Back in the day

Back in the day the land was a jungle. There were no huge open expanses where you could see the ocean- or even 20 ft in front of you! Unfortunately we didn't take too many pictures then. That's a shame.

But we did find this one!


This picture was likely taken in either November or December of 2004. I'm 6 or 7 months pregnant here and climbing through some THICK hau.
This is just a ways behind the mango tree.

pics!

Our fabulous friend Deborah visited last week after a long absence from visiting. These are the pictures she took:

standing where the house will be!

Ass Backwards

We are so enthusiastic these days about our project that we're going a little ass backwards. It's hard not to get the work done while there is a willing and able person there to DO the work. When we started with the bulldozer guys we had an idea for our house. Well, at some point we changed part of that (we can change our minds, no?).

So yesterday we were there- dragged the whole family ( I say dragged because it was a little of that. The kids next door have some video game crap that's just enthralling them all). Twas an absolutely GORGEOUS day. Not one cloud in the sky. We needed to stake out where the house was gonna go. Ummmm... we have an idea for the house, but not plans for the house. I guess other people usually have house plans before they start dozing a house pad. Nevermind that.... we're not like other people!

So we were staking our house. Saul, buldozer guy tells us that we're standing on fill. Like it's not solid ground because he's filled it in, rather than cut it. Okay.... so we moved the house a bit in the other direction and shaved off a few feet- see the beauty of NOT having plans?? The flexibility!

The whole house plans thing had also come about because the pool builder guy.... who's ready to start (after pulling permits) said that usually you pull the permit for both the house and the pool together. Or at least there are house plans pulled 1st. Peter, the other pool guy (and also the water tank guy) said he could try and pull it sans house plans... in any case we're working on house plans.

GB, in fact, stayed up late last night drawing, while I snoozed heavily with Luka. I put him to sleep and never got up to hang with GB.... so he was on his own.
And yes, that means that we decided NOT to go with the kit homes. We heard another bad thing about working with the multi-facetted dude and decided to just trust our instincts on that anyways.

The plan is that we draw up our own plans and then give them to a draftsperson Val, who we worked with before. It won't be as fast as getting the kit, but it'll be ours : )

The road looks great. The rock walls are coming along. Things are happening!

Houses. Houses. Houses.

We are in a quandry over houses. We visited the multi-facetted homes a couple of weeks ago (and yes, they misspelled faceted....). The house was mostly pretty cool- and we could really see our main part of our house (i.e. kitchen/ living room) being one of their hale-12s. However.... the owner/ salesguy is kinda of a jerk- he's arrogant and just doesn't seem like he'd be easy to work with at all. We had visited there years ago and had the same impression, so I don't think this was a bad day sort of deal.

Since their system is also not perfect for us, we're leaning away from buying from them. The process of designing and building a house is stressful enough as it is- we don't need issues with the kit home people.

So now we're back to designing our own house. We have some pretty basic plans about what we want, but of course there are a zillion details to figure out.

We are also checking out some other cedar homes.... waiting to hear back.

I've got a bunch of pics on my computer here as well. Gotta load them up.

POOL!

We've had so much going on recently and have so much to write about....

We're in deep discussion over house and designs.

The exciting thing is that we came up with a fabulous (we think) pool design. Though we have a stream (actually 2) on the property, and the ocean nearby, we decided that since we love the water SO much, we need to have a pool. This pool is designed so that laps are easy (on left side of drawing) and there's plenty of place for kids and all to PLAY.

We figure that with a pool we'll have to have a party every weekend..... sounds good to us!!!!
oh, and crazily enough, the pool will go in before the house. The pool contractor said it's much easier that way anyways! woo hoo!

of course.... gotta say that the fabulous drawings above were done by GB. We sat out at the pool site and talked about design and then he executed this. :)

Woo Hoo! Driveway!

After a long day in town of errands and dentistry, we decided to pop over and check out what Louis and Saul have done on the driveway. Wow.... it was a productive day for them. Had they not been blocking the entry, we could have driven the van down there. That's major for us!

