I woke up early this morning to go running with Kimi. This time it was super hard to wake up at 6:30am because it was 3:30am Hawaii time, which I had gotten fairly used to. Anyway, Kim finally got to show me the killer hill run/trail run thing. After the run I went back to her house and played with the boys. Roman showed me his new creation out of small legos and Isaac ran around tying strings to his "babies"- he put his raccoon on a leash. After play time it was time to get ready for the beach.
Kim pointed out that I book ended my Hawaii trip with trips to Torrey Pines beach. This time I definitely put sunscreen on. There was no way I was going to burn so that all my hard work in Hawaii would peel off on my drive back to Utah. That would suck hard core. Roman wanted to build sand castles the whole time and Isaac was scared to play in the water like we did last time. Roman stopped the building long enough to jump in the waves with me, but not for too long. Isaac went in the water when his friends did. He wanted to go in the water, but didn't want any one with him. I stayed right with him, but when he started to walk back, I was a step behind and he went down. Yeah, he did not like that. I brought him up and he was screaming for Mama. Yet, later, while I was building with Roman and Kim was way up on the beach, Isaac goes off into the water. I look up at Kim to see if she's going to stop him... Nope, she doesn't see him. So I get up and catch up with him. I ask him what he's doing, "Going in the water" is that smart to do by yourself? "No" then why are you doing it? "Because I'm naughty." He said that last part with a big huge grin. What a punk. I reminded him how he didn't like going under the water and how it was okay to play in the water, but no alone. We then went up shore to tell Mommy what he did. "Mommy, I'm naughty because I went into the water alone." Again, he said it with a big old smile on his face. He's suck trouble!
Dad was only working a half day today and so I had to get back to meet up with him to go car shopping. Kim, the boys, and I grabbed a quick bite to eat and some Golden Spoon (GS as Kim would call it :o) and then I headed home. Even though I was later than I thought I would be, Dad still wasn't back yet. Good thing too, I still had to shower and clean off. We went car shopping and I was determined to get the Miada I test drove if it was still there, but it wasn't, and the Cash for Clunkers thing is temporarily (or it could be permanently) out of commission, so it wouldn't have benefited me to get the car now so I drove off the lot in my same old same old.
After car shopping it was off to Dana's. While I was in Hawaii, she had a specific job to do for me. She was supposed to make my pillow cases. I brought her the fabric and told her that her labor could be her birthday present to me. But no.... she had to be busy with her own life while I was gone and so she didn't get to sewing at all. Lame! (Teasing of course.) I went over to help her do it tonight. We first went swimming in her salt water pool- don't worry, it wasn't at all like swimming in the ocean, there's not THAT much salt water in it. Then she made us dinner while we waited for Josh to get home with the cutting board, ruler, and cutter. Once we got started, it didn't take us too long to knock out the 7 pillow cases, which meant we still had time for an ice cream treat and an episode of Arrested Development (which she then sent home with me so some time before I come home again, I've got to watch 3 seasons of this show).
And this was supposed to be my "recoup day" before headed back to Utah tomorrow. Not quite!
Friday, July 31, 2009
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Trip Home- July 30
Another early morning, and another morning where I was ready way before we actually had to go (remember church on Sunday?) Breakfast wasn't until 7am and I was up at 6am and ready no later than 6:20am. I did what I always do with extra time, and I stood out on the balcony and watched the waves. It was finally 7am and time to grab breakfast. It was a simple buffet, but it was good. We were the first ones there because we were one of the only people leaving in the morning today. We ate quick, headed out, made one last stop at Wal-mart to pick me up a calendar I wanted, and were at the airport WAY early. That's how we roll around here.
We took a quick flight from Maui to Oahu, then from Oahu we flew to San Diego. It was so lame. The flight attendant on the flight from Maui walked past me as we were boarding and said, there're too many bags on this flight, we'll have to load yours downstairs. I was fine with that, it meant I didn't have to put it up top, I didn't have to pay for it, and I just pick it up as I walk out. Oh nay-nay. What she didn't tell me when she checked it was that I had to go to baggage claim to pick it up. Never mind that our flight had come in late and I had a connector, they refused to just call down and have one of the people bring it up. I guess it's good that Hawaiian airlines is ALWAYS late. I would have made it on the plane barely if our connector flight would have been on time, but since it was late, I ended up waiting which means that it wasn't too bad that it took forever for the luggage to come out, plus I had to go through security AGAIN and that line was forever LONG. Ooooo, I was NOT happy with that rude lady who checked my bag (since, in fact there was PLENTY of room on the plane so I don't know what crazy was talking about).
Other than that though, the trip wasn't bad. We landed and the airport was CROWDED so Dana got stuck in lots of traffic as she came and got us. But we're back now and we've got all our bags, all our parts, and everything seems to be alright with the house.
It's late now and I'm waking up early to go running with Kim, so I'm gonna end this one here.
We took a quick flight from Maui to Oahu, then from Oahu we flew to San Diego. It was so lame. The flight attendant on the flight from Maui walked past me as we were boarding and said, there're too many bags on this flight, we'll have to load yours downstairs. I was fine with that, it meant I didn't have to put it up top, I didn't have to pay for it, and I just pick it up as I walk out. Oh nay-nay. What she didn't tell me when she checked it was that I had to go to baggage claim to pick it up. Never mind that our flight had come in late and I had a connector, they refused to just call down and have one of the people bring it up. I guess it's good that Hawaiian airlines is ALWAYS late. I would have made it on the plane barely if our connector flight would have been on time, but since it was late, I ended up waiting which means that it wasn't too bad that it took forever for the luggage to come out, plus I had to go through security AGAIN and that line was forever LONG. Ooooo, I was NOT happy with that rude lady who checked my bag (since, in fact there was PLENTY of room on the plane so I don't know what crazy was talking about).
Other than that though, the trip wasn't bad. We landed and the airport was CROWDED so Dana got stuck in lots of traffic as she came and got us. But we're back now and we've got all our bags, all our parts, and everything seems to be alright with the house.
It's late now and I'm waking up early to go running with Kim, so I'm gonna end this one here.
Last Day in Maui- July 29
So this is one day late because Dad decided that he was going to pack his laptop early (where as he had plenty of other stuff not packed). Oh well, if it weren't for him bringing it along in the first place, I'd be way more behind than just one day. But, I say that I'm a day behind just so you understand why it's so condensed, I've had time to forget the stuff I did :o)
Alright. I again slept in, but until 7am this time, and then got dressed to go to breakfast with Mom. We went back to the same restaurant that we had breakfast in the day before (and it's the place we had dinner, but later in the day they call it by a different name- go figure). After breakfast I walked down to Whaler's Village to do a little last time shopping and to let me digest before I went for my run. Good idea right? Yeah, it would have been, if the shops would have been open at 8:30, but they weren't. I walked back and did my run instead. I figured the walk to the shops had helped me digest enough. I found a beach trail that I hadn't seen the day before, so that helped to add a little bit of time to my run, but it still wasn't super long. But again, it's better than not getting my butt out there. Plus, this time when I got back to the room, I took time to stretch and do an ab workout and stuff, so my body was working longer than I was actually running.
After the workout I showered and tried the shops one more time. By time I left the room, it was 10:30, so I figured they would HAVE to be open by then, there's no way that shops opened at 11. I was right, they were open this time. The first stop I made was the "Stupid Factory." That was Dana's favorite store last time we came. There stuff is pretty funny, although a lot of it verges or is flat out inappropriate. I spent a little time in that store making sure I read all the funny stuff. I almost bought Dana a magnet, but then decided I didn't want to be the reason she had that particular article in her house. But I bought me some new pajama shorts that are oober cute :o) I hit up a couple of other stores, but like I said before about Whaler's Village, there's not too much there that I'm interested in. I did go to the whale museum briefly to look around. It's pretty interesting, but I'm glad I went alone so I could move as quickly or as slowly as I wanted to.
After shopping I went back to the room, oiled up, and went down to the beach. I didn't actually go into the water because I only had 40-ish minutes before Dad got out of his meetings and I didn't want to miss his call. So I sat on the beach reading a book and listening to music. It was pretty nice. When Dad called I just ran up to the room and we went out to lunch. We'd heard about L&L being a really great place to eat good local food. Um... It's not a great place, just as a heads up. It was okay, but it nothing way impressive.
When we finished with lunch we came back to the resort to suit up to go snorkeling. We just hit up the water right in front of the resort. We saw lots of fish and explored the coral for a while, but the only problem was that there were a ton of people all snorkeling right there because it's such easy access and not a half bad spot. We didn't see anything fancy like turtles, eels, or that flat fish that hides in the sand, but it was still pretty good. We tried to get away from the crowd by swimming to the other side of Black Rock (where we were), but there was nothing over there, and the wind was stronger on that side, so it was a little rougher to swim through.
Dad's mask was leaking and fogging and it was crowded, so he wasn't having the most fun, so we headed in earlier than planned. I think we got back to the room around 3:00pm and we had nothing else planned until the farewell dinner at 6:00pm. Dad and I walked around the resort taking pictures of the scenery, since we were staying at a gorgeous place, we wanted to capture that beauty just a little bit. Picture taking didn't actually take that long, so even though I took a long shower and tried to take a long time to get ready, I still had time to get most of my stuff packed and be bored before it was time to leave for dinner.
The farewell dinner- thumbs down. The food was alright, not the greatest, and the entertainment was crap. It was a cover band that's pretty typical of these events. I held out as long as I could. They weren't terrible, but they weren't my cup of tea, and I had no one to talk to, so I wasn't having the greatest time. The lead singer of the band was a creep-stash old man and after a little while (like when he sat on the edge of my chair and told me "daddy's here") I had to leave. Well, that and I wasn't too entertained by watching the old people dance up front. I decided to walk along the beach. Luckily my roommate Alysha was still up so that I could chat with her and not feel so stupid about being alone on the beach. The beach was nice though, the sky still held some sunset colors, and later, over the water I saw lightening and even spied a shooting star.
When I finally decided that Alysha should really be in bed (since Utah is 4 hours ahead of Hawaii) I headed back up and finished packing, read a little, and went to bed.
Alright. I again slept in, but until 7am this time, and then got dressed to go to breakfast with Mom. We went back to the same restaurant that we had breakfast in the day before (and it's the place we had dinner, but later in the day they call it by a different name- go figure). After breakfast I walked down to Whaler's Village to do a little last time shopping and to let me digest before I went for my run. Good idea right? Yeah, it would have been, if the shops would have been open at 8:30, but they weren't. I walked back and did my run instead. I figured the walk to the shops had helped me digest enough. I found a beach trail that I hadn't seen the day before, so that helped to add a little bit of time to my run, but it still wasn't super long. But again, it's better than not getting my butt out there. Plus, this time when I got back to the room, I took time to stretch and do an ab workout and stuff, so my body was working longer than I was actually running.
After the workout I showered and tried the shops one more time. By time I left the room, it was 10:30, so I figured they would HAVE to be open by then, there's no way that shops opened at 11. I was right, they were open this time. The first stop I made was the "Stupid Factory." That was Dana's favorite store last time we came. There stuff is pretty funny, although a lot of it verges or is flat out inappropriate. I spent a little time in that store making sure I read all the funny stuff. I almost bought Dana a magnet, but then decided I didn't want to be the reason she had that particular article in her house. But I bought me some new pajama shorts that are oober cute :o) I hit up a couple of other stores, but like I said before about Whaler's Village, there's not too much there that I'm interested in. I did go to the whale museum briefly to look around. It's pretty interesting, but I'm glad I went alone so I could move as quickly or as slowly as I wanted to.
After shopping I went back to the room, oiled up, and went down to the beach. I didn't actually go into the water because I only had 40-ish minutes before Dad got out of his meetings and I didn't want to miss his call. So I sat on the beach reading a book and listening to music. It was pretty nice. When Dad called I just ran up to the room and we went out to lunch. We'd heard about L&L being a really great place to eat good local food. Um... It's not a great place, just as a heads up. It was okay, but it nothing way impressive.
When we finished with lunch we came back to the resort to suit up to go snorkeling. We just hit up the water right in front of the resort. We saw lots of fish and explored the coral for a while, but the only problem was that there were a ton of people all snorkeling right there because it's such easy access and not a half bad spot. We didn't see anything fancy like turtles, eels, or that flat fish that hides in the sand, but it was still pretty good. We tried to get away from the crowd by swimming to the other side of Black Rock (where we were), but there was nothing over there, and the wind was stronger on that side, so it was a little rougher to swim through.
Dad's mask was leaking and fogging and it was crowded, so he wasn't having the most fun, so we headed in earlier than planned. I think we got back to the room around 3:00pm and we had nothing else planned until the farewell dinner at 6:00pm. Dad and I walked around the resort taking pictures of the scenery, since we were staying at a gorgeous place, we wanted to capture that beauty just a little bit. Picture taking didn't actually take that long, so even though I took a long shower and tried to take a long time to get ready, I still had time to get most of my stuff packed and be bored before it was time to leave for dinner.
The farewell dinner- thumbs down. The food was alright, not the greatest, and the entertainment was crap. It was a cover band that's pretty typical of these events. I held out as long as I could. They weren't terrible, but they weren't my cup of tea, and I had no one to talk to, so I wasn't having the greatest time. The lead singer of the band was a creep-stash old man and after a little while (like when he sat on the edge of my chair and told me "daddy's here") I had to leave. Well, that and I wasn't too entertained by watching the old people dance up front. I decided to walk along the beach. Luckily my roommate Alysha was still up so that I could chat with her and not feel so stupid about being alone on the beach. The beach was nice though, the sky still held some sunset colors, and later, over the water I saw lightening and even spied a shooting star.
When I finally decided that Alysha should really be in bed (since Utah is 4 hours ahead of Hawaii) I headed back up and finished packing, read a little, and went to bed.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Lazy Day
Remember how I was supposed to get up early to go for a run this morning? Well, when my alarm went off at 5:45am, I just couldn't do it. I turned the alarm off and slept until 8:00am. Oh my gracious, that felt GOOD. When I woke up it still wasn't hot outside so I still got my run in :o) Last time I was here, Dana and I ran all around the golf course so that we could go pretty far without actually running far away. Get it? Because of the windiness you can get in good mileage in a small area. But today I started off on the golf course and noticed big signs that say get off if you're not golfing. So I got off and had to run on the street. Now, either those signs weren't there last time or Dana and I just completely ignored them. I'm thinking it was more of the second one, but I'm not entirely sure. All I know is that when you can't wind around on the golf course, there's not very far that you can go. I ran everywhere I could (I got stopped by resorts and a freeway) and was only gone half an hour. Oh well, that's better than nothing, so I'll take it.
When I got back from my run Mom and I went to breakfast at one of the restaurants at the hotel and then we headed to the pool. That's where we spent the majority of our morning. It was overcast and sprinkled every once in a while and so I was super bummed that the day we chose as our beach day was the day that was cloudy. Mom said, "I really like this, I know I'm still getting sun, but it's not that hot." I told her I didn't like it because I couldn't feel the sun and that you can't tan when it's over cast. You can burn, but you can't tan. And I was right. Even though I had sunscreen and Maui Babe tanning lotion on (which has SPF in it) my chest is still red. Luckily it's not the bright red kind of red, but it's definitely not all tan :o( Urrrgggg..... I only have one more day left to get golden brown, and I don't know how well I'm going to do.
Dad got out of his meetings at 12:30pm and so he met us out by the pool and we had lunch there. You'd think that for how expensive the pool side food is, that it would actually taste good, right? Not so much. And it took FOREVER to actually get our food. Whatev', it's not a huge deal at all, but I've always got to put in my two cents, right?
After lunch we headed back to the room so Dad could change and we could pick up our snorkeling stuff. We headed north to a bay that Dad heard was a really great snorkeling spot. We had to take a short little walk through a forest to get to the beach. It was so pretty, but it left me a little sad. The forest was rain foresty and just made me realize how off my room is. My classroom does not look a thing like what we walked through today. I wanted to grab some of the vines from off the tree to hang up, but Mom's convinced that they wouldn't make it through customs when they do the bag check. Dang shoot, those would have really helped :o)
Beside the cool little nature walk we took, the snorkeling was amazing. We saw some fish that we hadn't seen yet this trip, saw a couple turtles, and a couple eels. I saw a freaking huge blow fish- not the puffer fish that I see everywhere and think are blow fish, but an actual blow fish. There was lots of cool coral to look at too. The only down side was that I had attempted to give my booties another chance and so after a while my feet started killing me. I finally caught a glimpse of the size today. No wonder they hurt, I've been cramming my size 7 foot into a size 5 bootie. It did bother me, but when I saw something I was really excited about, I forgot the pain :o) Hehehe, the first turtle we saw was so funny. He was half way under a rock/cave thing and was scratching his shell on the rough rock. He was doing it on one side for a while and then turned his body so that he could scratch the other side of his shell. I guess that earlier that day someone had spotted a sting ray, and I was excited to maybe see that, but that was a no go, no sting ray this trip. But honestly, it was a great place to snorkel, and if we would have had more time and if my feet hadn't have been killing me, we could have spent a lot more time out there, it just kept going and going and everywhere you went, there was new stuff, it didn't just repeat.
