Christmas in the Midwest-Our Trip Home!

We left the 80 degree weather of Hawaii on December 3rd and arrived in 20 degree Sioux Falls, South Dakota. We were greeted by Rudolph (aka my mom with antlers and a red nose) and a car with the heat on high! :) We celebrated Christmas with my family while we were home. We also got to see my good friend, Jessica, from high school and her husband and daughter. We enjoyed seeing my little sister's baby bump too. We'll have a new niece or nephew in April! On Tuesday we went to Chaelor and Hunter's school and ate lunch with them. Hunter's class was learning about Hawaii so we were guest speakers in his classroom. The time passed way too quickly while we were in George!

The Stille family

Jessica and I

On Wednesday, December 9 we flew from Sioux Falls to Chicago to stay with Chris' family. Despite the snowstorm we made it safely to Illinois/Wisconsin. We got to see our nephew, Austin, for the first time! It was so fun to spend so much time with him! We also celebrated Christmas with Chris' family while we were there. I also got to see my Grandma Stille and Aunt Linda. Chris got plenty of basketball in with his dad, brother, and brother-in-law. The girls got pedicures. Several of Chris' extended family members joined us for lunch on Sunday afternoon-Grandpa and Grandma Mulder, Uncle Tom, Uncle Jim and Aunt Sue. Our time in Wisconsin passed far too quickly as well!

Austin with his favorite uncle and auntie!

The Mulder Women

My Aunt Linda and I

Grandma Stille and I

We are thankful that our families made our time at home so special and a big thanks for turning up the heat! :)


We got back to Hawaii on December 14 and returned to work on December 15. I get off work at 1pm tomorrow and Chris has to work the whole day. We plan to go to our church's Christmas Eve service at 6pm. We both have off Christmas Day! :) Chris was supposed to work, but he was able to get it off. We plan to head to the North Shore Christmas morning to see the 20ft. waves. After that we are headed to one of the other intern's house for chili and Christmas movies. At 3pm we will have Christmas dinner with our pastor's family and church family. Although we would love to be with our own family on Christmas Day we are very thankful for our Hawaii family!

Good News and Chinaman's Hat

First, I must share our good news! On Tuesday, I received my loan repayment deposit. I applied for the National Health Service Corps Loan Repayment Program earlier this year and got a contract and after 3 months of patiently waiting (or not so patiently at times) I finally got my money! Since I work at a community health center and it's considered an underserved area I qualifed for the loan repayment. I have a 2-year contract to work at the Health Center in order to get the money. Not a bad deal! :)

Very excited to write the check!

On Wednesday afternoon Chris and I headed to the North Shore. Our friend, Dave, has a house right on the beach. He has graciously invited us over several times. We kayaked with him to Chinaman's Hat. It was about a mile to get there. Along the way we saw a couple huge sea turtles in the water. It was amazing! Once we got to Chinaman's Hat we hiked to the top on the regular, clearly paved trail. It was a great view from the top. We even saw more sea turtles come to the surface. We enjoyed a little time in the ocean at the sandy beach. There was a small cave we sat in and took a quick picture. We couldn't stay in there long because the waves were so intense it was knocking us around. We were getting ready to head back to our kayaks when Chris decided we should climb up the other side of Chinaman's Hat, the "less paved" and straight up way. Dave decided he would try it too and what was I supposed to do? I didn't want to be left by myself so I agreed to give it a try too. We all made it up safely (minus a few cuts and panics!). It was a good challenge! Chris was proud I gave it a try and made it! :) We then hiked down and kayaked back to Dave's house. We had a great time and look forward to going back!

A picture of the mountains behind Chinaman's Hat

Chris and I in our kayak...at the end of our trip!
Here's a picture of me climbing!

Here's a picture of Chris in front of Chinaman's Hat. The traditional way to climb is on the right side, around the back. The not-so traditional way was climbing on the left side, a good challenge!

A picture of us at the top!

An Overdue Update

We haven't been doing a very good job of keeping this blog up to date, but in my defense, there is not much to update. We continue to be busy with work. Chris is on his 2nd week of his ICU rotation. He is enjoying the ICU and is half done with his long 30-hour shifts. He has done enough arterial blood gases to be "checked off" so he can officially do them on his own now. Exciting! :) His next rotation is Nephrology, which will be exciting for me to hear about! I miss working in nephrology.

