The Flood

On Friday I left to go pick up the kids from preschool. I left a little bit early so I could stop at the library and the bank. By the time I got home we'd been gone an hour. As I got closer to the door I could hear the sounds of gushing water. I opened the door and saw we were flooded! About 2-3 inches of water was covering the downstairs.
We later found out that the flood was caused because the nut that attaches the water supply hose to the toilet cracked. Who would've thought a small $6 hose could do so much damage?


When I saw we were flooded I immediately called Zui (actually he happened to call at that exact moment). He was downtown and it would be a half hour before he'd be home. Luckily he called his dad to come over and help. Here's Yvonne sweeping the water out of the house.
Dad scooping the water and emptying it into the toilet. With 4 kids awake and a huge disaster at foot, I was VERY grateful for their help.

The water also seeped into our neighbor's house on our adjoining wall. Thankfully, we have great neighbors that were very understanding and didn't put up a big stink.

The kids thought it was great! They loved that our house turned into a giant puddle. They took off their shoes and started splashing around. And guess what? We even found some missing toys and puzzle pieces that floated out from underneath the fridge and other places!


We are still surveying the damage. After we pushed all the water out and dried up the place, we noticed our laminate flooring started to buckle :( We are really hoping it doesn't get worse and need to be replaced.
Well, it could've been worse, that's for sure. It could've happened UPstairs. We're counting our blessings...

New House Pics

We are still slowly unpacking and working on remodeling...but here is the latest state of our house :) This is just as you walk in the front door. The stairs are on the left, kitchen on the right.
Here's our kitchen, I Love the color Corina helped me pick out "Rookwood Blue Green." I can't say enough good about Sherwin Williams. I asked about a discount and they gave me each gallon of paint for $15 each!
Living room/family room. The desk will be moved into the office downstairs once our carpet comes in. The carpet should come in about 2 weeks, can't wait. Then we can finish moving furniture around and finally put up some pictures and decorate.
Dining room--I bought this table off of craigslist for $75. It comes with an extension leaf and 6 chairs, but all in terrible condition. So this is the next project I'm in the middle of (like I really needed another project...what was I thinking?!)
Looking outside to our lanai, which needs a LOT of work. Zui plans on removing all the concrete this week, then laying down a deck and putting in grass. Just one of many projects...
Before and after pics of the chairs I'm working on. We're still deciding on a color. DH doesn't like the red, so we may go for a brown. Still many hours left to go on this project, but little by little things are coming together!

A New House in the making...

On June 1st, Zui and I became homeowners for the very first time!!! We bought a 4 bed/3 bath in Mililani. It's great because it's walking distance to where we both work, at Zui's dad's house. So our house is considered a "row house"-- attached on both sides like a townhouse but without the association fees. Because it is an attached home, it sold for much cheaper than other 4 bed in the area, which run about $600k.

We are so excited to have: a garage, an attic, 4 bedrooms (Yay! Izaiah will no longer have to sleep in the living room!), a dishwasher, small backyard, and lots more room inside :) We are going from 700 living sq. feet in this 2 bed townhouse to almost 1700 sq ft.

So we actually haven't moved in...yet. We've owned the house 3 weeks and are still fixing it up. First thing to go was the popcorn ceiling. Zui got a few boys from church to help take it down (thank you Carson, Nathan, and Cameron!)

It was quite the project, but as you can see the boys had fun in the process with "snow"ball fights and rain showers.
This is most of the accumulated popcorn they collected...crazy!

With the popcorn ceiling down the next step was to texture, which Zui did with the help of a few boys again. Good thing I married such a handyman!
After texturing, they primed the ceiling, then painted it. Here's just a little idea of the mess in our house...good thing we're getting these carpets replaced.
4 days after we got the keys, Zui left to go to Moloka'i for a week for a high adventure survival camp with the young men. Luckily my friend Katie came to help me through it. We were determined to not let anything slow us down while Zui was gone so...everyday we found sitters (thank you Brady's!) to watch Anjuli and Zion for a few hours so we could paint.

Zeya either played in the portacrib (didn't last long) or tried to go to sleep in the portacrib (didn't really happen) and mostly just stayed attached to me in the baby trekker. I got a little paint in his hair, but he didn't mind :)
Sorry about all the cheesy pics--I had never picked up a paintbrush before in my life, so painting for me was such a thrill!

I loved watching the walls turn from dirty white to "cottage cream." It instantly made the house feel more like a home.


Here's my friend Katie. I really can't thank her enough. She flew all the way from New York to help me while Zui was gone. She watched the kids everyday while I taught piano, then during the day helped paint AND at night my visiting teachers stayed in the house with the sleeping babes so we could go back and paint til 11pm or so.