Here's the view down from the highway (with teeny GB and teeny Ra'am walking)
Back up to the highway
This is at the bottom of that stretch- there's a rock wall on either side of the wall that needs a little TLC in the form of weed control.


Once you turn near that rock wall, you go through this beautiful tunnel of trees. This is an old railroad track from back in the day.
Look at all of that ROCK!
And here's where the road ends for the day. You can see how deep the rock is.
yay US!

tomorrow GB's meeting with Peter, the water tank guy, who may also do a pool for us. We'll see.

Stirring up the LAND!

Big things have been happening here, despite our infrequent posting. We've had tons of dozing work done in the last month. And with big machines, change is rapid!

In the middle of begining work with the new dozer guy, we took a family trip to Florida and LA to visit with family and celebrate Thanksgiving. It was a wonderful trip- great to see our parents..... and as usual, it's always fabulous to come home to Hawai'i!

Louis Nobriga has been out there with crew, altering the landscape to be a little more user friendly. He's made an access road down to the river, as well as a nice housepad at the bottom of the property that will be used for something.

At the top of the property we've dozed the driveway down from the highway. I just stopped by there on my way home from town and they're laying rock/ gravel down on the road, and Louis said that probably tomorrow I can drive my van down there! Exciting stuff!!!!

We also have Andrew Taufa on board already to do a rock wall at the front of the driveway. woo hoo!

We now need to come up with some house plans.... find a pool maker (the guy who was gonna do it is getting out of it).... a contractor, plus tons of other things. These ones are the more exciting (and maybe a wee bit stressful??).

I've taken a ton of pics in the last couple of visits there. I think I'll just put them in their own post : )

plus.... I'm certain that I've forgotten to include some crucial happening. So another post is in order.

Photos!

Click on any picture to make it bigger.

I was looking at this majestic coconut palm today. It's a little hard to see in the picture, but down on the left is all of her babies. A little grove of new coconut palms. New growth! I know it's just weeds and stuff, but it's so pretty to see little plants coming up after the razing left over after dozing! Here is Saul, fearless dozer dude. This is the "driveway", pre-clearing. Saul is ready to tackle this project! Here's our big and fabulous mango tree. Everytime I look at it I'm just in awe! It's perfection in a tree.Part of our driveway.... looking back towards the highway. Luka and I at the bottom part of the property. We look happy. Here's the access road down to the river. It makes walking down there WAAAY easier. Luka and I spent an hour down there throwing rocks. It's amazing how rocks can occupy a two year old's attention for so long (well almost 2, anyways : ) )
Noam took some pics. Apparently he thinks the view is picture worthy ; ) GB is always thrilled to be standing where we will live. Look at that view behind him!!! He's standing about where we want to put the pool! OK. This is a weed. This pretty, heart shaped seed is from an african tulip tree. When we moved here we thought they were so pretty. I mean, a tree that flowers all of the time?? Amazing, right?? But every flower equals a ton of these pretty little seeds, easily blown on the wind. This translates to african tulips everywhere. And what pests. I recently found a major leak in our yard where some roots of one of these busted the pvc pipe. yikes! but I can still appreciate the simplicity of the seed. What's a post w/o a few pictures of the little sprite, playing?? I took these this am.... he's playing where we'll have a circular driveway. Isn't he cute??

Rock walls, rain, and shaking earth

We've had a little bit of progress despite some days like this:


Yup. It rains THAT hard here. In fact, in the last few weeks we've had several thunder and lightning storms, which are pretty rare here.
That's not on the land, but the view from our front lanai into the yard.

Amidst the rain we've been having majorly HOT and HUMID and SUNNY weather (which is a good thing because our dryer crapped out on us and we're waiting for the new one to get here).