We also head back to the COLD Midwest in December. A week from today! We are very much looking forward to seeing our family and friends, but we are not looking forward to the cold. I must admit I had to wear a sweatshirt a couple nights ago because a "cold front" came through and it was 80 degrees! (Mom and Dad turn up the heat now! Bruce & Doris I'll sleep in the living room by the wood stove!)

I continue to see interesting patients everyday. I have done many things at this job that I've either never done before or never seen before. A brief rundown...a patient with multiple personalities, telling ladies they are pregnant, telling patients I think they have cancer, being called horrible names because I wouldn't give a patient pain medications, etc.. Every day is a challenge and a new experience! I feel more settled in my job now and feel like I am more productive with my time.

Chris and I continue to run when we have time. Actually, Chris runs every day he can when he either doesn't have to go in to work or he gets done early and I run Monday-Friday. It's nice to be able to run outside everyday. There has only been 1 day when it was raining and we couldn't run outside. Speaking of rain, it's been raining here a lot (which means it has rained here several days in a row for more than 5 minutes at a time). We still got 2 hours of beach time in today! :) Back to running....we ran in the Race for the Cure, the breast cancer 5K a few weekends ago. I organized a team from work. It was a great run and Chris said it was the fastest I have ever run with him! :) Pictures below...

I will try to be better about updating!

After the race...

Waikiki Health Center Team...before the race...

And I'll end with a picture of us....just another day at the beach!

Maui

This past weekend we headed to Maui (island 3/6 we've visited) for a quick trip! We were able to get $50 round trip tickets from Oahu to Maui, which is a great deal! We left at 6am on Saturday and returned on Sunday evening at 10:30pm. It was a quick trip, but FULL of activities! Here's a recap...

After getting our rental car on Saturday we drove to a beach that was supposed to have dolphins, but unfortunately we didn't see a big group of them. We both think we saw a couple pop their heads out of the water, but we're not sure. Of course we weren't able to capture any pictures! We decided to head to another beach to snorkel. It was great! There were a ton of beautiful colored fish and the water wasn't that cold!

We ate pizza at a local pizza joint and then headed to Lahaina where our hotel was. We walked around Lahaina and did some shopping. After that we decided to go parasailing. It was $70/person, but we got a great kama'aina (local) discount and only paid $40/person. We were ~1200 feet in the air. It was awesome! We had both parasailed before, but never together so it was fun to experience it together! We had a lady in the boat taking pictures for us and she did a good job. We counted 42 pictures! After parasailing we headed to another beach and saw giant sea turtles swimming. It was neat to see! Then we headed to the hotel and checked in. We got ready and went to the Old Lahaina Luau. This was our second luau. It was fun to go to another luau and of course the food was excellent!

Sunday we woke up fairly early and drove to a neighboring town to bike down a volcano. We had to re-book with a different company late Saturday afternoon because of a major screw up by the first company we booked with. Long story, but needless to say, it's not over yet. I will be calling them tomorrow when I can talk to a manager about their HORRIBLE service. Ok, so here's a quick rundown of what happened: Saturday 11am received a call from Mountain Riders saying there was no one else on our tour and that we would have to reschedule for another day or be upgraded to the sunrise tour. We explained that this was our last day in Maui and we had to go on Sunday. She said that she would call us back at 5pm when they would be closing and let us know if anyone else joined our tour. At 4:55 Chris called them and a different person answered the phone and said that no one joined our tour and now the sunrise tour was full. This person would not give us her name and offered to do nothing for us except refund our money. (We booked this tour >1 week prior and paid for it.) She was LESS than helpful and we were very angry! Thankfully we got a tour with another company. It turned out to be a great tour. We rode in a bus to the top of the volcano and then rode (coasted!) down the volcano. It was very cold at the top of the volcano and rainy. We wore rain suits for the bike tour as it rained almost the whole time. Despite the rain we had a great time! After the bike tour we took the famous Road to Hana. This is a road full of tight turns and one-way bridges with many waterfalls along the route. The max speed limit is 15mph and the total mileage is 32 miles. We stopped several times to take pictures! We had a guide book offering many inside tips as well. One tip we decided to follow, led us up a waterfall, through thick mud, only to find that we couldn't see the "better" waterfall. Our legs were full of mud, but it was fun and worth a good laugh. After the tour we went to a couple of beaches....black sand and red sand beaches. We then ate supper and headed back to the airport.