The reason we had to get back was because we were meeting up with one of the whole salers or something for dinner. The guys we ate with are really nice guys, but I did not do as good of a job holding my own in conversations as I did the first night we were here. I tried, every now and again to start a conversation with the guy sitting on my left, but when I'd ask him a question, he'd give a super short answer. Luckily Mark and Minka were down at my end of the table. They are never short on conversation topics. They kept the flow pretty good at our end. After a while, I did have more of a saw in things, so it was less awkward, but for real, Mark and Minka dominated the talking- and that's not a bad thing. But our table was definitely cut in two. Dad and the CEO of whoever we were eating with were talking business and then our half of the table was talking about whatever random topics we were discussing.
After dinner we headed over to the TPN ice cream social. I was full from dinner and so only grabbed a dessert shot and skipped the ice cream. And since I'm not social, I told Dad I was going to cut out. He told me to wait because he was just going to finish his bowl and split too. So that's what we did- Dad and Mom had their ice cream and then we left before any drunkards got up to do karaoke. I walked outside to our room. It is such a gorgeous night outside tonight. The moon, the stars, the palm trees, it's unbelievably beautiful. So why am I wasting my time inside typing a blog? Peace out homes, I'm going back out into the night time. (Don't worry, that's all I had to write for today anyway, I'm not skipping out on anything.)
Oh, snap. Hold up, there's one more thing. On the Blue Water Rafting tour the guides told a joke that Dad thought was hilarious. He's been saying randomly ever since and so I told him to stop because it's not funny anymore. He said that he didn't want to forget it and that's why he kept saying it over and over. I told him I'd blog about it so that it would be written somewhere so he can refer back to it sometime if her really cared that much. So here it is. In Hawaii, they call appetizers Pupus. And beef is Peepee. So if you want to order a beef appetizer, you have to order a Peepee Pupu. There we have it, besides the pirate steering wheel joke, that's Dad's favorite.
When I got back from my run Mom and I went to breakfast at one of the restaurants at the hotel and then we headed to the pool. That's where we spent the majority of our morning. It was overcast and sprinkled every once in a while and so I was super bummed that the day we chose as our beach day was the day that was cloudy. Mom said, "I really like this, I know I'm still getting sun, but it's not that hot." I told her I didn't like it because I couldn't feel the sun and that you can't tan when it's over cast. You can burn, but you can't tan. And I was right. Even though I had sunscreen and Maui Babe tanning lotion on (which has SPF in it) my chest is still red. Luckily it's not the bright red kind of red, but it's definitely not all tan :o( Urrrgggg..... I only have one more day left to get golden brown, and I don't know how well I'm going to do.
Dad got out of his meetings at 12:30pm and so he met us out by the pool and we had lunch there. You'd think that for how expensive the pool side food is, that it would actually taste good, right? Not so much. And it took FOREVER to actually get our food. Whatev', it's not a huge deal at all, but I've always got to put in my two cents, right?
After lunch we headed back to the room so Dad could change and we could pick up our snorkeling stuff. We headed north to a bay that Dad heard was a really great snorkeling spot. We had to take a short little walk through a forest to get to the beach. It was so pretty, but it left me a little sad. The forest was rain foresty and just made me realize how off my room is. My classroom does not look a thing like what we walked through today. I wanted to grab some of the vines from off the tree to hang up, but Mom's convinced that they wouldn't make it through customs when they do the bag check. Dang shoot, those would have really helped :o)
Beside the cool little nature walk we took, the snorkeling was amazing. We saw some fish that we hadn't seen yet this trip, saw a couple turtles, and a couple eels. I saw a freaking huge blow fish- not the puffer fish that I see everywhere and think are blow fish, but an actual blow fish. There was lots of cool coral to look at too. The only down side was that I had attempted to give my booties another chance and so after a while my feet started killing me. I finally caught a glimpse of the size today. No wonder they hurt, I've been cramming my size 7 foot into a size 5 bootie. It did bother me, but when I saw something I was really excited about, I forgot the pain :o) Hehehe, the first turtle we saw was so funny. He was half way under a rock/cave thing and was scratching his shell on the rough rock. He was doing it on one side for a while and then turned his body so that he could scratch the other side of his shell. I guess that earlier that day someone had spotted a sting ray, and I was excited to maybe see that, but that was a no go, no sting ray this trip. But honestly, it was a great place to snorkel, and if we would have had more time and if my feet hadn't have been killing me, we could have spent a lot more time out there, it just kept going and going and everywhere you went, there was new stuff, it didn't just repeat.
The reason we had to get back was because we were meeting up with one of the whole salers or something for dinner. The guys we ate with are really nice guys, but I did not do as good of a job holding my own in conversations as I did the first night we were here. I tried, every now and again to start a conversation with the guy sitting on my left, but when I'd ask him a question, he'd give a super short answer. Luckily Mark and Minka were down at my end of the table. They are never short on conversation topics. They kept the flow pretty good at our end. After a while, I did have more of a saw in things, so it was less awkward, but for real, Mark and Minka dominated the talking- and that's not a bad thing. But our table was definitely cut in two. Dad and the CEO of whoever we were eating with were talking business and then our half of the table was talking about whatever random topics we were discussing.
After dinner we headed over to the TPN ice cream social. I was full from dinner and so only grabbed a dessert shot and skipped the ice cream. And since I'm not social, I told Dad I was going to cut out. He told me to wait because he was just going to finish his bowl and split too. So that's what we did- Dad and Mom had their ice cream and then we left before any drunkards got up to do karaoke. I walked outside to our room. It is such a gorgeous night outside tonight. The moon, the stars, the palm trees, it's unbelievably beautiful. So why am I wasting my time inside typing a blog? Peace out homes, I'm going back out into the night time. (Don't worry, that's all I had to write for today anyway, I'm not skipping out on anything.)
Oh, snap. Hold up, there's one more thing. On the Blue Water Rafting tour the guides told a joke that Dad thought was hilarious. He's been saying randomly ever since and so I told him to stop because it's not funny anymore. He said that he didn't want to forget it and that's why he kept saying it over and over. I told him I'd blog about it so that it would be written somewhere so he can refer back to it sometime if her really cared that much. So here it is. In Hawaii, they call appetizers Pupus. And beef is Peepee. So if you want to order a beef appetizer, you have to order a Peepee Pupu. There we have it, besides the pirate steering wheel joke, that's Dad's favorite.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Zip It- July 27
Another day where we were up and out early in the morning. We had to be up at 5:45am because Mom and I needed to be at "Skyline Adventures" by 6:30am. While Dad was in meetings this morning, Mom and I spent our time up on the mountain coming down on ziplines. It was so much fun. We met up at the place, got a ride up the mountain, got our gear on, drove farther up the mountain, and then started off. There were 8 lines in total, each one getting longer than the last. We started off with just a 200 or so foot ride and ended with a 1000 foot ride. There was a group of 12 of us (plus 2 guides). We didn't get really close with the group, because everyone kind of kept to themselves. Sometimes we would talk and joke around with each other, but really not that much. Well, actually, one of the two newly wed couples was pretty funny. The guy was taking videos of himself going across the line and the girl was pretty snappy, so I got a kick out of it when she would rile up the tour guide.
On this trip I decided that if ever I lose my job, I should for sure just become a tour guide. After going on a couple of guided trips, I realized that all you need to be a good tour guide is to be funny. And I'm freaking hilarious. I wasn't as good as I could be, but I was knocking out some pretty funny material today. I can't recall exactly what it was at the moment, but I'm not lying, I was funny :o) And no, I'm NOT the only one that thought I was funny, I got lots of laughs from the crowd. But obviously, I got that impression to be a tour guide because our tour guides today were hilarious. Beck and Brandon. They would pose while riding the lines, banter back and forth with each other, and say funny (I'll be it way planned) stuff. Brandon was a flirting machine, and he wasn't picky :o) He first targeted the 13 year old girl and when it was pointed out that she was too young and on a trip with her dad, he used the same pick up line on her dad when he came in as he did with the girl when she came in. When he thought it was the 13 year old girl's turn, he made a comment like, "Now that you're dad's gone..." but when she didn't come down, he said, "Now that she's gone..." to the poor 15 year old boy who came alone. Yeah, and he flirted with me too, so that proves he's not too picky. On the first zip he over heard Mom talking about how I should be proud of her because she wasn't yelling, "That's my baby." So, for a while he kept calling me "Babe" and "Baby" I told him it was different when he said it then when Mom says it. After a while he changed my nickname to "Brookie Wookie" after Mom told him that growing up my nickname was "Brookie Cookie." He first started calling me "Brookie Wookie Cookie" but then shortened it. Yeah, it was fun! Fun people, fun ride, fun-ny...
The trip took a good 4 hours (we stopped and had a small breakfast at the top of a drop off) and when we got back we went inside to talk to the guy about the 10% discount we were supposed to get. We had seen a 10% off coupon in "This Week Maui" but when we called, they didn't give us the discount because they said it was for something else, but we looked at the coupon again and it didn't say it was just for the other one, so we brought it to the guy's attention before we left and were checking back in with him after. He said that it was only for the other one and sorry, they're changing the coupon right now, blah, blah, blah. I said, "so, that means we get a free shirt, right?" He laughed and said no, but he gave us two free shot glasses. Wow, it really does help to just ask. (I'm usually scared to ask about things like that, or anything, but apparently I'm getting better :o)
We met up with Dad when we got back and watched a presentation about how pure Hawaiians will be null and void by 2044. I don't know, the guy was very passionate about the subject and was looking to educate us about the problem so we can be a part of the solution, but I wasn't all for his cause so I found it a little... not so entertaining.
After that we headed down the coast for some lunch and a little shopping. I remember Whaler's Village being more exciting to walk around. Not so much any more. Either I'm totally done with shopping for a while and that's why it's not fun any more or the stores have changed and just really suck now. I'm going with it's a combination of both. Sad day :o( After Whaler's Village, we jumped in the car to go to Lahaina to walk around down town there. There are mostly shops down town, but we didn't do the shopping thing. Yeah, we walked into a couple stores, but mostly we walked around and then went by the water and walked around there. Oh, today was the second day that I took out my camera. There's not going to be too much pictorial documentation of this trip. I just haven't really been good at pulling my camera out, and since I prefer scenery pictures to people pictures (if the people in it is me), I haven't been too excited to pull it out anyway.
Mom got a little burned out at Lahaina and her ankle was bothering her, so instead of staying there and choosing a place to eat there, we came back to the hotel. Mom stayed in the room to recoup while Dad and I went to the beach. I tried to get in a little bit of sun, but it was setting and so even with nothing around me, I was still getting weird shadows on my back so I decided to just get in the water and not worry about the tan. (That'll come tomorrow while Dad's got his long meetings.) Once we got back, we took pictures of the sunset-ish and ran to pick up a quick dinner so we could come back and eat it with Mom, who wasn't feeling up to going out anywhere.
And even though it's not super late right now, I'm soooooo tired. I always feel weird going to bed too early though, so I'll probably read a bit and then pass out. But I've got to be up early again tomorrow to go for a run because it was too late to go on one by time we were done with everything. Busy and loving it, that's the theme of this vacation.
On this trip I decided that if ever I lose my job, I should for sure just become a tour guide. After going on a couple of guided trips, I realized that all you need to be a good tour guide is to be funny. And I'm freaking hilarious. I wasn't as good as I could be, but I was knocking out some pretty funny material today. I can't recall exactly what it was at the moment, but I'm not lying, I was funny :o) And no, I'm NOT the only one that thought I was funny, I got lots of laughs from the crowd. But obviously, I got that impression to be a tour guide because our tour guides today were hilarious. Beck and Brandon. They would pose while riding the lines, banter back and forth with each other, and say funny (I'll be it way planned) stuff. Brandon was a flirting machine, and he wasn't picky :o) He first targeted the 13 year old girl and when it was pointed out that she was too young and on a trip with her dad, he used the same pick up line on her dad when he came in as he did with the girl when she came in. When he thought it was the 13 year old girl's turn, he made a comment like, "Now that you're dad's gone..." but when she didn't come down, he said, "Now that she's gone..." to the poor 15 year old boy who came alone. Yeah, and he flirted with me too, so that proves he's not too picky. On the first zip he over heard Mom talking about how I should be proud of her because she wasn't yelling, "That's my baby." So, for a while he kept calling me "Babe" and "Baby" I told him it was different when he said it then when Mom says it. After a while he changed my nickname to "Brookie Wookie" after Mom told him that growing up my nickname was "Brookie Cookie." He first started calling me "Brookie Wookie Cookie" but then shortened it. Yeah, it was fun! Fun people, fun ride, fun-ny...
The trip took a good 4 hours (we stopped and had a small breakfast at the top of a drop off) and when we got back we went inside to talk to the guy about the 10% discount we were supposed to get. We had seen a 10% off coupon in "This Week Maui" but when we called, they didn't give us the discount because they said it was for something else, but we looked at the coupon again and it didn't say it was just for the other one, so we brought it to the guy's attention before we left and were checking back in with him after. He said that it was only for the other one and sorry, they're changing the coupon right now, blah, blah, blah. I said, "so, that means we get a free shirt, right?" He laughed and said no, but he gave us two free shot glasses. Wow, it really does help to just ask. (I'm usually scared to ask about things like that, or anything, but apparently I'm getting better :o)
We met up with Dad when we got back and watched a presentation about how pure Hawaiians will be null and void by 2044. I don't know, the guy was very passionate about the subject and was looking to educate us about the problem so we can be a part of the solution, but I wasn't all for his cause so I found it a little... not so entertaining.
After that we headed down the coast for some lunch and a little shopping. I remember Whaler's Village being more exciting to walk around. Not so much any more. Either I'm totally done with shopping for a while and that's why it's not fun any more or the stores have changed and just really suck now. I'm going with it's a combination of both. Sad day :o( After Whaler's Village, we jumped in the car to go to Lahaina to walk around down town there. There are mostly shops down town, but we didn't do the shopping thing. Yeah, we walked into a couple stores, but mostly we walked around and then went by the water and walked around there. Oh, today was the second day that I took out my camera. There's not going to be too much pictorial documentation of this trip. I just haven't really been good at pulling my camera out, and since I prefer scenery pictures to people pictures (if the people in it is me), I haven't been too excited to pull it out anyway.
Mom got a little burned out at Lahaina and her ankle was bothering her, so instead of staying there and choosing a place to eat there, we came back to the hotel. Mom stayed in the room to recoup while Dad and I went to the beach. I tried to get in a little bit of sun, but it was setting and so even with nothing around me, I was still getting weird shadows on my back so I decided to just get in the water and not worry about the tan. (That'll come tomorrow while Dad's got his long meetings.) Once we got back, we took pictures of the sunset-ish and ran to pick up a quick dinner so we could come back and eat it with Mom, who wasn't feeling up to going out anywhere.
And even though it's not super late right now, I'm soooooo tired. I always feel weird going to bed too early though, so I'll probably read a bit and then pass out. But I've got to be up early again tomorrow to go for a run because it was too late to go on one by time we were done with everything. Busy and loving it, that's the theme of this vacation.
Favorites- July 26
So, back to the post that I referenced that I would write on Thursday. When you meet new people, you’re always stuck talking about the same old things. So, where are you from? What’s your major? What do you plan to do with your major? Blah blah, boring stuff. Oh, if you’re from a place that they have heard of before, they might try to play the “Do you know…” game to see if by any small chance you happen to know the same people. I’m not a fan of that game- probably because I don’t know too many people and I hardly ever make connections. Then, the conversation will move into the favorite category. What’s your favorite movie? TV show? Song? Band? Etc.
I’m not a super fan of these questions. I usually tell people that I don’t do favorites, except for a very few. For instance, my favorite color is blue, and it’s because my eyes are blue and I think I have very pretty eyes (I’m not vain, I had no control over that, I just appreciate what I’ve been given). And I’ve recently realized that there are a couple reasons I don’t have favorites. For one, I’m pretty easy going and will enjoy most movies I see, I enjoy almost all types of music, etc. I’m not super opinionated about things I view or listen to (okay, I know that you’re all thinking, she’s not opinionated, yeah friggin’ right- but that’s not what I said. Of course I’m opinionated, but I usually don’t judge and over analyze movies and junk). So that’s one reason why I don’t have a whole lot of favorites. The second reason I don’t do favorites is just because I have a bad memory. If I do watch a movie that I think is AMAZING, I usually forget about it within a week. Then, once it’s mentioned, I’ll remember it’s my favorite, but in the between time, I’ve forgotten. A third possible reason that I don’t have too many favorites to talk about in that conversation, perhaps, is because people ask me about the wrong things.
This is what I came up with on Thursday while we were snorkeling. Most people won’t ask you what your favorite fish is (unless you’re at a seafood restaurant and they’re asking what you want to order), but I’ve actually got one of those. My favorite fish is the Humuhumunukunukuapua’a (the Hawaiian state fish). We’re so tight that I just call him Humu for short (oh, and because I can’t actually ever remember his full name).
So yeah, I’ve got to work on this whole remembering my favorites thing, and people also need to start asking me better favorite questions. Let’s go over the list they’re allowed to ask me: favorite color, favorite fish…. Okay, it is me that needs to work on it more.
