J-O-B-S !

Ok. This post is the one many of you have been waiting for. We're going to update you on our JOB adventures.

We were VERY lucky with our apartment search. Pretty lucky with our car search. The job search has proved to be more challenging, but nothing we can't handle.

Carly found 2 jobs. The first is as a bartender at a local golf course. Very close to home, beautiful course with great views, and so far the hours are flexible and part time. Seems to be going fine for now.

Her second job is a part time day job with a company called CARE HAWAII. She will most likely be working with children or infants with various disabilities doing case work. The application process has taken several weeks, and the upcoming weeks will be training so the actual job will start sometime in December. It seems like a fantastic opportunity to utilize her degree, has great pay and benefits, part-time hours and may also be close to home depending on her assignments.

Kevin's situation is a bit more complicated. Things just don't seem to be going very smoothly. The dream for the last 2 1/2 years has been to work at one of the big hotel spas like the one we saw at the Hilton Hawaiian Village when we visited. Well, as fortune would have it, he was offered THE job that he has been dreaming about since then... the problem is that everything takes a VERY LONG TIME to happen. The application process has been delayed and delayed by various problems. The HR woman went on a 10 day vacation the day after offering him the job, there's paperwork, background checks, hoops of fire to jump through bla bla bla... Then, when it seemed like a start date was approaching, we found out that the 9 days that we planned to be home for the holidays are "black out dates" for employees. That means that NO ONE is allowed to request to take days off since the spa is very busy and open 365 days a year. SO... it was recommended that he wait until afer the trip home to start work.

So now, he plans on just finding something temporary to make some money for the next few weeks and then re-configure a schedule when we get back after Christmas. He'll probably wait tables or tend bar full time for now, then maybe split to part-time massage with a few nights at the restaurant--not so dissimilar to life back in Jersey.

So that's the scoop. There's no shortage of jobs here, but the laid-back lifestlye translates into a lot of waiting around for employers to make decisions.

Prayers welcome.