After a year of really BIG THINGS it is both comforting and normalizing to be finding joy in small and ordinary things, and to see them not small at all and life as anything but ordinary. So a blog post about some simple but delightful occurrences in our week.Birthdays and bananas - dogs and dedications and continuing to turn a house into our new home.
Lunel invited a group of girlfriends for a celebration -- and the cake!!! OMG. It was light fluffy sponge cake with many layers of whipped cream and lilikoi. We shared an outstanding dinner at the "Rim Restaurant" with window seats only a few feet from the edge of Kilauea Volcano. (Yeah, we know that might sound weird to some people, or the fact that we now live in a town called VOLCANO!) We have always known we were living on "an edge" of a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean; we still love it here)
The dog-and-beach photo is one of our beloved Reba-Bo-Beba who is doing very well in her new home. (The trauma of our relocation and stress resulted in some sad dynamics between her our other corgi dogs.) She has been re-homed in Kona and we get periodic updates and are happy she is now doing well.
As for the dedication -- hopefully it is large enough for you to read; if not just click on the photo to enlarge it. A framed copy is hanging on the wall just as you walk into the art studio, dedicating the space to Phil's grandfather and Lunel's dad whose influence in our lives helped shape the people we are today.
AND LOOK GUYS -- we have bananas in our yard. The the flower of one of our many bananas looks totally alien. FYI: Bananas are not trees - technically the plant is an HERB, but the banana is a fruit. We're lucky to have about 12 of them -- ranging from keiki (baby) size to this over 20' tall.A nearly unbelievable set of circumstances and the involvement of many people lead us to our charming new home (Hale Le'a) for which we are grateful. It was hard to lose our home, 99% of all our possessions -- but finding this house which included buying all of the previous owners' normal home furnishings, meant essentially moving into someone else's fully-stocked home. It has taken many months, but we are feeling more settled and comfortable. The library and our art collection is gone which means we have been on the hunt for some haysmer-style art.
Part of the excitement these days is the conversion of this (photo) space into what will be a big lanai with a hot tub (where the light blue elliptic is.) We are envisionaries - the transformation we created with our beautiful Luana home in Leilani Estates we can do again, albeit slower, with the help of our highly competent contractors. We WILL post the after photos in a few weeks.