arriving in aloha...

well, we made it. we had a fantastic "farewell tour" through oregon and northern california, but i will tell you about that later. the morning that we flew out was quite humorous (and a little stressful). as you have heard in earlier posts, our house doesn't close till march 21st. what that means is that we don't get our stuff till then, and we are living in a temporary house for the time being. trying to return the rental car and cart all our stuff to the airport was chaos. wes dropped me off at the shuttle, while he returned the car and a man actually came up to me very concerned/frightened that i was traveling alone. at one point i looked back at wes as he was crossing the street and he was standing with the "smart cart" and a pile of luggage was sitting in the road. when i walked away from the stroller (with coen in it) to help him, it tipped backwards because i had too much stuff hanging on the handles. oops! we had so so so much stuff.

coen was a total ROCK STAR on the plane. wes and i were just looking at each other going, "who is this kid?!" he took a super long nap, watched movies and chatted with anyone that would stop and listen. the night before we left i bought him a cheap-0/ugly scooby doo suitcase from wal-mart. both wes and i were not sue if it was a good idea, we were pretty certain it would turn into a huge pain in the neck. ends up, coen adores it. he was pulling in all over the airport saying, "my suitcase! my suitcase!" best seven bucks we spent the whole trip!

coen kept up the rock star attitude till he went to bed that night. praise God! we woke up early the next morning and set out on an adventure to volcano village's farmers market. we bought tons of local produce and have been enjoying it all week.

our temporary house is in the national park. the volcano observatory owns the house, and uses it for visiting scientists and guests. we are a 3 minute walk the rim of hale mau mau crater at kilauea. the night we arrived the volcano goddess madame pele welcomed us with a new eruption and we felt several earthquakes. the hale mau mau crater is currently erupting, but it is not the location that you are seeing on the news. coen and i have been taking a long walk each morning along the hale mau mau rim. it is breath taking! coen has become obsessed with seeing the volcano, and he asks us a hundred times a day if he can, "see volcano please?" uh, oh...do we have a little volcanologist on our hands?

it is so lush and green. this side of the island remind me of a topical version of seattle. the picture below is the view from the lookout just behind our house. the plume is erupting to the left, on the far right of the picture sits wes' office.

here's a close up of the plume.

and here's wes' office, perched on the hill overlooking the hale mau mau crater. office upgrade? um, yes!

our enthusiastic volcano chaser said to me this morning, "there it is! very hot, be careful volcano!" good advice. he also insists that we try to blow out the "smoke" like it's a candle. we keep trying, but no luck thus far.

so far we are settling in just fine. it's fun to not have a house to unpack, but i am getting antsy to move in. these next couple weeks will be a good chance to explore, and adapt while we wait for our house. really, it feels like we are on vacation. i am sure that will fade when the chores of life start to build up. for now....the adventure continues.

oh, one last thing. coen has been learning to use the camera. i plan to highlight some of his work in a later post, but as i was going through pictures today i found this one. it made my heart happy. i love my boys.