I’m not a super fan of these questions. I usually tell people that I don’t do favorites, except for a very few. For instance, my favorite color is blue, and it’s because my eyes are blue and I think I have very pretty eyes (I’m not vain, I had no control over that, I just appreciate what I’ve been given). And I’ve recently realized that there are a couple reasons I don’t have favorites. For one, I’m pretty easy going and will enjoy most movies I see, I enjoy almost all types of music, etc. I’m not super opinionated about things I view or listen to (okay, I know that you’re all thinking, she’s not opinionated, yeah friggin’ right- but that’s not what I said. Of course I’m opinionated, but I usually don’t judge and over analyze movies and junk). So that’s one reason why I don’t have a whole lot of favorites. The second reason I don’t do favorites is just because I have a bad memory. If I do watch a movie that I think is AMAZING, I usually forget about it within a week. Then, once it’s mentioned, I’ll remember it’s my favorite, but in the between time, I’ve forgotten. A third possible reason that I don’t have too many favorites to talk about in that conversation, perhaps, is because people ask me about the wrong things.
This is what I came up with on Thursday while we were snorkeling. Most people won’t ask you what your favorite fish is (unless you’re at a seafood restaurant and they’re asking what you want to order), but I’ve actually got one of those. My favorite fish is the Humuhumunukunukuapua’a (the Hawaiian state fish). We’re so tight that I just call him Humu for short (oh, and because I can’t actually ever remember his full name).
So yeah, I’ve got to work on this whole remembering my favorites thing, and people also need to start asking me better favorite questions. Let’s go over the list they’re allowed to ask me: favorite color, favorite fish…. Okay, it is me that needs to work on it more.
En Route - July 26
Church today was at 9am but we got up at 6am to make sure that we were all packed and ready before heading off to church. We were all cleaned up by 7am and then we just sat around. Okay, we read scriptures and good Sunday activities like that, but for real- when I’m in Provo and I have church at 9am, I wake up at 7:50am. There is NO sleeping on this trip apparently.
It was Ward Conference at the ward we went to and so we heard the Bishop and the Stake President speak. They were pretty good, but the best part was that there were two families moving out of the ward and so they came up to the front and everyone stood up and sang Aloha-oe and then people filed up to the front and gave them hugs, said good-byes, and gave them leis. The sad part was that one of the families got bombarded with leis and the other family got like three. We stayed for Sunday school, but because we had to check out at noon, there wasn’t time to stay for Relief Society/Priesthood. But in Sunday School they had the visitors announce themselves and there were as many visitors as regular members. I’m not even joking.
We did the last bit of cleaning up and packed up the car. Took one last look out the balcony and headed off to Kaanapali to check into the resort. We pull up around 12:30pm and they tell us that they’ll give us a call as soon as our room is ready, but that it wasn’t ready yet. Apparently check-in is normally at like 3pm. We waited in the lobby area for about an hour and a half before Dad suggested that we go somewhere. Holy freaking moley it was so boring. I mean, the lobby has a really nice view, but I don’t do down time well. We got in the car and headed North. We drove past the Ritz Carlton and checked out a couple of bays then headed back. It was 3pm when we got back, but there was “a discrepancy” in our room and so we still couldn’t get in. Finally, around 3:40pm they told us they would just give us a different room. Thanks. Now, we already got an upgrade to a Junior Suite (we don’t know why) but I’m thinking that after making us wait 3 ½ hours for a room, they should have upgraded us all the way to a beach side villa. Yeah, that would have been nice. Not that our Junior Suite isn’t nice. Mom and Dad get a king size bed, I get a queen (a real bed!!!!) and of course our balcony has an amazing view of the lawn where they have nightly performances, beach covered in palm trees (well, the palms are more on the lawn), and then the sparkling blue water with boats floating by so serenely. Yeah, the Sheraton’s not too shabby of a place to be staying.
Once we finally got in and unpacked and everything, there were 2 hours before it was time to go to the opening social dinner. I took my book out onto the balcony and tried to get rid of a few tan lines by pulling down the straps of my dress. Unfortunately it was super hot out there and I sweated a little bit. I got over the being sweaty part, but then when I came in to get ready for dinner, I realized that I had sweated more than I thought and that it was visible on my back. Sick! I just kept twirling around in the room in the air conditioning trying to make it less visible and then just headed out the door hoping no one was checking out my back side that closely. Dinner was nice. Usually when I come to these, I have at least one sibling to keep me entertained while all the adults talk about stuff that I don’t comprehend. Not this time :o( Cindy Haun is one lady that Mom was talking to. She’s really nice and involved me in the conversation, so that was super nice. But then she had to go and socialize with other people. But, I’ve got to say that I help my own pretty well. Not that I was the center of conversations by any means, but I didn’t just sit there staring at my plate of my napkin the whole time. And, even when I was a silent member of the conversation, I apparently faked attentiveness pretty well. I add that part because toward the end of the night Dad started talking to this one real-estate guy and I was in between them. I was listening to what he had to say because there was nowhere else I could turn, but I almost always had no idea what he was talking about and sometimes the band would be so loud that I wouldn’t even be able to hear what he was saying. But, at the end of the night that guy asked me if I was in the financial planning business. I told him no and Dad told him I was a teacher, and he said, “Oh, because you seemed really attentive to the conversation.” Luckily he turned away before I could admit that I had no idea what he was talking about when he was talking 1980s Texas real-estate. Hehehe.
After dinner Dad and I changed into our suits to try a little night snorkeling. We got down to the water and saw that there was a group of night divers just getting out of the water. We geared up and got in (nice and warm :o) We saw nothing! At first Dad wouldn’t get close to the reefs (which is where the fish normally are) and we were just looking at empty sand on the bottom of the ocean. Eventually we made our way over to the reefs, but then Dad got scared that we were too close and we’d get hit against the side so we went back into the middle of nothing. It didn’t really matter though because I saw a total of one fish along the reef wall anyway. I have to admit that just being out there in the water at night was pretty cool and worth experiencing. Plus, it wasn’t a total flop. At times, there would be these weird little red things that would swarm around Dad’s flashlight (yeah, we only had one, that’s why Mom didn’t come this time). At one point Dad turned off his light to see something and I noticed that there was something glowing in the water. It turns out that the swarming red things glow in the dark. And, they glow brighter based on movement. So as I moved my hands out in front of me, my hands would glow, and the best was when I would swim backward and watch my feet kick, there would be lots of glowing going on there. I was ahead of Dad because he told me I had to swim hard because the tide was taking us out. He said that he was watching me swim and that they were all over me, so I was glowing. Yep, yep, there wasn’t too much to see out there, but I can’t lie that I thought those glowing things were pretty cool- pretty gross too, but pretty cool.
It was Ward Conference at the ward we went to and so we heard the Bishop and the Stake President speak. They were pretty good, but the best part was that there were two families moving out of the ward and so they came up to the front and everyone stood up and sang Aloha-oe and then people filed up to the front and gave them hugs, said good-byes, and gave them leis. The sad part was that one of the families got bombarded with leis and the other family got like three. We stayed for Sunday school, but because we had to check out at noon, there wasn’t time to stay for Relief Society/Priesthood. But in Sunday School they had the visitors announce themselves and there were as many visitors as regular members. I’m not even joking.
We did the last bit of cleaning up and packed up the car. Took one last look out the balcony and headed off to Kaanapali to check into the resort. We pull up around 12:30pm and they tell us that they’ll give us a call as soon as our room is ready, but that it wasn’t ready yet. Apparently check-in is normally at like 3pm. We waited in the lobby area for about an hour and a half before Dad suggested that we go somewhere. Holy freaking moley it was so boring. I mean, the lobby has a really nice view, but I don’t do down time well. We got in the car and headed North. We drove past the Ritz Carlton and checked out a couple of bays then headed back. It was 3pm when we got back, but there was “a discrepancy” in our room and so we still couldn’t get in. Finally, around 3:40pm they told us they would just give us a different room. Thanks. Now, we already got an upgrade to a Junior Suite (we don’t know why) but I’m thinking that after making us wait 3 ½ hours for a room, they should have upgraded us all the way to a beach side villa. Yeah, that would have been nice. Not that our Junior Suite isn’t nice. Mom and Dad get a king size bed, I get a queen (a real bed!!!!) and of course our balcony has an amazing view of the lawn where they have nightly performances, beach covered in palm trees (well, the palms are more on the lawn), and then the sparkling blue water with boats floating by so serenely. Yeah, the Sheraton’s not too shabby of a place to be staying.
Once we finally got in and unpacked and everything, there were 2 hours before it was time to go to the opening social dinner. I took my book out onto the balcony and tried to get rid of a few tan lines by pulling down the straps of my dress. Unfortunately it was super hot out there and I sweated a little bit. I got over the being sweaty part, but then when I came in to get ready for dinner, I realized that I had sweated more than I thought and that it was visible on my back. Sick! I just kept twirling around in the room in the air conditioning trying to make it less visible and then just headed out the door hoping no one was checking out my back side that closely. Dinner was nice. Usually when I come to these, I have at least one sibling to keep me entertained while all the adults talk about stuff that I don’t comprehend. Not this time :o( Cindy Haun is one lady that Mom was talking to. She’s really nice and involved me in the conversation, so that was super nice. But then she had to go and socialize with other people. But, I’ve got to say that I help my own pretty well. Not that I was the center of conversations by any means, but I didn’t just sit there staring at my plate of my napkin the whole time. And, even when I was a silent member of the conversation, I apparently faked attentiveness pretty well. I add that part because toward the end of the night Dad started talking to this one real-estate guy and I was in between them. I was listening to what he had to say because there was nowhere else I could turn, but I almost always had no idea what he was talking about and sometimes the band would be so loud that I wouldn’t even be able to hear what he was saying. But, at the end of the night that guy asked me if I was in the financial planning business. I told him no and Dad told him I was a teacher, and he said, “Oh, because you seemed really attentive to the conversation.” Luckily he turned away before I could admit that I had no idea what he was talking about when he was talking 1980s Texas real-estate. Hehehe.
After dinner Dad and I changed into our suits to try a little night snorkeling. We got down to the water and saw that there was a group of night divers just getting out of the water. We geared up and got in (nice and warm :o) We saw nothing! At first Dad wouldn’t get close to the reefs (which is where the fish normally are) and we were just looking at empty sand on the bottom of the ocean. Eventually we made our way over to the reefs, but then Dad got scared that we were too close and we’d get hit against the side so we went back into the middle of nothing. It didn’t really matter though because I saw a total of one fish along the reef wall anyway. I have to admit that just being out there in the water at night was pretty cool and worth experiencing. Plus, it wasn’t a total flop. At times, there would be these weird little red things that would swarm around Dad’s flashlight (yeah, we only had one, that’s why Mom didn’t come this time). At one point Dad turned off his light to see something and I noticed that there was something glowing in the water. It turns out that the swarming red things glow in the dark. And, they glow brighter based on movement. So as I moved my hands out in front of me, my hands would glow, and the best was when I would swim backward and watch my feet kick, there would be lots of glowing going on there. I was ahead of Dad because he told me I had to swim hard because the tide was taking us out. He said that he was watching me swim and that they were all over me, so I was glowing. Yep, yep, there wasn’t too much to see out there, but I can’t lie that I thought those glowing things were pretty cool- pretty gross too, but pretty cool.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Shopping, Shopping, Some Swimming, and More Shopping
Today was a trip to the swap meet. Remember how I didn't run yesterday so I was supposed to wake up early today to do it? Well I did. I woke up a lot last night actually, this condo is just not good for my sleep pattern. I miss the days when I could sleep anywhere and sleep through anything. Eventually I woke up and stayed up, went for my run, showered, and headed out with Mom and Dad to go to the swap meet. We drove all the way there, just to find out that the location had been moved. I ran into McDonald's really quick to figure out where it had been moved to, and then we headed off to the real swap meet.
Can I tell you how much I like getting good prices on things? It's fun. There were a bunch of booths set up (not as many as the one on the big island though) but a lot of them were repeats. There were wood carving booths, jewelry booths, toy booths, shirt booths, sarong booths, and then a few specialty booths that weren't repeated five times. I walked around to look at all the booths and then went around again to actually buy things. The sad part was that I wasn't super excited about really anything that was there. There was nothing I had to have or REALLY wanted. The first purchase I made was a map of Hawaii done on canvas with a picture in the background. The coolest part of the picture is the frame, but the frame is $60 so that was a no go. I also bought a ring. It's silver with three plumerias around the band. I remember looking at them last time I was in Maui so I figured it was okay to get one this time. I bought a super pretty pearl necklace that's got 6 strands of pearls and can be worn in 3 ways. The first way is a twist, or just as 6 strands, or the long way that turns it into 3 strands (if you don't follow that, it's okay, just don't worry about it). That was my super deal of the day. The lady told me it was $55 so I went to other places and found the lowest price was $35. I came back to her to tell her what I could get it for at the other place, hoping she'd go lower, but she was really sad when I told her it was $35 and told me that she'd give me that price. I didn't want to talk her down because I could tell that that was a low price so I took it. And then I bought two bracelets made out of jewel nuts. Dad hardly bought anything, and Mom didn't buy as much as I would have expected. But, I guess that just goes to show you that the swap meet wasn't all that great. Fun, I won't lie, but not like other times we've been. Maybe that's the problem... there's nothing we REALLY want from Hawaii because we've already gotten it.
After the swap meet we went to the cannery mall because Mom wanted to watch the kids hula competition. Well, that's not what we saw. We caught the tail end of a hula show and the kids never came out. It appears that we were given some wrong information. But as long as we were at the mall, we decided to look around. The mall was small and the only thing we ended up getting was some flip flops for Dad (his very first pair). After walking the mall we headed across the street for some lunch. We went to the Aloha Mix Plate for lunch because it was supposed to be authentic Hawaiian. I wasn't too impressed, but it filled me up, so that counts for something.
After going so many days of early morning, going non-stop, going going going, we finally had to take a break. After lunch we came home and napped. I was out for about 2 hours, but Dad was out for like 4. Holy Moley. We went back down to the cart shops by our condos, but didn't get anything. Again, it was kind of sad and disappointing that there was nothing that we really wanted. Well, that's a lie. Once Dad finally woke up, we went back down and he got two of those aluminum old school pictures he likes (again, if you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry about it).
After cart shopping we suited up and went down to the beach. Never mind that our condo is right on the beach, we got in the car and drove 2 minutes to a different beach. Don't ask me why. Anyway, by time we went in, it was around 7pm. When we got in the water, it was a little cooler than I expected, but once we got in and started moving around, it was nice and warm. It was pretty cool to be able to swim in the ocean while star gazing. We didn't last too long because it was getting dark pretty fast and Mom kept worrying that I was drifting too far away. Never mind that I've had at least 18 years of swimming experience, but whatev'.
Cutting down on the swim time ended up to be a good thing though because while we were in the water I remembered that we were supposed to go to Hilo Hattie's today but because the naps went so long, it didn't happen. I'd tried on a dress twice and really like it, but it's $40. With the 20% discount, it's only be $32 and so I had been debating for a while if I actually wanted to get it. I don't know, I guess the longer I'm on vacation, the more easily I spend money or something because I decided today that yes, I wanted to get the dress. So we quickly came home, showered off and Dad and I headed down to get the dress. I walked in, grabbed the dress and was ready to go. One of the workers looked and me and noted that I knew exactly what I wanted. I admitted to her that I'd already tried it on twice, so yeah, I did know what I wanted. She rang up the dress and it scanned as $19.99, so with the discount it was $15.99. WHAT!?!?!?! That totally made my night. I was so excited. How does a $39.99 dress just ring up $19.99? And it's not like I noticed the mistake and just kept it quiet, she noticed the price difference too and was just as surprised as I was, but she decided that it was just on sale.
By time we got back from our last shopping trip of the night, it was 9pm and time for dinner. So dinner, a little t.v., some blogging, some packing, and that's the end of the day. I'm still excited about my amazing buys and especially glad that they're things that I will wear when I get home (unlike most of the stuff I bought on past trips that were so Hawaiian that I felt weird wearing it off the island).
Can I tell you how much I like getting good prices on things? It's fun. There were a bunch of booths set up (not as many as the one on the big island though) but a lot of them were repeats. There were wood carving booths, jewelry booths, toy booths, shirt booths, sarong booths, and then a few specialty booths that weren't repeated five times. I walked around to look at all the booths and then went around again to actually buy things. The sad part was that I wasn't super excited about really anything that was there. There was nothing I had to have or REALLY wanted. The first purchase I made was a map of Hawaii done on canvas with a picture in the background. The coolest part of the picture is the frame, but the frame is $60 so that was a no go. I also bought a ring. It's silver with three plumerias around the band. I remember looking at them last time I was in Maui so I figured it was okay to get one this time. I bought a super pretty pearl necklace that's got 6 strands of pearls and can be worn in 3 ways. The first way is a twist, or just as 6 strands, or the long way that turns it into 3 strands (if you don't follow that, it's okay, just don't worry about it). That was my super deal of the day. The lady told me it was $55 so I went to other places and found the lowest price was $35. I came back to her to tell her what I could get it for at the other place, hoping she'd go lower, but she was really sad when I told her it was $35 and told me that she'd give me that price. I didn't want to talk her down because I could tell that that was a low price so I took it. And then I bought two bracelets made out of jewel nuts. Dad hardly bought anything, and Mom didn't buy as much as I would have expected. But, I guess that just goes to show you that the swap meet wasn't all that great. Fun, I won't lie, but not like other times we've been. Maybe that's the problem... there's nothing we REALLY want from Hawaii because we've already gotten it.
