The West is Best!

When moving out to Fiji, the plan was to live in Suva (the south side of the island) Stuart would go to school and I'd work. When we got here, we were there in Suva trying to get things settled. We were looking for housing, going to USP to get all of the details taken care of for Stuart to enroll. During this time, we were finding out a few things we didn't anticipate. We decided Suva wasn't the place for us and Stuart wasn't going to go to school anymore.

We'll just treat it like a long holiday and move back home to Hawaii. We had rented a little spot in Pacific Harbour for the month. We would finish out the month there while we did fun stuff people do when they go to Fiji. We were looking for flights, and even asked a friend if he could pick us up from the airport.

We knew people would be asking us how the surf was and we had to try and surf Cloudbreak and all those spots. It was almost the end of the month and time to buy our return flight. But before that, we had to go surf. We found a company that would pick us up, take us out on the boat and drop us off afterwards. That's when we met Ian, the owner of Fiji Surf Co. Ian was looking for some surf photographers to work for him so he could offer that service to his guests. We talked a little bit about what he was looking for, and what we had to offer. We had found our match!

We were moving to the West!

Stuart remembered there was a family who lived really close to Ian's house and the boat launch where the surf trips left from everyday.  He also remembered there just happened to be another house on the property that didn't have anyone living in it back when he was serving his mission.  We spoke to the Reddy's asking about the house to see if it was empty and if we could live there.  Everything was falling into place perfectly!


Now a whole bunch of photos...  Pretty much just of our house and the "kids".  Sorry if you get sick of seeing mochi and kitty but they've already grown so much so I need to put up their little pictures so I can remember how small they started out :)

I love my "Mochi&Me" time.  He's gotten a little too big for him to sit comfortably on my belly now so he's always trying to get away. 

This is pretty much the whole front part of the house...  sitting room and kitchen.  I'm backed up against the kitchen sink.  I'm strategically down low so you can't see our messy kitchen table :)

 

 

 

 

I love it when Kitty Sleeps with her tongue hangin out like that. 

I'm pretty sure this was a one time thing.  He started out as a good sharer.  Then I think he tried to "share" some one else food and he learned to be selfish when they barked and growled at him. 

He's so little!  And so cute!  I'll have to post a more recent picture because his ears aren't floppy anymore.  Heeler's have ears that stick straight up

Our House!

View from out our front door...  You can't see them in this photo but on a clear day I've counted  more than 15 islands out on the horizon!

Kitty

The papaya tree in front of our house!  Sooooo Good!!!

Mochi, back when he was still having a hard time climbing onto the deck...
Oh and this deck Stuart and Bro. Reddy made one night without any power tools!!!  Pretty impressive :)

We made Board hangers in the rafters...  saves space.  Not to mention how awesome they look up there!






We're happy and healthy out here in Fiji and living a wonderful life!  We miss our family and friends but are grateful that we are able to have such a crazy adventure together.  

Have a great week!!! 

#4: Take a Trip to Fiji. CHECK!!!

I must say that I think I went above and beyond on this one!  I didn't just take a trip to Fiji, I moved here!  Do I get extra credit for that???  I think I should :)

Here's the stamp in my passport from when I came in:

Fiji has BEAUTIFUL water:

Uh... yeah:

And BEAUTIFUL waves:

#3: Add to our Family of 2. CHECK!!!

I've been slacking big time.  I've also noticed that I've checked off a few things from my 101 in 1001 list so I need to update the list and blog about some of them... The interesting ones at least.  #3 is: Add to our family of 2.  Now don't get too excited just yet.  We're not having a baby within the next nine months... but we have added to our family.  We have 2 "Kids" now.  A boy and a girl named Kitty and Mochi.  Here's a little video of them.  

Kitty is great!  She likes to eat spiders and cockroaches which I love!!!  She also keeps any rats away... I haven't seen any around since we brought her home.  Unfortunately she also likes to eat geckos and these cute little birds that hang around our house.  It was so sad the first time I saw it... but now its no big deal as long as she doesn't bring it inside the house I'm fine with it... Survival of the fittest (or biggest, sneakiest, and quickest) right?

