House Tour

Hi! This post is mostly for my family, because they are curious about where we live and want to be able to picture us in our house. It's just a little bit of a tour of our house and the island-within-an-island that we live on. I apologize for the poor photo quality - someday I will take a photography class and learn about light... And we've put up pictures and curtains since these photos were taken (as well as scattered a million toys around), so it looks more like home now.

When we arrived in Hawaii, we were planning to live off base. We looked around at local housing and were disappointed by the poor quality and high prices we found. While we looked, we were staying at the Navy Lodge, which is a hotel on Ford Island. Ford Island is a a tiny island inside Pearl Harbor, on the southern side of Oahu. We kept driving around the island, looking at the military housing, and wishing we could just live there. However, all of the housing on the island is 3 or 4 bedroom, and we were only entitled to a 2 bedroom because we have 1 child. On the day we went to the housing office to check in though, they had no 2 bedrooms, so we lucked out and they placed us on Ford Island! Yippee!

So now we drive across a bridge, right past many of the WWII memorials, to get home every day. The island is maybe 1 1/2 miles by 1 mile? Not sure. On the island, you'll find a lot of military housing, the Navy Lodge, buildings where the military still works, a gym, a mini-mart, the Pacific Aviation Museum, and lots of memorials.

Here is Crumpet in front of our house. It's a 4 plex - 4 units linked together. We have 3 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, and a one car garage. The whole house has linoleum flooring, except the stairs which have carpet. It's weird and I'm not sure why they did that, but Crumpet has managed to fall down the stairs a couple of times, so I'm glad they carpeted them...
The neighborhood is a loop made up of these units.
The back of our house. The tree is a plumeria tree - it makes fabulous flowers.

Here's our living room as you come in the front door.
Living room, looking at front door:
Dining room from the living room. Kitchen is to the right; stairs, pantry, laundry room, 1/2 bath, and door to the garage are to the left.
Kitchen. I have tons of counter space!
The pantry. It's hard to see, but it's huge! I love it!
The laundry room. Any one who knows the saga of the laundry closet in Georgia will understand how much I adore this room! It's huge, and it has a closet to the left as well as the cabinets.
On to the upstairs... (Notice that Cobweb cat was very helpful in the filming of the tour; she somehow ended up in most of the pictures..)
Master bedroom. I'm standing in the master bathroom door to take the picture, and there is a long closet to the right.
Crumpet's room. He has a nice deep closet.
The school room/ guest room.This room is down a hallway from the master bedroom. Crumpet's bathroom is also off this hallway. So far, there are just boxes and toys on the right side of this room. We're planning to get something for guests to sleep on if any one comes to visit (hint hint, come visit!).
Speaking of house guests... We have found several of these guys in the house.
The garage. To the right, there is a good storage area.
The storage area:
We were hoping to feed beautiful, exotic Hawaiian birds and couldn't wait to set up a feeder when we moved in. Instead, we got TONS of pigeons. Uggh. It was like a horror movie. In the end, we stopped feeding the birds!
Here's our backyard.
Cobweb in our new garden. The cats can safely hang out in the backyard, and they love being able to go out.
Other side of the yard.
Some hibiscus plants and our vegetable garden. We planted a few veggies that were already started and a lot of seeds. We now have a very green garden and the tomatoes, eggplant and dill are nearly ready to pick!
Ford Island was once a runway, so some of it looks like this, with control buildings and office buildings across the tarmac.
An air raid shelter from WWII.
One of the cool things about living IN Pearl Harbor is that there are always new, huge ships pulling in for repairs, etc. We always go check them out - a boy's dream.
In front of the USS Utah memorial, which is really an old rusty ship half submerged in the water. This is where we go on our nightly crab hunt.
We have banyan trees on the island. These are the coolest things I've ever seen (anyone remember seeing them on Lost?), and that's saying something because all of the trees and other plants on this island are fascinating.

So that's our house! Lots of room for guests, lots of fun things to do, perfect weather... You know you want to visit...