After the swap meet we went to the cannery mall because Mom wanted to watch the kids hula competition. Well, that's not what we saw. We caught the tail end of a hula show and the kids never came out. It appears that we were given some wrong information. But as long as we were at the mall, we decided to look around. The mall was small and the only thing we ended up getting was some flip flops for Dad (his very first pair). After walking the mall we headed across the street for some lunch. We went to the Aloha Mix Plate for lunch because it was supposed to be authentic Hawaiian. I wasn't too impressed, but it filled me up, so that counts for something.
After going so many days of early morning, going non-stop, going going going, we finally had to take a break. After lunch we came home and napped. I was out for about 2 hours, but Dad was out for like 4. Holy Moley. We went back down to the cart shops by our condos, but didn't get anything. Again, it was kind of sad and disappointing that there was nothing that we really wanted. Well, that's a lie. Once Dad finally woke up, we went back down and he got two of those aluminum old school pictures he likes (again, if you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry about it).
After cart shopping we suited up and went down to the beach. Never mind that our condo is right on the beach, we got in the car and drove 2 minutes to a different beach. Don't ask me why. Anyway, by time we went in, it was around 7pm. When we got in the water, it was a little cooler than I expected, but once we got in and started moving around, it was nice and warm. It was pretty cool to be able to swim in the ocean while star gazing. We didn't last too long because it was getting dark pretty fast and Mom kept worrying that I was drifting too far away. Never mind that I've had at least 18 years of swimming experience, but whatev'.
Cutting down on the swim time ended up to be a good thing though because while we were in the water I remembered that we were supposed to go to Hilo Hattie's today but because the naps went so long, it didn't happen. I'd tried on a dress twice and really like it, but it's $40. With the 20% discount, it's only be $32 and so I had been debating for a while if I actually wanted to get it. I don't know, I guess the longer I'm on vacation, the more easily I spend money or something because I decided today that yes, I wanted to get the dress. So we quickly came home, showered off and Dad and I headed down to get the dress. I walked in, grabbed the dress and was ready to go. One of the workers looked and me and noted that I knew exactly what I wanted. I admitted to her that I'd already tried it on twice, so yeah, I did know what I wanted. She rang up the dress and it scanned as $19.99, so with the discount it was $15.99. WHAT!?!?!?! That totally made my night. I was so excited. How does a $39.99 dress just ring up $19.99? And it's not like I noticed the mistake and just kept it quiet, she noticed the price difference too and was just as surprised as I was, but she decided that it was just on sale.
By time we got back from our last shopping trip of the night, it was 9pm and time for dinner. So dinner, a little t.v., some blogging, some packing, and that's the end of the day. I'm still excited about my amazing buys and especially glad that they're things that I will wear when I get home (unlike most of the stuff I bought on past trips that were so Hawaiian that I felt weird wearing it off the island).
Friday, July 24, 2009
Blue Water Rafting- July 24
Last night I slept better than the first night, but still, it wasn't that great. Instead of pulling out the bed, I took the cushions off and laid them out on the floor, covered those with sheets, and had a make-shift bed. I also learned how to turn the air conditioner down so I didn't freeze my hinnie off.
We woke up early this morning so that we could drive down to the dock and meet up with the Blue Water Rafting tour group. Blue Water Rafting is a snorkel tour, and it actually turned out to be less snorkeling than any of us had thought. But it was good! We got there early, and of course they were a little late, but it's Hawaii, what else would you expect except laid back workers? The captain guy asked if I was over 18- yep- so that I could sign my life away on a waiver form, and put me in charge of getting Mom and Dad to sign it too. We loaded up and there were only like 13 other people on the raft (luckily there were 5 people that were a no show so we had more room). One of the guys, Danny comes up to the meeting area with a bright red Hawaiian shirt on, with a black guitar shirt under, a bandanna, sun glasses, long hair, and immediately says, "I'm with the band." Now there are two ways this could have gone. One- he could have been oober obnoxious, over the top, annoying. Or two- he could be really fun and entertaining. Which do you think was our luck??? Number two. This guy was seriously entertaining, which was just icing on the cake because our two captains (Captain Devin and Captain Rob) were freaking hilarious on their own. Devin and Rob were cracking cheesy jokes the WHOLE time, but they were so perfectly planned that it was hilarious. Let's see if I can remember some... At one point in time we saw sea turtles and stopped the boat to watch them stick their heads out and such and Rob goes, "The reason that they're called green sea turtles is because their meat is green. I can vouch for that, I ran over one once. It worked out quite nicely though, I could eat it right there on the spot. It kind of tasted like spotted owl and bald eagle." That was funny :o) Or when we hit a pod of dolphins, Devin says, "So, you know, when dolphins travel in a group it's called a pod, right? Well when a dolphin travels alone, scientists call it an i-pod." Hehehe :o) And also when swimming with the dolphins Rob said that the dolphins were attracted to our boat because Devin had painted a nude lady dolphin on the bottom of the raft. Okay, not all of their humor was clean humor, and not all of it was histarical, but it was good. When we came in to the dock at the end of our trip they kept on going on and on with some bird jokes. That one was for sure good, but I can't remember it all, but I'll try. "Be careful when you're feeding the birds, they have churpies. But don't worry, it's tweetable. Yeah, with the right medicine, it will only take 3-4 beaks." I know there was more to it, but you get the gist.
Alright, so aside from the comedy act, the tour was incredible. It started out with us seeing turtles right away, they honestly were surrounding our boat. Then we took off and stopped because there was a large pod of spinner dolphins. We didn't get to see any do any amazing tricks or anything, but we stayed with them for a little while. As we were leaving the dolphins we saw a blow fish that was blown up. We circled him with our boat and for some reason Rob reached down and touched it. Yep, those things really are sharp is what he told us. Freaking gracious. One of the 18 year olds on the boat lost her top on the drive out. She wasn't sitting near me, so I don't know exactly what happened, but Rob had to slow the boat down so that she could re-tie her bathing suit. That's classy chica, really classy. We looked at the southern most tip of Maui and got a little lesson on the different kinds of lava. That began our 30 minute lava tour. We saw side ways blow holes (and got sprayed by them thanks to the careful manuvering of Rob). We drove our boat into a cave (where we again got sprayed by a compression cave). We saw lots of different lava formations that looked like squirrels, hogs, Walter Mathow, Fred Flinstone, and a light switch. At one point in time we stopped the boat and jumped in the water really quick and ended up swimming with a crocodile. Do you believe me? Well don't, it was just another rock formation that looked like a croc head. I just thought it was cool to say that I swam with a crocodile in Maui.
Then it was time to hit up the snorkeling spots. We went to Molokini which is a really popular snorkeling spot that we went to last time. The cool part is that you're snorkeling in a volcano crater, the not cool part is that it's a REALLY popular place to snorkel, so there's more people than fish. This trip was different, because we snorkeled the back side of the crater. Blue Water Rafting is the ONLY company that takes snorkelers out there. The back side of the crater is more for divers, since it's a 300 foot steep drop off into the ocean, but right along the reef there's some pretty cool sites to see. Oh my gosh. The water was so unbelievably blue/purple. And it was so clear that even though it was such a long way to the bottom, you could still see pretty far down. The reef was beautiful and the fish were not shy :o) There was this one part of the wall that was safe enough to get right up against and you could ride the swell up and down like a water elevator. It was quite the experience.
We had one more spot to snorkel before heading in. Along with the Molokini trip most boats stop off at "Turtle Town" Rob told us that we were skipping Turtle Town and going straight to "Turtle World." We got off the boat and immediately saw two turtles. Then one more came swimming over to them and then one more appeared out of no where. The rest of the group followed right behind us, so Mom Dad and I headed more in land to check out the coral and see what fish we could. There wasn't too much fish activity in the coral, but I got to touch a sea urchin, and I really was intrigued by the coral and the small fishies I was seeing. By time we went back to the boat, we couldn't find those turtles again, but we saw one more swimming at us so we chased him for a little while.
That was basically the end of our tour. Oh, except that Rob had some fun doing donuts in the raft right before we entered the harbor. Yeah, the 4 hours went by pretty quick, and we had an amazing time. For sure, I would recommend the trip to others, but pretty much only if they went on the "Pineapple Express" with Devin and Rob.
We came home and showered quickly before we headed out to Kahalui to do some shopping. I found a really cute bathing suite at this one place, and it was on clearance, but unfortunately they only had XS and L bottoms and those didn't fit me. I definitely needed one of the middle ones. Sad day. But I did end up getting a cute bathing suite cover up from Hilo Hatties that I wanted. I don't think we got much from the Mall except an early dinner. But after the mall and after dinner we headed out to Ho'olaki something beach to see if we could watch the wind surfers. Nope- there were NONE out. Sad day. We walked along the cliffs for a bit and enjoyed the ocean, but without any wind surfers to watch, there wasn't much need to stay too long.
We drove back and Mom and Dad headed up the stairs while I headed across the street to walk along the beach while talking to Alysha. It seems that I can't leave my two roommates home alone without them wanting to cause harm to each other. Poor girls. I ended up talking to Alysha for an hour and a half -ish and for went my run. Because even though it's not all that late, I am that tired. The snorkeling trip ended at 11:30am, but when we were driving out to the mall, I all of a sudden realized how tired I was. I couldn't stop yawning and Dad was having a rough time staying awake too. That trip this morning really took it out of us. So I'm not going to do much more tonight, and I'm going to call it good. I'm waking up early tomorrow morning to go for my run to make up not going tonight... I just hope I can get up and go. We're not leaving until 7am, so I think I can get up at 6am. Yeah, I can do that.
We woke up early this morning so that we could drive down to the dock and meet up with the Blue Water Rafting tour group. Blue Water Rafting is a snorkel tour, and it actually turned out to be less snorkeling than any of us had thought. But it was good! We got there early, and of course they were a little late, but it's Hawaii, what else would you expect except laid back workers? The captain guy asked if I was over 18- yep- so that I could sign my life away on a waiver form, and put me in charge of getting Mom and Dad to sign it too. We loaded up and there were only like 13 other people on the raft (luckily there were 5 people that were a no show so we had more room). One of the guys, Danny comes up to the meeting area with a bright red Hawaiian shirt on, with a black guitar shirt under, a bandanna, sun glasses, long hair, and immediately says, "I'm with the band." Now there are two ways this could have gone. One- he could have been oober obnoxious, over the top, annoying. Or two- he could be really fun and entertaining. Which do you think was our luck??? Number two. This guy was seriously entertaining, which was just icing on the cake because our two captains (Captain Devin and Captain Rob) were freaking hilarious on their own. Devin and Rob were cracking cheesy jokes the WHOLE time, but they were so perfectly planned that it was hilarious. Let's see if I can remember some... At one point in time we saw sea turtles and stopped the boat to watch them stick their heads out and such and Rob goes, "The reason that they're called green sea turtles is because their meat is green. I can vouch for that, I ran over one once. It worked out quite nicely though, I could eat it right there on the spot. It kind of tasted like spotted owl and bald eagle." That was funny :o) Or when we hit a pod of dolphins, Devin says, "So, you know, when dolphins travel in a group it's called a pod, right? Well when a dolphin travels alone, scientists call it an i-pod." Hehehe :o) And also when swimming with the dolphins Rob said that the dolphins were attracted to our boat because Devin had painted a nude lady dolphin on the bottom of the raft. Okay, not all of their humor was clean humor, and not all of it was histarical, but it was good. When we came in to the dock at the end of our trip they kept on going on and on with some bird jokes. That one was for sure good, but I can't remember it all, but I'll try. "Be careful when you're feeding the birds, they have churpies. But don't worry, it's tweetable. Yeah, with the right medicine, it will only take 3-4 beaks." I know there was more to it, but you get the gist.
Alright, so aside from the comedy act, the tour was incredible. It started out with us seeing turtles right away, they honestly were surrounding our boat. Then we took off and stopped because there was a large pod of spinner dolphins. We didn't get to see any do any amazing tricks or anything, but we stayed with them for a little while. As we were leaving the dolphins we saw a blow fish that was blown up. We circled him with our boat and for some reason Rob reached down and touched it. Yep, those things really are sharp is what he told us. Freaking gracious. One of the 18 year olds on the boat lost her top on the drive out. She wasn't sitting near me, so I don't know exactly what happened, but Rob had to slow the boat down so that she could re-tie her bathing suit. That's classy chica, really classy. We looked at the southern most tip of Maui and got a little lesson on the different kinds of lava. That began our 30 minute lava tour. We saw side ways blow holes (and got sprayed by them thanks to the careful manuvering of Rob). We drove our boat into a cave (where we again got sprayed by a compression cave). We saw lots of different lava formations that looked like squirrels, hogs, Walter Mathow, Fred Flinstone, and a light switch. At one point in time we stopped the boat and jumped in the water really quick and ended up swimming with a crocodile. Do you believe me? Well don't, it was just another rock formation that looked like a croc head. I just thought it was cool to say that I swam with a crocodile in Maui.
Then it was time to hit up the snorkeling spots. We went to Molokini which is a really popular snorkeling spot that we went to last time. The cool part is that you're snorkeling in a volcano crater, the not cool part is that it's a REALLY popular place to snorkel, so there's more people than fish. This trip was different, because we snorkeled the back side of the crater. Blue Water Rafting is the ONLY company that takes snorkelers out there. The back side of the crater is more for divers, since it's a 300 foot steep drop off into the ocean, but right along the reef there's some pretty cool sites to see. Oh my gosh. The water was so unbelievably blue/purple. And it was so clear that even though it was such a long way to the bottom, you could still see pretty far down. The reef was beautiful and the fish were not shy :o) There was this one part of the wall that was safe enough to get right up against and you could ride the swell up and down like a water elevator. It was quite the experience.
We had one more spot to snorkel before heading in. Along with the Molokini trip most boats stop off at "Turtle Town" Rob told us that we were skipping Turtle Town and going straight to "Turtle World." We got off the boat and immediately saw two turtles. Then one more came swimming over to them and then one more appeared out of no where. The rest of the group followed right behind us, so Mom Dad and I headed more in land to check out the coral and see what fish we could. There wasn't too much fish activity in the coral, but I got to touch a sea urchin, and I really was intrigued by the coral and the small fishies I was seeing. By time we went back to the boat, we couldn't find those turtles again, but we saw one more swimming at us so we chased him for a little while.
That was basically the end of our tour. Oh, except that Rob had some fun doing donuts in the raft right before we entered the harbor. Yeah, the 4 hours went by pretty quick, and we had an amazing time. For sure, I would recommend the trip to others, but pretty much only if they went on the "Pineapple Express" with Devin and Rob.
We came home and showered quickly before we headed out to Kahalui to do some shopping. I found a really cute bathing suite at this one place, and it was on clearance, but unfortunately they only had XS and L bottoms and those didn't fit me. I definitely needed one of the middle ones. Sad day. But I did end up getting a cute bathing suite cover up from Hilo Hatties that I wanted. I don't think we got much from the Mall except an early dinner. But after the mall and after dinner we headed out to Ho'olaki something beach to see if we could watch the wind surfers. Nope- there were NONE out. Sad day. We walked along the cliffs for a bit and enjoyed the ocean, but without any wind surfers to watch, there wasn't much need to stay too long.
We drove back and Mom and Dad headed up the stairs while I headed across the street to walk along the beach while talking to Alysha. It seems that I can't leave my two roommates home alone without them wanting to cause harm to each other. Poor girls. I ended up talking to Alysha for an hour and a half -ish and for went my run. Because even though it's not all that late, I am that tired. The snorkeling trip ended at 11:30am, but when we were driving out to the mall, I all of a sudden realized how tired I was. I couldn't stop yawning and Dad was having a rough time staying awake too. That trip this morning really took it out of us. So I'm not going to do much more tonight, and I'm going to call it good. I'm waking up early tomorrow morning to go for my run to make up not going tonight... I just hope I can get up and go. We're not leaving until 7am, so I think I can get up at 6am. Yeah, I can do that.
Snorkeling 101- July 23
Well, give or take a couple, I’m not exactly sure how many times I’ve gone snorkeling, but it’s got to be around that number :o) So yeah, today we headed down to the bottom of Kihei to hit up some good dive spots (as Dad calls them, everyone else realizes there’s a difference between snorkeling and diving). But before I get into the snorkeling, let me share just how terrible my night was. We’re staying in a one bedroom condo right? Right. It’s a pretty nice place, but with only one bedroom, it means that I sleep out on the pull out couch. Not that terrible. I never had a terrific bed growing up, never had to have the fancy pillow top cover, whatever, so I can sleep on pretty much anything and be okay with it. Well… I found my match. I could not sleep on that criz-appy bed last night. The mattress is history, I was sleeping straight up on the springs. Plus, it was freezing, but I didn’t know how to control the air conditioner. Plus, we’re right on the road so I could hear cars going by. Plus, there was this weird light shining through the window (which is weird considering that the road doesn’t really have street lamps. So I was in and out of sleep all night. But to top it off, there was a SUPER annoying bird going off like an alarm clock this morning. By 6am I had had it. I mean, it helped that Dad had already come into the living room twice already, so I thought it was much later, but no, it was 6am. Gracious.