It was a quick 2 days and we were exhausted on Monday. Thank goodness for Labor Day! We spent the day grocery shopping, doing laundry, and taking naps!

Here are some pics of our trip....

Parasailing!

Old Lahaina Luau at sunset

Rainsuits and our cruiser bikes. (It really was a bike tour, not a space mission!)

Road to Hana...with legs full of mud!

Koko Head Hike

A few weeks ago we went on our first hike here in Hawaii. It was a hike of 1,048 steps straight up. We went early in the morning to avoid the afternoon heat, although it was still very hot! Here are some pictures...

Before the hike

At the top of the mountain

Other than that, we've fallen into a fairly "normal routine" which looks like this:

4:30-5:00am Chris gets up sometime within this time period and a short 20 minutes later is out the door on his way to Tripler.
6:25-6:30am I get up and begin my morning routine, run, finish the prior day's charts for work, leave for work.
9:00am I arrive at work, sometimes earlier, but my first patient is scheduled at nine.
WORK, WORK, WORK
4:00pm-7:00pm-10:00pm At some point Chris finishes work and drives 30 minutes home (on a good day).
6:30pm I finish work and begin my 20 minute commute home. (I have every Wednesday afternoon off from work!)
7:00-7:30pm We eat supper, made by whoever gets home first!
9:00pm We head to bed and it starts all over again.

Our weekends are filled with Chris working one of the days, I take care of household tasks and the other weekend day is spent at the beach, church, and relaxing.



We are both enjoying our jobs, however are challenged on a daily basis. Our conversations in the evenings are often centered around the interesting, weird, unbelievable patients we saw that day.

This weekend we're headed to a party with other Tripler physicians and families. It should be a good time! Hope you all have a good rest of the week and weekend!

We're settled in!

An overdue update...

Our stuff from Iowa finally arrived last Friday morning! It took about 3 hours for the movers to move everything inside. After that, they left Chris to start unpacking. He tackled the boxes of clothes, DVDs, and the electronics! I got home from work, ate dinner with Chris before he left for work and then began unpacking. I unpacked the kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom. This past weekend we did more unpacking and organizing. We are all settled, except for the desk things in our guest bedroom. No worries, the sheets are on the bed and it's ready for you to visit! See pictures below!

Besides finally getting our stuff and organizing we have been extremely busy with our work. Chris continues to do inpatient cardiology and will actually switch to inpatient wards on Thursday. He has enjoyed this past month, but is also glad to have one month behind him. He is looking forward to working LESS already! His days have been starting around 5am for a half-hour commute and then he arrives home around 6:30-7:00pm after another half-hour commute. He has been on call the last few Fridays so that means going in at 7pm and staying until noon (or 1pm or 2pm) on Saturday. This next rotation he will be on call, but no Friday nights! :)

My job has been very busy as well. I am scheduled for 8 hour days right now, but I either go in early to finish charting from the day before or stay late to finish charting. I stay at work as long as Chris is still at work as well. My experiences thus far have been very eye-opening and challenging. It's been hard to know what to do with patients who have no money for any testing, no money to buy medications, no insurance, etc. It's hard for me to accept the idea of "you can only do so much." I feel like I'm not doing my job adequately, but it's true....I can only do so much! Starting in August I will be working 4 9-hour days and 1 4-hour day. I'm not sure that will be a better schedule, but we'll see.

Here are the pics of our unpacked house!

Hawaii Firsts...

This week has been a busy, but fun week! It started with a busy day of golfing for Chris on Monday with his friend, Scott. Scott's wife, Jamie, and I went shopping! That evening Chris and I enjoyed our first Hawaiian luau together. We went to the Hale Koa, which is the military hotel. The entertainment was great and the kalua pork was fantastic! We had a great time!

