannah is pointing out my favorite flower...hydrangeas!!! Seeing them made me homesick for the Azores!

Probably the highlight of going to the Big Island was actually getting to see a volcano errupting! We went after dark to watch the blazing red lava shoot from the ground and flow into the ocean. Unforntunately, my camera does not take good night pictures, so I really could not capture it on film. The side of the mountain was actually glowing and then there was the one spot that was actually errupting! Anyway, here are a couple of pictures just to prove that I was there!

This is the freakiest picture I've ever taken! From this angle you can see the number 999 in the flames. But if you turn the picture up-side-down, you see the number 666, which is the devil's number...which is incredibly creepy!!!

The map of the most current erruption pattern. We were very lucky that we came at a time where we actually got to see a real live volcano errupting!

Aly and I survived the rather dark and treacherous walk on the uneven black lava rocks!!!

This was the macadamia nut factory on the Big Island. Yummy! (especially the dark chocolate covered nuts! mmmm...)

We drove through a rainforest!

We accidentally found the goregous spot on the Big Island when we were driving around! We saw a sign that said "scenic route" and decided to take it! Glad we did! It was beautiful!