Snorkeling was amazing though, made up for the fact that I didn’t sleep well. Well…. It didn’t start out amazingly, let me tell you that story. When we all got our snorkeling gear (and I mean for the very first time), I was what, 10 or so? And so I got the kiddie mask. I was able to use that one for a long while because I have a pretty small head (and I would just deal with serious mask face after snorkeling). So I never got my own real snorkeling mask. No big, I’m all about saving money (hence the reason I wore the small one for as long as I could). So when I needed to pack a mask and snorkel for this trip, I decided not to pack the little one, but to take the one that Joy used to use. I put it up to my face and sucked in to see if it fit. (It’s a legit test, I’m not making that up.) At home it fit okay so I packed it. Oh nay-nay. Today when I took it out in the water, it leaked. Water wasn’t rushing in or anything, but it got pretty annoying pretty quickly. Good old Mom was there to trade me masks temporarily, but Dad decided that when we went back into town, we’d get me a new mask. The first place we went to wasn’t all that great. When I got in the water I thought- okay, it’s cool and all, but really? I’ve seen coral and I’ve seen all these fish before. Pretty much the only cool part about it was that I saw a sea turtle, and he was huge! Now, I’ve seen sea turtles before, but it’s ALWAYS so cool to see them in the water (and out). But there really wasn’t much there, so pretty soon after we got in, Dad told us we were moving on.
The next place we went to was much better. I decided that the first place sucked not only because it honestly wasn’t that fantastic, but because my mask was leaking and my feet were killing me (I also don’t fit into the booties I did when I was 10- actually we probably got those when I was 12 but still). So for the second place, I had Mom’s mask and I took the booties off. So much better!!! Although I have seen coral before, I was able to slow down and realize how cool snorkeling is, it’s nature watching under water- so peaceful and just enough of a change from normal life. I also thought about how weird it is people swim with masks on just to stare at fish. I don’t know, it’s weird, I can’t really explain why without feeling like an idiot and failing to really explain, so I’m just not going to try. Anyway, at that place there were three extra cool things that happened. One, Dad spotted two turtles and the first one that he spotted honestly swam away and hid. Most turtles ignore people and go off to a rock and eat. Not this one. This one fled, found a rock, and lay low. It wasn’t eating; it was just pressed up against the rock hoping we wouldn’t spy it. Silly turtle :o) The second cool thing was that I saw an eel. Dad sees them every now and again when we go, and he always tells me about them, but by time I make it to them, they’re always gone. This time, I saw one!!! It was a cool stripped one and it was big too. It was wrapped up all around some coral, winding in and out of it, but by time Dad came, he had gone all the way through the coral and into a hole. But I saw it, go me. Third cool thing: I saw a flat fish that hides in the sand. (Mom and Dad called it a flounder, but when I hear “Flounder,” I think of a big fat yellow and blue fish that talks to Ariel, not a flat fish that hides in the sand.) I saw it out of the corner of my eye and got excited that it was a sting ray but then I looked at it for real and saw that it was one of those cool flat fish. That was the only time I’ve seen one of those so of course I was super excited. I watched it and it slowly moved closer and closer to the bottom of the ocean and then settled in the sand. I put my head out of the water and called Mom and Dad over. Mom was the only one to hear me at first and she asked what I found. I told her and then dove down to point him out. That dang fish is good. He didn’t budge. Well, his eyes did. Dad finally came over and I had to point the fish out again. It staid still when I pointed and when Dad went down and tried to move him. We gave up on watching him because Dad had found another turtle, but then we hear Mom screaming that the fish was swimming again. So we all got to see the thing swim, and spot how dang good he was at hiding.
After that place we bought me a mask and snorkel. I wasn’t looking for the most expensive one, just one that fit my little face. It just so happen that the non-expensive one that fit my face was pink and white. Oh man, for one that screams girly, which I’m not really; and two, that totally doesn’t match my blue fins. Oh well, I greatly appreciate the new mask. It works so much better than the leaky yellow one (which still didn’t match my blue fins). The third place we hit up had nothing. There were some fish, but really, it was pathetic. And crowded. Too many tourists there. So instead of making it a good snorkeling spot, we turned it into a good beach spot. We played in the water a bit, walked along the shore for a bit, and then left because by then the sun was super intense and we couldn’t just sit out in it.
We had some fruit when we got home and then headed out to the shops at Wahealia obviously to do a little shopping. Well… I did a lot of looking, and Mom and Dad did a fair amount of shopping. I’m just too cheap and too broke for stores like Tiffany’s and Roxy and Quicksilver and all those stores there. After the fancy shops, it was time to do some shopping that was more my budget- the around town kind of stores- the ones where you can bargain. Ever since shopping last night, I made it my goal to find a really cute summer dress, so that’s what I was looking for all day. We went to one store today and I walked in and the guy asked what I was looking for. I told him I was looking for a cute summer dress that was a little more fancy (fancier than the tube top, made as a beach cover up thing he showed me) and he goes, “Yeah, just the hard part is…. (and then places his hands on his chest)” Holy cow. Why are Hawaiians so comfortable talking about my chest?!?! He calls over his sister-in-law to help size me. And then she goes on about how my body is a size small, but my chest is a size large, and how she only has a couple of dresses that might cover me well. She was nice, and again, she was pushy! She was handing me dresses left and right and I put them on. I liked a couple of them, but they weren’t anything that I loved (like two dresses I’d already found) and so again, she was not happy when I did not end up buying from her. But honestly, these people need to have some more decorum!
I didn’t find a dress that I liked in the stores around there so we headed back to the place we went last night. I walked in, found the dress I tried on. At first the lady didn’t recognize me, but then all of a sudden, she goes, “I saw you…” I told her “yeah, I came last night.” She thought she had me hooked and so she said, “Okay $40, okay?” I told her that I wanted to try it on one more time. Again, I walked out and she told me I didn’t need a bra. YEAH, I GOT THAT MUCH, THANKS!!! I asked her if she could go lower than $40 and she laughed and told me to go change. She asked how much I wanted to pay and I told her $35. She said she’d give it to me for $37. I told her that I really wanted that dress, but I’d found another one at Hilo Hattie’s for $32, so I didn’t really want to pay $37 for this one (that’s not a lie, that’s really true-there is another super cute dress at Hilo Hattie’s). She was not happy, but I got the dress for $35!!! As we walked away, she told my Mom that she should make sure to take me into any store where she wanted to get a good price (because I got a great deal out of her :o)
While shopping around in the last two places, I started to get a little weird- a little hyper maybe. My roommates know what I’m talking about, it’s that mood where I make them promise not to let me out in public because I’ll just end up embarrassing myself by doing something stupid. (Of course my roommates always make me go out when I’m in those moods, but those are other stories :o) So when we got home I changed and went for a run. Unfortunately the streets are not well lit, but it wasn’t scary or anything because there is so much car traffic that the streets turn out to be pretty well lit, and there were people walking everywhere. I was definitely not going to get nabbed on that run. And I especially wasn’t going to get nabbed because I was running at quite the quick pace. I was very pleased with myself when I got back.
Since my run, this is really all I’ve done. And it’s time to get off anyway because we’ve got a big day and an early morning tomorrow. Shoot. I wanted to write another post about “favorites” but that’s not going to work out so well tonight, because today was pretty eventful, so I’m pretty tuckered out, and like I said, we’re getting’ up early tomorrow (5:30am). So I’ll have to squeeze that other post in some other time.
Snorkeling was amazing though, made up for the fact that I didn’t sleep well. Well…. It didn’t start out amazingly, let me tell you that story. When we all got our snorkeling gear (and I mean for the very first time), I was what, 10 or so? And so I got the kiddie mask. I was able to use that one for a long while because I have a pretty small head (and I would just deal with serious mask face after snorkeling). So I never got my own real snorkeling mask. No big, I’m all about saving money (hence the reason I wore the small one for as long as I could). So when I needed to pack a mask and snorkel for this trip, I decided not to pack the little one, but to take the one that Joy used to use. I put it up to my face and sucked in to see if it fit. (It’s a legit test, I’m not making that up.) At home it fit okay so I packed it. Oh nay-nay. Today when I took it out in the water, it leaked. Water wasn’t rushing in or anything, but it got pretty annoying pretty quickly. Good old Mom was there to trade me masks temporarily, but Dad decided that when we went back into town, we’d get me a new mask. The first place we went to wasn’t all that great. When I got in the water I thought- okay, it’s cool and all, but really? I’ve seen coral and I’ve seen all these fish before. Pretty much the only cool part about it was that I saw a sea turtle, and he was huge! Now, I’ve seen sea turtles before, but it’s ALWAYS so cool to see them in the water (and out). But there really wasn’t much there, so pretty soon after we got in, Dad told us we were moving on.
The next place we went to was much better. I decided that the first place sucked not only because it honestly wasn’t that fantastic, but because my mask was leaking and my feet were killing me (I also don’t fit into the booties I did when I was 10- actually we probably got those when I was 12 but still). So for the second place, I had Mom’s mask and I took the booties off. So much better!!! Although I have seen coral before, I was able to slow down and realize how cool snorkeling is, it’s nature watching under water- so peaceful and just enough of a change from normal life. I also thought about how weird it is people swim with masks on just to stare at fish. I don’t know, it’s weird, I can’t really explain why without feeling like an idiot and failing to really explain, so I’m just not going to try. Anyway, at that place there were three extra cool things that happened. One, Dad spotted two turtles and the first one that he spotted honestly swam away and hid. Most turtles ignore people and go off to a rock and eat. Not this one. This one fled, found a rock, and lay low. It wasn’t eating; it was just pressed up against the rock hoping we wouldn’t spy it. Silly turtle :o) The second cool thing was that I saw an eel. Dad sees them every now and again when we go, and he always tells me about them, but by time I make it to them, they’re always gone. This time, I saw one!!! It was a cool stripped one and it was big too. It was wrapped up all around some coral, winding in and out of it, but by time Dad came, he had gone all the way through the coral and into a hole. But I saw it, go me. Third cool thing: I saw a flat fish that hides in the sand. (Mom and Dad called it a flounder, but when I hear “Flounder,” I think of a big fat yellow and blue fish that talks to Ariel, not a flat fish that hides in the sand.) I saw it out of the corner of my eye and got excited that it was a sting ray but then I looked at it for real and saw that it was one of those cool flat fish. That was the only time I’ve seen one of those so of course I was super excited. I watched it and it slowly moved closer and closer to the bottom of the ocean and then settled in the sand. I put my head out of the water and called Mom and Dad over. Mom was the only one to hear me at first and she asked what I found. I told her and then dove down to point him out. That dang fish is good. He didn’t budge. Well, his eyes did. Dad finally came over and I had to point the fish out again. It staid still when I pointed and when Dad went down and tried to move him. We gave up on watching him because Dad had found another turtle, but then we hear Mom screaming that the fish was swimming again. So we all got to see the thing swim, and spot how dang good he was at hiding.
After that place we bought me a mask and snorkel. I wasn’t looking for the most expensive one, just one that fit my little face. It just so happen that the non-expensive one that fit my face was pink and white. Oh man, for one that screams girly, which I’m not really; and two, that totally doesn’t match my blue fins. Oh well, I greatly appreciate the new mask. It works so much better than the leaky yellow one (which still didn’t match my blue fins). The third place we hit up had nothing. There were some fish, but really, it was pathetic. And crowded. Too many tourists there. So instead of making it a good snorkeling spot, we turned it into a good beach spot. We played in the water a bit, walked along the shore for a bit, and then left because by then the sun was super intense and we couldn’t just sit out in it.
We had some fruit when we got home and then headed out to the shops at Wahealia obviously to do a little shopping. Well… I did a lot of looking, and Mom and Dad did a fair amount of shopping. I’m just too cheap and too broke for stores like Tiffany’s and Roxy and Quicksilver and all those stores there. After the fancy shops, it was time to do some shopping that was more my budget- the around town kind of stores- the ones where you can bargain. Ever since shopping last night, I made it my goal to find a really cute summer dress, so that’s what I was looking for all day. We went to one store today and I walked in and the guy asked what I was looking for. I told him I was looking for a cute summer dress that was a little more fancy (fancier than the tube top, made as a beach cover up thing he showed me) and he goes, “Yeah, just the hard part is…. (and then places his hands on his chest)” Holy cow. Why are Hawaiians so comfortable talking about my chest?!?! He calls over his sister-in-law to help size me. And then she goes on about how my body is a size small, but my chest is a size large, and how she only has a couple of dresses that might cover me well. She was nice, and again, she was pushy! She was handing me dresses left and right and I put them on. I liked a couple of them, but they weren’t anything that I loved (like two dresses I’d already found) and so again, she was not happy when I did not end up buying from her. But honestly, these people need to have some more decorum!
I didn’t find a dress that I liked in the stores around there so we headed back to the place we went last night. I walked in, found the dress I tried on. At first the lady didn’t recognize me, but then all of a sudden, she goes, “I saw you…” I told her “yeah, I came last night.” She thought she had me hooked and so she said, “Okay $40, okay?” I told her that I wanted to try it on one more time. Again, I walked out and she told me I didn’t need a bra. YEAH, I GOT THAT MUCH, THANKS!!! I asked her if she could go lower than $40 and she laughed and told me to go change. She asked how much I wanted to pay and I told her $35. She said she’d give it to me for $37. I told her that I really wanted that dress, but I’d found another one at Hilo Hattie’s for $32, so I didn’t really want to pay $37 for this one (that’s not a lie, that’s really true-there is another super cute dress at Hilo Hattie’s). She was not happy, but I got the dress for $35!!! As we walked away, she told my Mom that she should make sure to take me into any store where she wanted to get a good price (because I got a great deal out of her :o)
While shopping around in the last two places, I started to get a little weird- a little hyper maybe. My roommates know what I’m talking about, it’s that mood where I make them promise not to let me out in public because I’ll just end up embarrassing myself by doing something stupid. (Of course my roommates always make me go out when I’m in those moods, but those are other stories :o) So when we got home I changed and went for a run. Unfortunately the streets are not well lit, but it wasn’t scary or anything because there is so much car traffic that the streets turn out to be pretty well lit, and there were people walking everywhere. I was definitely not going to get nabbed on that run. And I especially wasn’t going to get nabbed because I was running at quite the quick pace. I was very pleased with myself when I got back.
Since my run, this is really all I’ve done. And it’s time to get off anyway because we’ve got a big day and an early morning tomorrow. Shoot. I wanted to write another post about “favorites” but that’s not going to work out so well tonight, because today was pretty eventful, so I’m pretty tuckered out, and like I said, we’re getting’ up early tomorrow (5:30am). So I’ll have to squeeze that other post in some other time.
And We’re Off- July 22, 2009
Before I went to bed, I asked Mom what time we were leaving the next morning. She told me that we had to leave at 7am, so I set my alarm for 6am. But this morning Mom came in and says, “it’s a quarter to 6, we leave in an hour.” Alright, so I got up, but I was ready in like 15 minutes- what was there for me to do? I was packed, and had my outfit lined up already. So I was ready to leave early… well, it’s better than being ready late.
Hawaiian airlines is losing so much business that they no longer have a counter, they have three kiosks and a funny old lady who stands there in a moo-moo and lei. That threw Dad off, he got worried that Dana dropped us off in the wrong area. We got all checked in with no problem and headed to the gate. We had some time to wait, so again, it’s better early than late, but sometimes early is just annoying.
It was a 5 ½ hour flight, but it went by surprisingly fast. It felt faster than the 4 hour flight to Florida, but I’m sure that watching 2 movies helped with that. Yeah, I’m not sad at all that I never saw Monsters vs. Aliens when it was out in the theater. That was the in flight movie and it was a good way to waste some time, but it really was not a good movie. Jumper, however, the movie I watched on Mom’s player, was much better than I had expected. I’d heard that it wasn’t a good movie, but it seems that when I hear that, when I finally see it, I end up enjoying it. It’s probably because I lower my expectations because other people tell me it’s bad and so when it’s not completely horrible, it turns out to exceed my expectations.
Anyway, who really cares about the flight, right? Good point. So we showed up on Oahu and had a short layover before taking a quick island hopper plane to Maui. Unfortunately our plane was late and so we didn’t get to Maui as soon as we would have liked. And it’s not like we were at a good gate with a nice view out the window; nope, we were on one of the out skirt ones that looked out over walkways and dryness. We finally got on the plane and that flight was super short. I think Dad said it was 40 minutes, but it felt like we went up and were coming right back down.
First things first, we got our car. Second things second, we went grocery shopping. Third things third, we went to our condo. At first I was super not excited because the building did not look like its picture. It’s more run down and less dazzling than the pictures showed. But, then we actually got into our condo and saw the view. Holy frick! The view is SO insanely gorgeous. The pictures of it won’t do it justice, I promise! After making dinner, we went for a walk along the beach and did a little looking around at the shopping area right by the condo.