At the luau

On Tuesday we were able to pick up Stratty (the Dodge Stratus). It finally arrived from Iowa. Once we got the car we had to go to Tripler to get a form to fill out for our Hawaii registration. We then had to get a safety inspection. Hawaii requires that all cars have a safety inspection done on a yearly basis to be sure they are in good, driveable condition. This was our first inspection since the Kia we bought already had one done. Unfortunately, Stratty's tires were worn and they required us to get new tires before it would "pass." This meant more $$$$ spent! Since it's the end of the day by now, we couldn't finish the registration because the place closed and we didn't have our completed safety inspection. This was extremely frustrating! It was something that shouldn't have required a whole day to finish. Tuesday night was our last free night since we both had to start work on Wednesday. We enjoyed dinner at Red Lobster.

Wednesday was Chris' first day of residency. His alarm went off at 4:15 am and he got home around 7 pm. Overall, he had a good day, however he was amazed at how busy he was and how many things (other than medicine) he'd have to do! This was also my first day of work at the Waikiki Health Center. Much like Chris' day, mine was a lot of orientation-type things and not much medicine! I will start seeing patients next week! We attempted to finish the registration for the car tonight, however Chris wasn't with me at the city hall so he couldn't sign the form we needed. Not a huge deal though because she gave me a temporary registration and our new Hawaii license plates.

Thursday was day 2 for us at work and each of us had better days....more medicine for both of us!

Today was another busy day. We went to our townhome this morning and assembled our furniture. Our living room is now put together, except for our TV. We even took some pictures (see below). There are also pictures of our first painting job. Yes, we finally finished painting our bedroom and bathroom. It actually looks pretty good! Tonight is Chris' first night on call. He's going in at 7pm and will stay all night until tomorrow at noon. This will be my first evening alone in Hawaii and I will be going to see a movie (yes, by myself).

Our newly painted bedroom!

And bathroom!

Our living room!

This is our entertainment center (we want our TV!) and that is a chair with an ottomon (hard to see that in the picture).

Tomorrow we will be celebrating our first holiday in Hawaii with fireworks at the Ala Moana beach park! Have a great 4th everyone!

The Big Island, Furniture, Car Saga

This past weekend we flew to Hilo, which is on the Big Island. This was our first experience with Go! airlines. This is a discount airline, which only flies between the islands. The flight only cost $43 one way, but then again the flight was only 37 minutes long! Anyway, our flight on Friday night was 1 hour late and then our flight back to Honolulu was cancelled so they put us on a later flight Sunday night. This was fine with us as it gave us more time in Hilo, however it was 30 minutes late too. I guess "you get what you paid for" is appropriate in this case. On to the juicy details....

First, Chris had Friday afternoon off so we decided we should get Hawaii drivers' licenses. We get a "kama'aina" discount. Kama'aina in Hawaiian means local. We had to take a written test to get our licenses and could only miss 6 out of the 30 questions. Well, we both passed. Chris missed 2 and I just barely passed...I missed 6.

On to Hilo......
We woke up early on Saturday morning and drove to Volcano National Park. (See pictures below) We were one of the first ones there for the day and it was free admission this weekend! :) We drove around the whole park and took many good pictures. It was amazing to see how the lava once flowed and the formations it made. After the park we drove all over the island. We went to the Mauna Loa macadamia factory, the southernmost winery in the US, South Point (the most southern point in the US), black sands beach, etc. You'd think there would be a huge sign or marker at the southernmost point of the US, but in fact there was simply a small plaque on a stone; slightly disappointing! While at South Point we watched a few people jump off a 25-foot cliff into the ocean. Chris thought this looked really cool and contemplated doing it. He realized though that he had no swim trunks or any change of clothes in the car. Wait, no problem--he had boxers on. All he had to do was take his shorts off. Yes, I encouraged him. He stood on the edge in only his boxers deciding if he should jump. I quickly reminded him that he was standing there in his underwear and that he needed to jump. So......

Here he is climbing the ladder back up to the top. He said it was worth it!

This is a lava tube at Volcano National ParkThis is where the road used to be, but lava has covered the road and thus the road is closed!
Here is the volcano during the day.

