First step was the biggest, making the decision to actually make the move. Many factors weighed into our decision but the most important was would we enjoy our move to another Island. Oahu has been my wifes home all her life and mine since 1986 so making this move not only involved us but family also. I had read many blogs, and chat boards and the best advice I got and could give is first make sure you want to move and come and live here for a while first to get a feel for the lifestyle. It truly is a different but still the same lifestyle we are all familiar with.
Next we made up a pro and con list. The best way I could describe that is everything about our lives and those we affect needed to be in consideration. One of the biggest factors was we could sell our Oahu home and live basically mortgage free by making this move since property and a home on Hawaii is so much more less costly plus a lot more land to live on. We knew our golden retriever Kapua would love more space to run around on.Moving away from family for us was not that big of a problem since most of the family live on Oahu and Millie has relative on every Island. We did get a bit of resistance from our Grand Daughter Kyra. She quickly informed us that she was not really all that in favor of the idea. " what about attending my events, you wont be able to as much and papa will not be here to pick me up from school anymore!" hmmmmm that one did dig in a little deep however, being just a 45 minute flight away the main events and visiting family and vice versa family visiting us would be OK in our opinion. hmmmmm took a few days for that statement to be accepted by both Millie and myself.
We did love attending everything we could and Grand Kids become more and more important as you get older we felt.
So what I want to stress first and foremost is making the move and how it will impact the family but most of all how will it impact you the person making the move. For people not moving from another island here in Hawaii maybe not as much however, we also had family on the Mainland (Maine & Georgia) that we had already adjusted to the distance and being apart from.
We felt the distance was a minor 45 minute hurdle and we actually liked the idea of them coming and staying with us for a while (short while, hahaha), so, that major hurdle was taken care of. The pro list was starting to weigh out the con list very rapidly. Ah the golden years, .................Wait as my dad already told me "the golden years suck" hmmmmm medical questions were our next big hurdle and we had not even covered house building, lot buying ...etc etc
Well dam the torpedos full speed ahead to the land of volcanos !!!!!! More to come as the move continues.