Goodness gracious. I went into a dress shop because I’m looking for some more cute summer dresses. I just bought one and I think dresses are fun and I want to add some more to my closet. Walking past the store, I saw a green one on display that I wanted to try on. I went in and the lady told me that she only had two left of those. She asked me what size I was and held up the medium. I told her I probably needed the large and she really didn’t believe me. The other one hanging up was a small, so it was lucky that the one on display was a large. I tried it on and she finally understood why I needed a large. She pulled out some other dresses and was telling my Mom that I needed a large because my boobs were so big. I’m not kidding, she would not stop mentioning how large I was. It was slightly awkward, especially when she kept talking even when there was another customer in there. Oh, and she kept on telling me that I didn’t need to be wearing a bra with the dresses I was trying on. I told her that I understood, but that I didn’t want to try it on without a bra. So what does she do? She keeps pulling down my bra straps as soon as I walked out of the changing room. Oh goodness. And she was pushy. She kept giving me dresses to try on, which was fine, they were cute, but then she asked Mom which dress she liked the most and then took it up to the register. Um, hi… for one, it’s my choice, it’s my dress, and two, I had no idea how much the dresses were. The black one that Mom liked was $67, and she said she would give it to me for $58. The green one I liked was $43, but she’d give it to me for $40. When I told her I didn’t want the black one for $58 she kept telling me that that was as low as she could go and it was a really good price. Well, good for her, I didn’t want that one, I don’t care if she can’t go lower, I don’t want it. And when I told her I didn’t have my wallet with me and that I’d have to come back and look at the green one again, I thought her glare was going to set me on fire. I really like the dress, but now I’m scared to go back… and I’m not super excited to spend $40 on a dress when the last summer dress I got was only $18.
So that was day one. After shopping Mom and Dad went to jump in the pool while I showered. I should be in bed already because I’ve been up for a while, but I had to make sure I wrote (and writing is going a little slowly because Mom’s watching “So You Think You Can Dance” and I get easily distracted.
Hawaiian airlines is losing so much business that they no longer have a counter, they have three kiosks and a funny old lady who stands there in a moo-moo and lei. That threw Dad off, he got worried that Dana dropped us off in the wrong area. We got all checked in with no problem and headed to the gate. We had some time to wait, so again, it’s better early than late, but sometimes early is just annoying.
It was a 5 ½ hour flight, but it went by surprisingly fast. It felt faster than the 4 hour flight to Florida, but I’m sure that watching 2 movies helped with that. Yeah, I’m not sad at all that I never saw Monsters vs. Aliens when it was out in the theater. That was the in flight movie and it was a good way to waste some time, but it really was not a good movie. Jumper, however, the movie I watched on Mom’s player, was much better than I had expected. I’d heard that it wasn’t a good movie, but it seems that when I hear that, when I finally see it, I end up enjoying it. It’s probably because I lower my expectations because other people tell me it’s bad and so when it’s not completely horrible, it turns out to exceed my expectations.
Anyway, who really cares about the flight, right? Good point. So we showed up on Oahu and had a short layover before taking a quick island hopper plane to Maui. Unfortunately our plane was late and so we didn’t get to Maui as soon as we would have liked. And it’s not like we were at a good gate with a nice view out the window; nope, we were on one of the out skirt ones that looked out over walkways and dryness. We finally got on the plane and that flight was super short. I think Dad said it was 40 minutes, but it felt like we went up and were coming right back down.
First things first, we got our car. Second things second, we went grocery shopping. Third things third, we went to our condo. At first I was super not excited because the building did not look like its picture. It’s more run down and less dazzling than the pictures showed. But, then we actually got into our condo and saw the view. Holy frick! The view is SO insanely gorgeous. The pictures of it won’t do it justice, I promise! After making dinner, we went for a walk along the beach and did a little looking around at the shopping area right by the condo.
Goodness gracious. I went into a dress shop because I’m looking for some more cute summer dresses. I just bought one and I think dresses are fun and I want to add some more to my closet. Walking past the store, I saw a green one on display that I wanted to try on. I went in and the lady told me that she only had two left of those. She asked me what size I was and held up the medium. I told her I probably needed the large and she really didn’t believe me. The other one hanging up was a small, so it was lucky that the one on display was a large. I tried it on and she finally understood why I needed a large. She pulled out some other dresses and was telling my Mom that I needed a large because my boobs were so big. I’m not kidding, she would not stop mentioning how large I was. It was slightly awkward, especially when she kept talking even when there was another customer in there. Oh, and she kept on telling me that I didn’t need to be wearing a bra with the dresses I was trying on. I told her that I understood, but that I didn’t want to try it on without a bra. So what does she do? She keeps pulling down my bra straps as soon as I walked out of the changing room. Oh goodness. And she was pushy. She kept giving me dresses to try on, which was fine, they were cute, but then she asked Mom which dress she liked the most and then took it up to the register. Um, hi… for one, it’s my choice, it’s my dress, and two, I had no idea how much the dresses were. The black one that Mom liked was $67, and she said she would give it to me for $58. The green one I liked was $43, but she’d give it to me for $40. When I told her I didn’t want the black one for $58 she kept telling me that that was as low as she could go and it was a really good price. Well, good for her, I didn’t want that one, I don’t care if she can’t go lower, I don’t want it. And when I told her I didn’t have my wallet with me and that I’d have to come back and look at the green one again, I thought her glare was going to set me on fire. I really like the dress, but now I’m scared to go back… and I’m not super excited to spend $40 on a dress when the last summer dress I got was only $18.
So that was day one. After shopping Mom and Dad went to jump in the pool while I showered. I should be in bed already because I’ve been up for a while, but I had to make sure I wrote (and writing is going a little slowly because Mom’s watching “So You Think You Can Dance” and I get easily distracted.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
So Far So Good
So far, it's been a nice trip home. Sunday I got back while everyone was at church, but I had time to blog and cool down and relax before everyone came. By relax, I don't mean sleep, because as soon as I went for a little nappy-poo on the couch, Kim blows through the door, and marches up stairs. Roman comes in and says "Hi Aunt Brookie" and then Ben comes in and mocks him. Man, so much for that nap. Teasing of course, I would much rather play with the kiddies than nap. Pillious Isaac wouldn't give me a hug. I warned him I wouldn't put him down until I got one and he says "I already did" and then throws his hands up on my shoulders (but still not a hug). I had to carry the punk around for a little bit before he finally gave me a non-lame hug. Roman is always full of love, so I didn't have to worry about a hug and kiss from that little angel. Aaron didn't nap for very long, so not too long after the gang got there, he was brought down. He is A-dorable!!! He is always so smiley and he has the CUTEST giggle. And he'll do it on command, all you have to do is do a fake laugh at him and then he'll echo you. I hear he has some other tricks up his sleeve, like waving and saying "cat" but all I saw was the giggle and the frog crawl :o) Both worth seeing.
Dana and Josh were there too, of course, but I didn't interact with them so much as I pawned my fabric off on Dana so she could make me some pillow cases and then I ran off to play with the boys. Oops, I'm pretty much a terrible sister. But Dana is the one that I talk to the most on the phone, so we have less catching up to do (I guess).
We had shish-ca-bobs for dinner, and it was a little later than we had planned. We were all sitting around the table ready to eat when Ben picked up the first skewer and asked if the meat was cooked, then actually poked it to realize that it was NOT. So after the effort of grilling the ca bobs, we finished them off in the oven. Once they were finally done, they were good, and dinner was enjoyable.
Kim and I went for a run/jog after dinner and Kim just about killed me when I asked if she wanted to take the longer way home. By time we got back from the run, Dana and Josh had already left -without a goodbye :o( And Kim and Ben followed suit not too long after that. So I watched a movie, showered, and headed off to bed.
Monday I woke up, found and rinsed off the snorkeling gear for Mom and me, and headed up to Kim's. Sunday she had told me to be at her house no later than 9am so that we could go to the beach. I got there at 8:30am and she had just put the baby down for a nap. An hour and a half long nap. The boys didn't mind staying home a little longer, because they got to show me everything they could build with legos (Roman) and how to go up and down the bunk beds (Isaac) and their new toothbrushes, and anything else they could think of that I hadn't seen yet. Oh frick, they are so adorable!!!!!
Since the baby was sleeping, I had time to run down to the store to pick up stuff for sandwiches for a picnic on the beach. I also made all the sandwiches while Kim, I don't know what. (Teasing, please don't let Kim murder me for that comment, she was very busy all morning doing dishes and chasing her kids down.) Grandma Kerby also stopped by and we chatted for a while. That was nice, and it wasn't until then that I realized how short my visit home is going to be- I've got Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, leave Wednesday, get back the next Thursday, recoup Friday, and leave Saturday. So my trip is a pretty good length, but the actual time at home is not so long.
Anyway, the baby finally woke up and it was time to head out to the beach. We were super lucky to find a perfect parking spot right away. We were driving down by the beach and someone popped out of a spot right in front of us, no waiting, no nothing. And, it was right in front of a ramp that lead to the beach, we didn't even have to walk far to get down. Kim attributes that to Ben paying his tithing Sunday. Yay for obedience :o) Hehehe
When we first got there, it was overcast and the water was a little cold, which was fine because the boys just play in the sand, and not so much in the water anyway. Freaking gracious. Aaron LOVES the beach. He's crazy. Kim set him up in the tent area to keep him out of the sun and sand, and immediately he crawls into the sand to see what his brothers are digging. Not only that, but when Roman, Isaac, and I went down to play in the sand closer to the water, Kim brought Aaron down and plopped him next to us. He started crawling straight toward the water. I was right beside him and Kim told me to let him go. He did, he went and crawled into the water. Instead of crying when the water came up and got his arms and legs wet, he let out the biggest squeal of delight. Oh, he was a disaster by time the day was over. He had sand everywhere, he was sucking on a smooth rock he had found, he was soaking wet, and loving every minute of it. The only time he was fussy was when it was time to go and he had to be wrapped in a towel and put in the car.
I've been to the beach with the boys before, but never have I seen them really play in the water, it's always them on the beach in the sand (they're true builders). But yesterday they were jumping in the waves, rolling around in the shallow area just letting the tide take them in and out. They were having a blast. It was so much fun and of course, like I've said a thousand times and more.... they were so cute! Oh, yeah, and the water was warmer than when we first got there because about an hour after we came, the sun came out and it was PERFECT beach weather. The only negative thing about the day at the beach was that my back got red. I put sun tan lotion everywhere else, but by time Kim helped me put it on my back, it was too late. I was sure I had enough of a base from Florida, last trip home, and going to the pool. But apparently I was wrong. I'm not in too much pain though, and this morning it's already looking better so let's hope it's tan by tomorrow so that I don't have to be packing luggage on sun burned shoulders and a red back.
After the beach the boys took naps and Kim was sad that I didn't stay, but I wanted to get home and clean the house a little, do my laundry, and clean my car. Yeah, only some of that happened. I did clean up the house, but I gave up the car aspirations, and I did my laundry, but not until late o'clock at night.
Then today, I'm done choosing what stuff to pack, but still unsure about what I'm packing it all in. I can get it into two carry-ons, but Dad thinks I should check in a bigger bag and that technically I'm not supposed to have two carry-ons, I'm supposed to have one carry-on and a personal bag (which I call a second carry-on). So I'll figure that out soon. Whenever Mom gets back from the temple, we're supposed to go car shopping. I think I've done all the online stuff that I can, and I finally do have to actually get out there and talk to dealers, but I still don't want to. I'm a pansy, I know. And I'm secretly hoping that I get a super, can't turn this down offer so that I can buy the car and not have to drive my sable back. (The no air conditioning thing really was not that much fun- then again, that's how we did trips growing up, so I should stop acting spoiled and just suck it up.)
And then we take off for Hawaii tomorrow!!!!! Oh the roughness of my life ;o)
Dana and Josh were there too, of course, but I didn't interact with them so much as I pawned my fabric off on Dana so she could make me some pillow cases and then I ran off to play with the boys. Oops, I'm pretty much a terrible sister. But Dana is the one that I talk to the most on the phone, so we have less catching up to do (I guess).
We had shish-ca-bobs for dinner, and it was a little later than we had planned. We were all sitting around the table ready to eat when Ben picked up the first skewer and asked if the meat was cooked, then actually poked it to realize that it was NOT. So after the effort of grilling the ca bobs, we finished them off in the oven. Once they were finally done, they were good, and dinner was enjoyable.
Kim and I went for a run/jog after dinner and Kim just about killed me when I asked if she wanted to take the longer way home. By time we got back from the run, Dana and Josh had already left -without a goodbye :o( And Kim and Ben followed suit not too long after that. So I watched a movie, showered, and headed off to bed.
Monday I woke up, found and rinsed off the snorkeling gear for Mom and me, and headed up to Kim's. Sunday she had told me to be at her house no later than 9am so that we could go to the beach. I got there at 8:30am and she had just put the baby down for a nap. An hour and a half long nap. The boys didn't mind staying home a little longer, because they got to show me everything they could build with legos (Roman) and how to go up and down the bunk beds (Isaac) and their new toothbrushes, and anything else they could think of that I hadn't seen yet. Oh frick, they are so adorable!!!!!
Since the baby was sleeping, I had time to run down to the store to pick up stuff for sandwiches for a picnic on the beach. I also made all the sandwiches while Kim, I don't know what. (Teasing, please don't let Kim murder me for that comment, she was very busy all morning doing dishes and chasing her kids down.) Grandma Kerby also stopped by and we chatted for a while. That was nice, and it wasn't until then that I realized how short my visit home is going to be- I've got Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, leave Wednesday, get back the next Thursday, recoup Friday, and leave Saturday. So my trip is a pretty good length, but the actual time at home is not so long.
Anyway, the baby finally woke up and it was time to head out to the beach. We were super lucky to find a perfect parking spot right away. We were driving down by the beach and someone popped out of a spot right in front of us, no waiting, no nothing. And, it was right in front of a ramp that lead to the beach, we didn't even have to walk far to get down. Kim attributes that to Ben paying his tithing Sunday. Yay for obedience :o) Hehehe
When we first got there, it was overcast and the water was a little cold, which was fine because the boys just play in the sand, and not so much in the water anyway. Freaking gracious. Aaron LOVES the beach. He's crazy. Kim set him up in the tent area to keep him out of the sun and sand, and immediately he crawls into the sand to see what his brothers are digging. Not only that, but when Roman, Isaac, and I went down to play in the sand closer to the water, Kim brought Aaron down and plopped him next to us. He started crawling straight toward the water. I was right beside him and Kim told me to let him go. He did, he went and crawled into the water. Instead of crying when the water came up and got his arms and legs wet, he let out the biggest squeal of delight. Oh, he was a disaster by time the day was over. He had sand everywhere, he was sucking on a smooth rock he had found, he was soaking wet, and loving every minute of it. The only time he was fussy was when it was time to go and he had to be wrapped in a towel and put in the car.
I've been to the beach with the boys before, but never have I seen them really play in the water, it's always them on the beach in the sand (they're true builders). But yesterday they were jumping in the waves, rolling around in the shallow area just letting the tide take them in and out. They were having a blast. It was so much fun and of course, like I've said a thousand times and more.... they were so cute! Oh, yeah, and the water was warmer than when we first got there because about an hour after we came, the sun came out and it was PERFECT beach weather. The only negative thing about the day at the beach was that my back got red. I put sun tan lotion everywhere else, but by time Kim helped me put it on my back, it was too late. I was sure I had enough of a base from Florida, last trip home, and going to the pool. But apparently I was wrong. I'm not in too much pain though, and this morning it's already looking better so let's hope it's tan by tomorrow so that I don't have to be packing luggage on sun burned shoulders and a red back.
After the beach the boys took naps and Kim was sad that I didn't stay, but I wanted to get home and clean the house a little, do my laundry, and clean my car. Yeah, only some of that happened. I did clean up the house, but I gave up the car aspirations, and I did my laundry, but not until late o'clock at night.
Then today, I'm done choosing what stuff to pack, but still unsure about what I'm packing it all in. I can get it into two carry-ons, but Dad thinks I should check in a bigger bag and that technically I'm not supposed to have two carry-ons, I'm supposed to have one carry-on and a personal bag (which I call a second carry-on). So I'll figure that out soon. Whenever Mom gets back from the temple, we're supposed to go car shopping. I think I've done all the online stuff that I can, and I finally do have to actually get out there and talk to dealers, but I still don't want to. I'm a pansy, I know. And I'm secretly hoping that I get a super, can't turn this down offer so that I can buy the car and not have to drive my sable back. (The no air conditioning thing really was not that much fun- then again, that's how we did trips growing up, so I should stop acting spoiled and just suck it up.)
And then we take off for Hawaii tomorrow!!!!! Oh the roughness of my life ;o)
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Headed Home
Like I said in my last post, I headed home on Saturday. Because of my fun filled day on Friday, I was unable to get up as early as I had wanted to to head out. I woke up at 8am and was gone by 8:30am, but it still wasn't early enough. See, instead of just driving the 3 hours to Cedar City like usual, I was driving 6 hours to Las Vegas. Not that a 6 hour drive is totally disagreeable, but I don't have air conditioning in my car, and I had to drive through places like Mesquite and Saint George. They're hot. The drive started out okay. I had the windows down a bit at first, but when I got tired of my hair blowing everywhere, I would just roll them up. I had some pretty good music to get me through, and things were going pretty well for the first part of the drive. Then I hit Cedar City. I decided to fill up with gas there, so I got to stretch my legs a little and then I headed back on the road. (I'm not much of one for detours when I'm driving some where. If I don't have to stop, I usually don't. And when I do have to stop, it's not usually for very long.) Eww... except that almost immediately after I stopped, it was the end of windows up. I had to have my windows down almost the entire second half of the drive. Because, when I didn't have them down, I started sweating like a savage. When I was actually in Vegas, looking for the right exit to take, Mom called me and I had to put the windows up to talk to her. I thought I would be okay, but after a minute or so I told her I had to go, there was just no way I could lock myself up in that car any longer than it had taken for her to ask me where I was.