Here is the volcano at night...see the orange lava?!

After South Point we went to the Black Sands Beach and then we went to see the "live" lava from the viewing point. We took a little hike out to the viewing area and then waited until dark to see the red/orange lava. It was very cool to see!

Us at Black Sands Beach.

Sunday we spent all day driving around the island on scenic routes. We saw many waterfalls and went on a botanical garden tour. We also did some local shopping. It was a great trip! AND our new nephew was born while we were out and about. Austin Thomas Mulder was born to Brian and Jodi (Chris' brother and his wife) on Sunday afternoon! Congrats and we can't wait to see baby Austin in person!

The beautiful waterfalls!

Our new nephew and the new parents!

Furniture~ Our furniture was delivered today! Yay! It definitely filled up our living room! We can't wait until our other things arrive so we can finally move in! We bought paint today and plan to paint our bedroom and bathroom on Thursday.

Car Saga~ This is a very short recap of what happened. The first car we bought here in Hawaii had a salvage title, which we found out after the fact and we didn't think it would be wise to keep the car. After many headaches, discussions, money lost, lessons learned etc. we finally were able to "sell back" the car to the previous owner. This is such a relief to us! We decided to look for another car at a dealership and luckily we found a great car today! It is being detailed and we pick it up tomorrow! We will post pictures of it then!

That is it for now. We are on the downward slide. The REAL thing starts next Wednesday...Chris begins residency and I begin work!

Our "new" home!

Week 2 of our Hawaii adventure begins....

It's official...we signed a lease on Tuesday night for our new townhome! It's too bad we can't officially move in, ok, we could but we don't have anything to move in until our stuff arrives from IA!

This week has been filled with buying lots of new things! Chris had Wednesday off so we headed to the NEX (Navy Exchange) and went on a shopping spree! We started the day by getting my haircut. After that, we bought a bedspread and pillow for your room (yes, you, our guests!) We also bought a bunch of miscellaneous things since we got 10% off all our day's purchases. Chris thought of this as a great opportunity to buy a surfboard! He bought a 9 foot long board, complete with a sock cover and leash. He was so proud walking around the store with it! We had lunch at the NEX and then headed to the NEX furniture store. Chris strapped the surfboard onto the top of our car and off we went! We again used the 10% discount to our advantage! We bought a sectional couch, chair, ottomon, coffee table, 2 end tables, an entertainment center with hutch, area rug, and 2 glass vases! WOW, that is a lot of stuff! It will be delivered to our townhome on Tuesday. I hope it all fits!

Without further ado.....here are the pics of our townhome!

Ok, this is not our townhome (thankfully!). This is our very messy hotel room. Notice our business center on the desk (a computer and printer!) and Chris' surf board in the back right corner?! Just thought you should see how we're living right now!

This is our townhome! Actually, the picture is slightly misleading...the only thing that is ours in this picture is the garage behind the (rental) car and the door to the right of that in the background. Our townhome is just the bottom floor.

Here is our kitchen!

This is a partial picture of the living room. I took a good picture of the wall (as Chris says) and not a good picture of the room.

Here is the dining room!

This is 1/2 of the master bedroom! (Like the baby pink walls? Yeah, we don't either...we're hoping to repaint them if the owners approve of "Appalachian Trail," the green paint we picked out!)

This is the master bathroom! Notice the double sinks, a huge plus! Chris has already claimed the one on the left. (I don't know why, there's nothing different about it!)

This is your room (yes, the guest bedroom)! Sorry about the bad picture, the room is actually much larger!

This is your bathroom (the guest bathroom)!

And...here is our backyard! Yes, this is the WHOLE backyard! There is a little patio part where I'm standing to take the picture.

I will attempt to get better pictures (ok, Chris will take them) of our place with all our stuff! Give us a few weeks though it's still traveling here!

Next on the agenda: Friday--Take a written test to get Hawaii driver's licenses! Yes, a written test! Hopefully we'll pass. Then.....we're flying to Hilo, the BIG island for the weekend! We plan to go to Hawaii Volcano National Park, to the black sand beach, etc.

Watch for a blog post on Monday or Tuesday with details of our trip!