We are now the proud owners of 2 rock pillars that stand at our driveway. This picture shows one of them with it's form still on. We'll have to get some more pics w/o it. For now this will have to suffice. It's just beautiful. For now we have a chain that goes from one pillar to the next- to make sure that no one comes and dumps more trash on the property.
And here is the lovely couple who made it. Actually only the guy, Andrew made it. His wife's name is Mele. They are Tongan, and GB has been having a great time chatting with them about his time in Tonga.


I think that they are some of the happiest people I've ever met. They are always laughing and smiling. We hope to have them do some more rock work for us.

In other news, we're still waiting on the bulldozer guy. I'm hoping that he's lagging because he's dealing with earthquake stuff. He lives in Laupahoehoe and they were a little harder hit than we were. I know the school and library were closed there on Monday.

I guess for history's sake, I should note that we're 4 days post earthquake. The "big" one that made big news all over. We fared just fine- we were a little shaken up, but for a southern California gal, it was no biggie.

Mostly it was a crazy way to begin Noam's 10th birthday.

A good day

Twas a good day for sure.

GB, Noam, Luka and I headed out this am to make some progress.

We were meeting with a couple of bulldozer guys and a rock wall guy.

Ist bulldozer guy Louis was great. GB met him to talk about dozing the other property (though he didn't do the work). He says he can start in 2 weeks (insert happy dance here!)

Here they are standing near where our house will be (on the ridge, if you were following from before). When I downloaded the picture, I though that it looks like they're making a drug deal ; ) (click for bigger to see what I mean)













The rock wall guy, Andrew, and his wife Mele came while GB was still talking with Louis. They were awesome and Andrew is ready to start working tomorrow!!! To understand why I put those 3 exclamation points, you have to see that there's a building boom going on here right now, and it's virtually impossible to get people to work soon. They may be willing to do the job, but the waits are horrifying these days.

We also walked and talked about where exactly to put the house. We measured and didn't really make a full plan. But we're getting closer!

Here are some requisite pics of the bambinos.
sorry Ra'am wasn't with us. He has the flu.

Look how much the groundcover has grown in here! amazing!

Luka is eating a guava. Looks like he's pleased!






I forgot to say too that we had a really refreshing swim in the river before we drove home. It was a gorgeous day, but hot in the sun, so it felt magnificent!

Oceanview and Mangoes Too, Oh My!

Today I went up to do some chainsawing. Kapila and Aaron had been doing some work as well.

The ocean view has definitely opened up! This shot is from on top of my T100 (you can see where it is parked at the bottom of this post).


Here is a shot from 200 feet closer towards the ocean (makai).


This is a shot of our Mango grove with the giant bamboo. These mango trees' trunks are about 7 feet in diameter. The canopies are about 70 feet in diameter (my truck for reference). This will be our backyard if we are able to build on the Ridge.


Close ups on our ginat bamboo which I will i.d. tonight.

Busting his Ass for the good of the family..... literally

GB had a nice slide down a mud embankment while trying to weed out Miconia- our resident WEED and hit his butt on a rock. lovely.

The colors. Oh, the colors that came up on his butt cheek were fabulous. I'd love a sweater or something in those colors.... esp the way they change from day-to-day.

For your viewing "pleasure".

The HUNTERS! The PROVIDERS!

GB and Ra'am went hunting in the river today for prawns.

They used no nets, just their gloved hands- Ra'am said, "so that the prawns have a fighting chance". The fearless hunters returned with 14 of them.

Now this is not just a little shrimpie. These are tahitian prawns, Macrobrachium lar. They are pretty large and the males have long claw arms.

We don't have pics of the actual hunting.... but here are the at home pics.

Don't they look appetizing, swimming in the bucket?

Ra'am shows us how big this one is

GB is cooking

Smells good!

The finished meal. Prawns, mashed potatoes, and steamed warabi (fern shoots). The last picture is Kika enjoying what's left of the meal.

Next time they'll bring a net. They're also going to buy one of those disposable underwater cameras. They said that there were TONS of fish in the water. Can't wait!

Just for the record. The HUNTERS! The PROVIDERS! was coined by GB and Ra'am