I parked the car and wondered into the Rio and called Grandma to find out where she was. Since I parked myself, I didn't use the front door and it took us a while to find each other, but eventually we met up. We went up to her room where I sat and enjoyed the air conditioning. And while Grandma went down to talk to the cruise people, I took a nice cold shower and laid down on the bed and probably dosed off for a tiny little while.
When Grandma came back up, it was time for dinner. Holy freaking nice buffet. There was EVERYTHING in that place. I guess it pays to be a VIP in Vegas. That's twice now that I was not a cheap date, but I can say that I was cheaper for Grandma than I was for George, although Grandma also got me a hotel room.... maybe it evens out :o) After dinner Grandma stayed downstairs to do her typical Vegas thing and I went up stairs not knowing what I would do. I ended up taking a bath in the jacuzzi tub and watching some TV and reading a book. Grandma came back up to the room just in time for me to get ready for bed and clonk out for the night.
It was a very nice hotel room, and I enjoyed the view very much, and definitely appreciate the half way mark rest area, but I felt kind of funny coming to Vegas, and going to bed at like 8pm (okay, it was probably 9pm, but still). Then again, it's not like this was a trip to Vegas for me, it was a stop. And, the things that happen in Vegas after 9 and 10pm aren't really for me anyway :o)
This morning I woke up at 5:20am so I could be out before 6am, and that was still too late. It was already hot and the sun was already out by time I got to my car at 5:35am. It wasn't too hot though and I managed just fine with my windows up and my music on. There was a time, right out of Vegas, when I was worried that I'd have to drive the whole 5 hours with my windows down, but then I hit California and instantly things got better :o) Just kidding, I have no idea where I was when the clouds started covering the sun, but really, the weather did take a turn for the cooler and I was very grateful to not have to have the windows down the whole time.
Again, the music helped me through my trip. That, and checking out the cars on the road. All of a sudden, I'm much more aware of the other cars and MUCH more appreciative of the nice ones. How boring it would be if everyone owned a 1995 Mercury Sable. Thank goodness for cars like that gorgeous Corvette that I tailed and tracked as long as possible, or the mobster cars like the blacked out Charger, and Nissan Altimas (there were a lot of those out today), and other cars that helped me pass my time. But home isn't super exciting right now, because everyone is at church. Oh well, it gave me time to blog, so that's good.
And now it's lunch time, and didn't have a very good breakfast, so I'm gonna peace out. But, I'm headed out to Hawaii on Wednesday, so there will be plenty to blog about very soon !!!!! :o) !!!!!
I parked the car and wondered into the Rio and called Grandma to find out where she was. Since I parked myself, I didn't use the front door and it took us a while to find each other, but eventually we met up. We went up to her room where I sat and enjoyed the air conditioning. And while Grandma went down to talk to the cruise people, I took a nice cold shower and laid down on the bed and probably dosed off for a tiny little while.
When Grandma came back up, it was time for dinner. Holy freaking nice buffet. There was EVERYTHING in that place. I guess it pays to be a VIP in Vegas. That's twice now that I was not a cheap date, but I can say that I was cheaper for Grandma than I was for George, although Grandma also got me a hotel room.... maybe it evens out :o) After dinner Grandma stayed downstairs to do her typical Vegas thing and I went up stairs not knowing what I would do. I ended up taking a bath in the jacuzzi tub and watching some TV and reading a book. Grandma came back up to the room just in time for me to get ready for bed and clonk out for the night.
It was a very nice hotel room, and I enjoyed the view very much, and definitely appreciate the half way mark rest area, but I felt kind of funny coming to Vegas, and going to bed at like 8pm (okay, it was probably 9pm, but still). Then again, it's not like this was a trip to Vegas for me, it was a stop. And, the things that happen in Vegas after 9 and 10pm aren't really for me anyway :o)
This morning I woke up at 5:20am so I could be out before 6am, and that was still too late. It was already hot and the sun was already out by time I got to my car at 5:35am. It wasn't too hot though and I managed just fine with my windows up and my music on. There was a time, right out of Vegas, when I was worried that I'd have to drive the whole 5 hours with my windows down, but then I hit California and instantly things got better :o) Just kidding, I have no idea where I was when the clouds started covering the sun, but really, the weather did take a turn for the cooler and I was very grateful to not have to have the windows down the whole time.
Again, the music helped me through my trip. That, and checking out the cars on the road. All of a sudden, I'm much more aware of the other cars and MUCH more appreciative of the nice ones. How boring it would be if everyone owned a 1995 Mercury Sable. Thank goodness for cars like that gorgeous Corvette that I tailed and tracked as long as possible, or the mobster cars like the blacked out Charger, and Nissan Altimas (there were a lot of those out today), and other cars that helped me pass my time. But home isn't super exciting right now, because everyone is at church. Oh well, it gave me time to blog, so that's good.
And now it's lunch time, and didn't have a very good breakfast, so I'm gonna peace out. But, I'm headed out to Hawaii on Wednesday, so there will be plenty to blog about very soon !!!!! :o) !!!!!
One Last Hurrah!
I don't understand it, but it's Utah college culture that as soon as someone moves out of your ward (like even down the road to a different apartment complex), then they're dead to you. At first you try to call them and invite them to various activities, but eventually the calls are too sporadic and the person has already made too many other friends in their new ward to want to come back to their old ward. And like I said, that's just when you move down the street. So now that George is starting grad school up at the U and is moving to Salt Lake, I'm guaranteed to never see him again.
Most of the time when George and I hang out, it's usually just a movie after he gets off from work. Every now and again it's dinner too, but rarely do we ever go out and do something cool. And most of the time that we hang out, George is just a big booger to me. So I figured that he owed it to me to show me a really fun time our last night out together.
I really need to stop planning trips home around him. I left a day or two earlier from home the last time I came down so that I could go to the rodeo with him, and we all know how that ended (with him going to Vegas instead). And now, I decided not to leave for home until Saturday because George has Thursday and Friday off and I figured he could spend them with me. That was our initial plan, until George started whining. I figured that I wanted him to enjoy our last night too, so I told him we could just hang out Friday and he could do his cleaning checks and whatever crap he had going on on Thursday. Now, if I had thought about this a little better, I should have hung out with him on Thursday and gone home Friday, but that idea didn't pop into my head til it was too late. Alright, since I let him do his other crap on Thursday, he said he would clear his whole Friday for me. He lied!!! Thursday night he told me that he would be free after 1. Then he didn't actually come to get me until 2:30pm
I'm not going to lie, I was pretty ticked at him. He always pulls crap like this (sorry, I'm using that "c" word alot in this post). I'll be really excited to hang out with him, and he'll be SOOO disinterested that it makes me grumpy. And believe me, I was grumpy when he came to get me! He starts talking, telling me all about his busy life, completely oblivious at how much of a brat I'm being by NOT enjoying his company.
Luckily after we stopped off to get gas and head out to our activity, I remembered that I do actually enjoy spending time with him, and that even though he always pulls stunts to annoy me, I always end up giving in and completely forgetting what upset me. So, first on our agenda, Color Me Mine. It's a cute little shop where you pick out a piece of ceramic, paint it with glaze, they fire it, and you pick it up a couple days later (not really the best activity for a last night together because it's not ready right away, but he can drop it off with one of my roommates- he'll like that :o) I picked out a cup and was trying to make it fit into my rain forest theme so I could put it in my classroom. Like with all art and crafts type stuff, I had a really cute picture in my head, but it didn't turn out that way at all. I started out really well, but then George finished his nasty beast of a cup before I did so I was trying to hurry mine up. As I knew it would, it looks crummy. Oh well, if I put it in the classroom and tell the kids I made it, they'll praise it and make me feel better about my lack of artistic abilities :o) Yeah, so our cups will be done on Tuesday, so I'll have to call him on Wednesday and remind him to pick it up and drop mine off at my apartment. (I honestly wonder if I'll ever see that again.)
Our next stop was to go to Salt Lake. It was my idea to eat at the Melting Pot up in Salt Lake. I'd heard a bunch of people talk about it and I'd never been, and I knew he liked it and had taken other female friends up there before so I was okay asking him to take me. At the time we were leaving Provo, we would arrive in Salt Lake before the place actually opened so we decided that we would go check out Georgie's new apartment. It was then that he realized that his apartment keys were at Alicia's house. He was house sitting for her family last week and for some reason he's still been there even though they're home (I think he likes the bigger bed). So we went by her place to look for them. He tried calling her, but she wasn't home so we called her mom to get the code to the garage and we let ourselves in and found Alicia sleeping on the couch. George and Alicia looked around the house for a while (while I played with Maggie- the dog) but to no avail. George told me there was nothing to see anyway because it's an unfurnished apartment and we drove off. He was still perplexed about where in the world they could be when he thought of one more place. Right as we got onto the freeway, Alicia found the keys and we did a quick turn around to go and grab them.
We got back on the freeway and drove up to Salt Lake. I'm not really a quiet person, but in big groups I shut off, and for some reason, sometimes I also shut down around George. I was worried that the drive to Salt Lake would be pretty dull with George doing all the talking, but I held my own this time. We got up to his apartment, looked at the tiny kitchen (which is perfect size for him seeing as he doesn't cook), saw the nice dining/living room which has boxes of unbuilt furniture fresh from IKEA, went and saw his bedroom and he pointed out where his king size bed is going to be and how he still has room for other stuff to fit in there too. It's a pretty nice place, and he's excited about it and I'm excited for him too.
We drove past the University of Utah Campas and he got all excited about that too. But no time to stop, we had to get to the Melting Pot. Before we left Provo George asked if he should call and make reservations. For some reason he decided against it. Bad idea!!! We went and they said it would be an hour and a half wait. They took our number in case it was going to be less than that and we headed out to explore down town Salt Lake. We walked over to a little park area and were confused by the giant rock that was poised on top of the pillar with poles all around it. We had some theories about what it was, but no way to test them out. We sat down on a bench and mocked the wedding reception that was happening. We were wondering why anyone would choose to have their reception there. It was just some random, open to the public, spot in Salt Lake. It's not like it was even that pretty. Sitting doing nothing got old for me real quick so I asked George how far away the temple was and which direction. He decided that it was just a block or two away so we walked up to the temple. We didn't spend very long there. We checked out the inside of the tabernacle (they were getting ready for a Mormon Tabernacle Choir concert), walked past the temple, and headed back. By the time we had made it back, it had been an hour. We went in hoping that they could seat us earlier than they had thought. Nope. We walked back outside. We walked across the street and just sat down on a big planter box. We spent the next half hour checking out the cars that drove past us. That and making fun of the security guard who took his job VERY seriously. Yeah, we're both terrible people who will make fun of anyone. That's why we get along so well, because we just spend our time together making fun of each other.
After half an hour, they still hadn't called us and George decided that we should go in and sit down on their benches because, "Out of sight, out of mind, and we're not going to be out of sight." It worked. We walked in and they sat us within two minutes. The first thing we did when we sat down was down our waters. We were so thirsty after walking around in the hot sun and waiting for an hour and a half. The meal started out with the Swiss cheese fondue with bread, apples, and vegetables to dip in it. I've never really done the fondue thing, so I thought it was fun to get the little fondue forks and dip it in. And it didn't taste half bad either :o) Salads were the next course in the meal. I, of course, got the California salad. The main course was mmmmm...... scrum-didly-umptious. Different though. They bring you out a tray of raw meet and some sauces. You put the meat on your fork, and put the fork in the boiling whatever they brought out (broth stuff) and let the meat cook for 2 minutes or so. I was so full before the food was all gone, and I knew dessert was coming up. But George didn't let me stop. I put in one last meat and one last bite of lobster tail and told him he had to finish it up because there was no way I was eating anything else. He didn't really mind that :o) Last up was the dessert. Mmmmmmmm...... we went with the original chocolate fondue which was milk chocolate with peanut butter. I don't know why there's always room for dessert, but it's true. There were all different kinds of things on the dessert plate. Strawberries, bananas, marshmallows, cheesecake, and brownies. The first thing I grabbed was a brownie. George warned me that they were super rich, so I asked if that meant that I didn't need much chocolate on it. He said, "no, I'm still going to drench mine like it's on fire, I'm just warning you." The check came and I accidentally saw the charge. Wow... let's just say that I'm not a cheap date!
We headed back to Provo and to Blockbuster to pick up "A Goofy Movie." One of my favorite games is to play "Name that Disney movie" it's played like this: I do a terrible job humming a song from a Disney movie, and the other person is supposed to guess the movie. Well, last time I played, I started humming Powerline. I was so impressed when George got the movie right, just to find out that it was his favorite movie growing up. He refused to sing "On the Open Road" for me then, but said that we could rent the movie and have a sing-a-long if I wanted. He was probably joking, but I made him keep his promise. Unfortunately it was so late by time we got home that we didn't even make it through too much of the movie before it was time to head out because it was for sure bed time. That's why the day was not supposed to start at 2:30 pm!!!!!
As most adventures with George go, it started off pretty rocky because he'd gone and pissed me off, but we ended off having a pretty good ole time.
Most of the time when George and I hang out, it's usually just a movie after he gets off from work. Every now and again it's dinner too, but rarely do we ever go out and do something cool. And most of the time that we hang out, George is just a big booger to me. So I figured that he owed it to me to show me a really fun time our last night out together.
I really need to stop planning trips home around him. I left a day or two earlier from home the last time I came down so that I could go to the rodeo with him, and we all know how that ended (with him going to Vegas instead). And now, I decided not to leave for home until Saturday because George has Thursday and Friday off and I figured he could spend them with me. That was our initial plan, until George started whining. I figured that I wanted him to enjoy our last night too, so I told him we could just hang out Friday and he could do his cleaning checks and whatever crap he had going on on Thursday. Now, if I had thought about this a little better, I should have hung out with him on Thursday and gone home Friday, but that idea didn't pop into my head til it was too late. Alright, since I let him do his other crap on Thursday, he said he would clear his whole Friday for me. He lied!!! Thursday night he told me that he would be free after 1. Then he didn't actually come to get me until 2:30pm
I'm not going to lie, I was pretty ticked at him. He always pulls crap like this (sorry, I'm using that "c" word alot in this post). I'll be really excited to hang out with him, and he'll be SOOO disinterested that it makes me grumpy. And believe me, I was grumpy when he came to get me! He starts talking, telling me all about his busy life, completely oblivious at how much of a brat I'm being by NOT enjoying his company.
Luckily after we stopped off to get gas and head out to our activity, I remembered that I do actually enjoy spending time with him, and that even though he always pulls stunts to annoy me, I always end up giving in and completely forgetting what upset me. So, first on our agenda, Color Me Mine. It's a cute little shop where you pick out a piece of ceramic, paint it with glaze, they fire it, and you pick it up a couple days later (not really the best activity for a last night together because it's not ready right away, but he can drop it off with one of my roommates- he'll like that :o) I picked out a cup and was trying to make it fit into my rain forest theme so I could put it in my classroom. Like with all art and crafts type stuff, I had a really cute picture in my head, but it didn't turn out that way at all. I started out really well, but then George finished his nasty beast of a cup before I did so I was trying to hurry mine up. As I knew it would, it looks crummy. Oh well, if I put it in the classroom and tell the kids I made it, they'll praise it and make me feel better about my lack of artistic abilities :o) Yeah, so our cups will be done on Tuesday, so I'll have to call him on Wednesday and remind him to pick it up and drop mine off at my apartment. (I honestly wonder if I'll ever see that again.)
Our next stop was to go to Salt Lake. It was my idea to eat at the Melting Pot up in Salt Lake. I'd heard a bunch of people talk about it and I'd never been, and I knew he liked it and had taken other female friends up there before so I was okay asking him to take me. At the time we were leaving Provo, we would arrive in Salt Lake before the place actually opened so we decided that we would go check out Georgie's new apartment. It was then that he realized that his apartment keys were at Alicia's house. He was house sitting for her family last week and for some reason he's still been there even though they're home (I think he likes the bigger bed). So we went by her place to look for them. He tried calling her, but she wasn't home so we called her mom to get the code to the garage and we let ourselves in and found Alicia sleeping on the couch. George and Alicia looked around the house for a while (while I played with Maggie- the dog) but to no avail. George told me there was nothing to see anyway because it's an unfurnished apartment and we drove off. He was still perplexed about where in the world they could be when he thought of one more place. Right as we got onto the freeway, Alicia found the keys and we did a quick turn around to go and grab them.
We got back on the freeway and drove up to Salt Lake. I'm not really a quiet person, but in big groups I shut off, and for some reason, sometimes I also shut down around George. I was worried that the drive to Salt Lake would be pretty dull with George doing all the talking, but I held my own this time. We got up to his apartment, looked at the tiny kitchen (which is perfect size for him seeing as he doesn't cook), saw the nice dining/living room which has boxes of unbuilt furniture fresh from IKEA, went and saw his bedroom and he pointed out where his king size bed is going to be and how he still has room for other stuff to fit in there too. It's a pretty nice place, and he's excited about it and I'm excited for him too.