I've always, always, ALWAYS wanted a puppy... and know we have one!  Mochi is awesome!  He's so cute and he can swim :)  We took him out on a stand up paddle board and went up the river... we had a few spills but nothing he couldn't handle.  Such a trooper.  Mochi loves to play with Kitty... I'm not so sure the opposite is true.  Mochi just wants to play but he tends to be a little too ruff with his sister... good things she's tough and can handle it :)

Kitty is a funny girl... I think sometimes she thinks she's a puppy because whenever we come home from somewhere, she's always running out to greet us... it's pretty awesome!  We love our Kids!  They're so fun!

ps...  we've learned how to use iMovie so we're making videos now :)  ENJOY!

Snap Crackle Pop!!!

This morning I woke up to the sound of.... well I wasn't sure what it was at first. In the state of confusion I'm usually in right when I wake up, I couldn't tell if it was POURING rain on our tin roof, or firecrackers going off (Yes when it rains hard, the sound can be confused to firecrackers, don't be jealous:). It was neither. It was the sugar cane field being burned to get ready to harvest.

There have been sugar cane fields burning around here for the past few weeks (or a couple months maybe) and I have been wondering when Reddy (our landlord/neighbor) would burn his. Since we live right next to it I was looking forward to witnessing it! A few days ago we were going past our house on the boat and saw the field burning. I was so bummed because I wanted to be there, up close and personal. And I wanted to see it burn at night... I thought it would be more dramatic that way and make for a better photo op. Turns out they only burned half of it. Lucky me!

So I woke up grabbed my camera and headed out to get a few shots of the guys hard at work. It's pretty amazing that they clear the whole entire field by hand! No machinery is used to cut the cane. Its just a bunch of guys with their cane knives. The only machinery used is for transporting the stuff!

Hard at work:

Oops! I've been spotted!

Here's Reddy taking some juice to the workers:

Taking a break:

Off to quench the thirst of more hard working men:

Some burnt sugar cane:

And of course Mochi was happy to be out tromping through the remains of the cane :)

And this is just outside our house and I thought it was pretty :)

Thanks for stopping by!

I know this doesn't show you much about what we've been up to but there's more to come :)

Fiji!

I'm gonna try to blog again!!! Here are a few photos from our first month here in Fiji! This first one is kinda funny... it's where Stuart would have been going to school if things had gone as planned...

We spent our first few days in Suva looking for housing and checking thing out. We would jump on the bus and go into town or over to USP to get some stuff done. The buses are pretty awesome! Nice and open... they blast the music, unfortunately its the super irritating stuff (and the same 5 songs).

The beautiful beaches of FIJI:

Pretty stinky actually.... I don't know if Suva has any pretty beaches, I didn't see any. But this is where we would have lived.

This is the guard in front of the President's House. They're not supposed to talk or smile or anything... but we got him to talk... just barely, and through closed lips hahah! Stuart was speaking Fijian and he said it freaked him out! Ha!

Thats our green bus we always took to get back to where we were staying:

Me on the sea wall at Suva Harbor... there's actually a pretty fun wave out there that would have been our home break... but Tavarua/Namotu waves are better :) And there's way more options! Plus it's FREE! Can't beat that!

Hare Krishna Ice cream!

One day we went up to see Stuart old Mission President who is now the temple president... Jolly little couple!

Here's the Suva Temple! Beautiful... this shot was taken by the Security guard we were hanging out with while waiting for the Woolley's to come home.

Here we are on our way to our very first surf in Fiji!

Stuart waxing up his new board for the first time!

We had to go out from the Resort Waidroka (a beautiful spot) but it was pretty pricey)

Since it was our first time out, neither one of us wanted to play photographer so this was the only shot we got .

We moved out of Suva while we were trying to figure out what we were going to do and landed in Pacific Harbour. In a place called Arts Village. We had a cute little flat there.

It had the best pool ever that we would go play in every day! Tiki Pool Bar!

No one else was ever there so we had the place to ourselves... yeah thats a slide coming out of the Tiki man's head :)

I've never tried to post a video on here so we'll see how this goes :)

This was the view from our window!

We loved our little place in Arts Village while we were there but we were ready to leave when we did. And we're loving our new home in the West! The West is Best!!!

Hopefully I'll post more soon!!!