January 2026

Harding and I went to Germany via New Jersey in December 2025. We flew into Berlin where we stayed for a few days. Then we took the train to Stuttgart where we had a house/pet-sitting assignment. We watched a turtle, fish, axolotls, and a cat. On January 7, we flew out of Munich.

I loved Deutschland. Harding wrote a manifesto regarding future travels. In a nutshell, he will not be leaving the Hawaiian archipelago for the foreseeable future. He certainly will not travel anywhere the temperature goes below 50F.

To be fair, Europe is so far from Hawaii. We had to buy winter clothes. Our new house is hard to leave.

Upon return, we moved everything out of our old house. We started receiving supplies for the remodel of our current house. We continued to have meetings with our designer regarding our home remodel.

When we weren’t working on house projects, we sat on our porch and watched whales. The humpback whales come to Hawaii every year from around December-April. The ocean has been flat, which is bad for surfing, but great for whale watching.

On January 24, we hosted a group of people off the cruise ship. Cassie Ohl’s in-laws and Christian Ohl’s parents, Maynard & Joy, came into Hilo on a Princess cruise. I offered to show them around. About a week before they were slated to arrive, I texted Joy to confirm. She said, “Yes. There are 14 of us.”

14??!!

I rented two minivans, which still left two people in each van sitting on the ground or squished into the seat with another passenger. But, they were all very appreciative. We took them to Richardsons, Akaka Falls, our house, Liliuokalani Garden, and the farmer’s market. It was a blast.

On January 30, our painters arrived to start prepping the house. This is a very exciting development. We took “before” pics and are looking forward to posting the “afters.” It may be a while. It’s a two-person crew and today only one person showed up.

Any house project is disruptive. We had to move everything away from the outside of our house, including vegetation. In reality, this was great. We had amassed a lot of crap outside. The outside of the house looks so much better.

The painters are using a power washer to remove some of the paint. So, we have to close our windows, and the house was around 91 F today in the living room. It was probably 100 on the west side. We don’t run air conditioners at the house, because the breeze usually keeps us quite comfortable. Some days, like today, it gets hot.

My cousin Megan and her husband Earl moved onto the island. They bought a house in Kona and arrived last week. We had a wonderful BBQ with them on Saturday.

We are expecting visitors in February and March. We have been in contact with a new handyman (to fix the rotting pieces of wood the painters are finding). We were contacted by a general contractor recommended by my sister’s coworker.

2026 is looking bright.