We drove past the University of Utah Campas and he got all excited about that too. But no time to stop, we had to get to the Melting Pot. Before we left Provo George asked if he should call and make reservations. For some reason he decided against it. Bad idea!!! We went and they said it would be an hour and a half wait. They took our number in case it was going to be less than that and we headed out to explore down town Salt Lake. We walked over to a little park area and were confused by the giant rock that was poised on top of the pillar with poles all around it. We had some theories about what it was, but no way to test them out. We sat down on a bench and mocked the wedding reception that was happening. We were wondering why anyone would choose to have their reception there. It was just some random, open to the public, spot in Salt Lake. It's not like it was even that pretty. Sitting doing nothing got old for me real quick so I asked George how far away the temple was and which direction. He decided that it was just a block or two away so we walked up to the temple. We didn't spend very long there. We checked out the inside of the tabernacle (they were getting ready for a Mormon Tabernacle Choir concert), walked past the temple, and headed back. By the time we had made it back, it had been an hour. We went in hoping that they could seat us earlier than they had thought. Nope. We walked back outside. We walked across the street and just sat down on a big planter box. We spent the next half hour checking out the cars that drove past us. That and making fun of the security guard who took his job VERY seriously. Yeah, we're both terrible people who will make fun of anyone. That's why we get along so well, because we just spend our time together making fun of each other.
After half an hour, they still hadn't called us and George decided that we should go in and sit down on their benches because, "Out of sight, out of mind, and we're not going to be out of sight." It worked. We walked in and they sat us within two minutes. The first thing we did when we sat down was down our waters. We were so thirsty after walking around in the hot sun and waiting for an hour and a half. The meal started out with the Swiss cheese fondue with bread, apples, and vegetables to dip in it. I've never really done the fondue thing, so I thought it was fun to get the little fondue forks and dip it in. And it didn't taste half bad either :o) Salads were the next course in the meal. I, of course, got the California salad. The main course was mmmmm...... scrum-didly-umptious. Different though. They bring you out a tray of raw meet and some sauces. You put the meat on your fork, and put the fork in the boiling whatever they brought out (broth stuff) and let the meat cook for 2 minutes or so. I was so full before the food was all gone, and I knew dessert was coming up. But George didn't let me stop. I put in one last meat and one last bite of lobster tail and told him he had to finish it up because there was no way I was eating anything else. He didn't really mind that :o) Last up was the dessert. Mmmmmmmm...... we went with the original chocolate fondue which was milk chocolate with peanut butter. I don't know why there's always room for dessert, but it's true. There were all different kinds of things on the dessert plate. Strawberries, bananas, marshmallows, cheesecake, and brownies. The first thing I grabbed was a brownie. George warned me that they were super rich, so I asked if that meant that I didn't need much chocolate on it. He said, "no, I'm still going to drench mine like it's on fire, I'm just warning you." The check came and I accidentally saw the charge. Wow... let's just say that I'm not a cheap date!
We headed back to Provo and to Blockbuster to pick up "A Goofy Movie." One of my favorite games is to play "Name that Disney movie" it's played like this: I do a terrible job humming a song from a Disney movie, and the other person is supposed to guess the movie. Well, last time I played, I started humming Powerline. I was so impressed when George got the movie right, just to find out that it was his favorite movie growing up. He refused to sing "On the Open Road" for me then, but said that we could rent the movie and have a sing-a-long if I wanted. He was probably joking, but I made him keep his promise. Unfortunately it was so late by time we got home that we didn't even make it through too much of the movie before it was time to head out because it was for sure bed time. That's why the day was not supposed to start at 2:30 pm!!!!!
As most adventures with George go, it started off pretty rocky because he'd gone and pissed me off, but we ended off having a pretty good ole time.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Classroom Update
Goodness gracious. Who ever knew that organizing a classroom would be so much work and take so long? These last couple of weeks I've been spending most of my days in my classroom or out looking for things to put in my classroom. And I'm still not even done yet. Oh my freaking gracious, until today, I was saying that my room was coming together, but it still looked like a disaster. One of my friends came in and told me that I looked so organized. I looked around and told her it was a disaster, but she made the wise comment that all organization is a disaster before it's all done. Okay, she must have said it better than that because when she said it, it was smart, now that I type it, it sounds retarded :o)
The reason it looks so messy is because our math books are disposables (which means the kids write on them so they can only be used one year) and we took them apart to separate the pages so we can give them to the kids one at a time (because they don't tear out of the books well) and so organizing that is a long process that I need breaks from so that was taking up one corner of the room. Then, I had to organize the books by subject. So I had to take out all the books, put a label on them that says my name (covering up Mrs. Browne's name on most of them), put them into piles based on their content, and then once they were organized I had to put stickers on them so the kids would know how to keep them organized, and then I had to fit them into different bins. That was for sure more than a one day project so that was taking up another corner of the room. Then there were posters, scrap paper, cut out letters, fabric, and other junk all over the tables because they were things that I was using or debating using, and therefore didn't want to put them away.
I was finally able to finish the math books today, finished the books (put have to polish the shelves so they're not put away all the way yet), and cleaned up some of the clutter on the desks that I was done with for now. So... even though my classroom isn't all done, I'm so excited that it no longer looks like a disaster, and it looks a little bit like a rain forest!
Thank goodness for Alysha. I've dragged her in to help me twice now. Last Thursday it was her job to cut out things that I had laminated. We were in my classroom from 9am-1pm and that's all she did (and didn't even finish all the stuff I had to cut out). Don't worry, I was working on stuff too, it's not like I locked her in the room and then left. I was working on hanging vines from the ceiling, a bulletin board, and something else I'm sure. Today was her day off of work so I dragged her back in. What a great friend!! She was the one to actually finish up my math books. I had done all but one unit, so she offered to do that. She finished up the little bit of cutting she had left, and then she joined me on the books. I had organized most all of the ones that were in the classroom already, so today I had to organize the books I had brought from my apartment. I had to further separate some categories once I had gotten through all the books, and then it was time to label them. I had 840 dots to put on the books and I ran out of dots before I ran out of books. Dang shoot, I need to plan better. But it's okay. I won't have nearly as much to do to finish up, so I'm not worried about it. Today we were in the classroom from 10am to about 4:30pm and most of our time was spent on the books. Wow! And that was after I'd already spent at least two days on them.
Also, a lot of what has taken so long is looking for stuff to put in my classroom. I had in my head exactly what my classroom would look like, but finding the stuff that's in my head in the stores is turning out to be pretty tricky. In all honesty, it's pretty fun to go to teacher stores and look around, because they have so much cute stuff, but it's also frustrating when they have everything BUT what I'm looking for. The best part of shopping for teacher stuff though, is that now I can check out the school's credit card, so I no longer have to pay for this myself. Yes :o) Granted, I do have a budget, but seeing as I'm going to have to be making most of my own stuff, I'm sure to stay in budget.
Like I said, my room really is coming together and I'm so excited. So there's not much more that I actually need. Tomorrow I'm making one last attempt at finding the stuff I need in the stores and then I'm going to have to make it myself. I've already tried all the teacher stores locally, so I'm driving up to Salt Lake. There's two that I know I can hit up there and I'll probably find something else to do while I'm up there so that I don't waste the drive. I really hope to find stuff, because I've already been making stuff for my room and it's just not as cute as it is in my head when I have to make it :o(
The room wasn't picture worthy yet today, but I hope that before I go back home (on Saturday) that I'll be able to post some pictures of my room so that people can admire what a splendid job I'm doing :o) hehehe
The reason it looks so messy is because our math books are disposables (which means the kids write on them so they can only be used one year) and we took them apart to separate the pages so we can give them to the kids one at a time (because they don't tear out of the books well) and so organizing that is a long process that I need breaks from so that was taking up one corner of the room. Then, I had to organize the books by subject. So I had to take out all the books, put a label on them that says my name (covering up Mrs. Browne's name on most of them), put them into piles based on their content, and then once they were organized I had to put stickers on them so the kids would know how to keep them organized, and then I had to fit them into different bins. That was for sure more than a one day project so that was taking up another corner of the room. Then there were posters, scrap paper, cut out letters, fabric, and other junk all over the tables because they were things that I was using or debating using, and therefore didn't want to put them away.
I was finally able to finish the math books today, finished the books (put have to polish the shelves so they're not put away all the way yet), and cleaned up some of the clutter on the desks that I was done with for now. So... even though my classroom isn't all done, I'm so excited that it no longer looks like a disaster, and it looks a little bit like a rain forest!
Thank goodness for Alysha. I've dragged her in to help me twice now. Last Thursday it was her job to cut out things that I had laminated. We were in my classroom from 9am-1pm and that's all she did (and didn't even finish all the stuff I had to cut out). Don't worry, I was working on stuff too, it's not like I locked her in the room and then left. I was working on hanging vines from the ceiling, a bulletin board, and something else I'm sure. Today was her day off of work so I dragged her back in. What a great friend!! She was the one to actually finish up my math books. I had done all but one unit, so she offered to do that. She finished up the little bit of cutting she had left, and then she joined me on the books. I had organized most all of the ones that were in the classroom already, so today I had to organize the books I had brought from my apartment. I had to further separate some categories once I had gotten through all the books, and then it was time to label them. I had 840 dots to put on the books and I ran out of dots before I ran out of books. Dang shoot, I need to plan better. But it's okay. I won't have nearly as much to do to finish up, so I'm not worried about it. Today we were in the classroom from 10am to about 4:30pm and most of our time was spent on the books. Wow! And that was after I'd already spent at least two days on them.
Also, a lot of what has taken so long is looking for stuff to put in my classroom. I had in my head exactly what my classroom would look like, but finding the stuff that's in my head in the stores is turning out to be pretty tricky. In all honesty, it's pretty fun to go to teacher stores and look around, because they have so much cute stuff, but it's also frustrating when they have everything BUT what I'm looking for. The best part of shopping for teacher stuff though, is that now I can check out the school's credit card, so I no longer have to pay for this myself. Yes :o) Granted, I do have a budget, but seeing as I'm going to have to be making most of my own stuff, I'm sure to stay in budget.
Like I said, my room really is coming together and I'm so excited. So there's not much more that I actually need. Tomorrow I'm making one last attempt at finding the stuff I need in the stores and then I'm going to have to make it myself. I've already tried all the teacher stores locally, so I'm driving up to Salt Lake. There's two that I know I can hit up there and I'll probably find something else to do while I'm up there so that I don't waste the drive. I really hope to find stuff, because I've already been making stuff for my room and it's just not as cute as it is in my head when I have to make it :o(
The room wasn't picture worthy yet today, but I hope that before I go back home (on Saturday) that I'll be able to post some pictures of my room so that people can admire what a splendid job I'm doing :o) hehehe
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Fourth of July
Never 
mind that I'm writing about the 4th on the 8th. Hey, it could be worse, right? Like my friend wrote me in the beginning of June and I still haven't written her back yet.
I had so much fun on the 4th of July, but it sure was a long day. It started out with the "First of the Fourth" which was a midnight bar-be-que. That was pretty fun. We unchained the grill on the patio so that we could move it away from the buildings full of people sleeping. We took the grill out in the parking lot and watched some amazing lightning go off somewhere in the distance. As we talked and ate, the lightning got closer and closer. It was so awesome. It lit up the whole sky, and it apparently set off some sort of siren that echoed off the apartment complex because Steve and I both swore it was coming from opposite directions. Finally, not only did the lightning catch up to us, but so did the rain. It started out as a light sprinkle, but that didn't last long. Luckil
y we were all done eating and could start to rap up the food before the real rain hit. And oh man did it hit! The sprinkles didn't last very long, pretty soon after it sprinkled, it poured. It didn't phase us too much, but we did decide to move everything back. We moved the tables and grill back onto the patio. Some of the people stayed out to "frolic" in the rain, but Alysha and I headed back inside once everything was cleaned up.
The rain really wasn't that cold, but when we walked into our air conditioned apartment, we were shivering. We hurried up and changed into warm pajamas and got ready for bed. Except that in the process of getting ready for bed, Alysha and I both peeked our heads out into the hall to inform the other one that we weren't tired yet. We knew we had to wake up early and so it wasn't smart to stay up, but there was no way we were going to bed right then. We decided that we would move our mattresses out into the living room for a little slumber party and turn on a movie that we could fall asleep to. So we did. We put on "A Knight's Tale" and I didn't last a super long time before I fell asleep, but it was fun.
We woke up early because Alysha wanted to go to Macy's grocery store to get a free french toast breakfast before going to work, and I was going to accompany her to breakfast and then head back to meet up with some people for the parade. We got up and went to breakfast. Once we got to the front of the line, we only had 5 or so minutes to eat so we scarfed down our food and then went our separate ways.
When I got back I went out to the patio to meet up with some people in the ward so that we could go watch the parade. I'm not going to lie, the parade wasn't all that great. The beginning wa
s TERRIBLE, it was just emergency vehicles with their sirens on honking their horns. It was torture. It started to get better after that, but still, not super fantastic. The best float was the MTC float with a whole trail of missionaries behind it. I saw Elder Richardson (one of the Elders that comes over to teach Alysha) and missed the next float because I was so excited to text Alysha to tell her that Elder Richardson was in the parade.
After the parade a smaller group of us went down town to check out the carnival/fair thing going on. That for sure was not fun. It was just a bunch of shops set up, but I wasn't interested in buying anything from them. In all honesty, out of the four of us that went, I'm pretty sure only one guy enjoyed himself while the others of us were waiting for it to be over.
After the shop thing we went to, I came back home, called to wish Mom a happy birthday, did something else, and napped. I was so tired. After 15 minutes or so I heard Alysha come home, and I announced that she didn't have to try too hard to be quiet because I was already up. But, as soon as she dropped off her stuff, we both napped (since our beds were still out in the living room).
We woke up with enough time to grab a quick bite to eat and head up to the "Y". Our next 4th of July activity was to put on blue clothes and hike the "Y" where we would meet up with other people wearing blue, and others wearing red and all of us together would turn the "Y" into an American Flag. Poor Alysha is not so great at the whole hiking thing. She had a jacket tied around her waist and I would hold onto the ends of it and honestly pull her up the mountain at steep areas. Poor girl, she did not thoroughly enjoy that hike. Once we got up there, I helped the people set up, and talked to some of the people that were there. It turns out that two people from the ward I lived in the Spring term after my freshman year were there, and one of them recognized me (I didn't see the other one). We waited a while before it was finally time for everyone to get into places. There were not as many people there as had signed up for it, or as many people as we really needed, but apparently it still looked pretty good. It sounds like they want to keep doing this every year (this was the first time it'd been done) and so hopefully next year it will look better because more people will show up.
Once we were done taking pictures, we had some serious time to kill before the fireworks starte
d. Alysha and I just talked, listened to some music, watched the sun go down, and watched the lightning striking off in the distance. Eventually the fireworks started. I have to admit, it wasn't as cool as I thought it would be to watch them from up high. Fireworks are more impressive when they are large and above you. Oops. Oh well, it was still good. After the fireworks show was over, it was time to hike back down. I had to hold Alysha's arm the whole time because she is not very steady and she for sure would have slid down the mountain.
I was a little worried about the traffic getting home because everyone would be leaving the Stadium of Fire, plus other people who were just camped out watching the fireworks. We headed out, and in the beginning it wasn't so bad, so I was pretty hopeful. Then we hit a dead stop. It took us over an hour to go the two miles we had left to get home. I was NOT happy about that one.
As soon as we got back I showered and collapsed on my bed (still in the living room), making sure to set my alarm first so that I wouldn't miss church. I was so exhausted that I was able to fall asleep without a problem, but I guess that I rejuvenated pretty quickly because early in the morning, I woke up because Alysha was snoring like an animal. If I had really been that exhausted, I would have been able to ignore it, that's why I say that my body regenerated pretty well. Alysha woke me up with her snoring in Florida too, so she told me I had permission to shake her a little to wake her up. I tried that. It didn't work. I tried gently nudging her with my leg- NOTHING. I tried poking her in the arm- NOTHING. Then I tried shaking her a little- still NOTHING. Finally I put my hand up against her mouth (she could still breath, don't worry, I did it super lightly and with the back of my hand so it wasn't sealed on). She stop
ped snoring and started waking up a little and so I turned over, but couldn't help but laugh that that was what finally did it. The softest touch of all and that's what woke her up. She stopped snoring long enough for me to fall back asleep, but it took me a while because I was almost fully awake with all the effort it took to shut her up :o)
So, like I said, it was a super long, super fun Fourth of July!
mind that I'm writing about the 4th on the 8th. Hey, it could be worse, right? Like my friend wrote me in the beginning of June and I still haven't written her back yet.I had so much fun on the 4th of July, but it sure was a long day. It started out with the "First of the Fourth" which was a midnight bar-be-que. That was pretty fun. We unchained the grill on the patio so that we could move it away from the buildings full of people sleeping. We took the grill out in the parking lot and watched some amazing lightning go off somewhere in the distance. As we talked and ate, the lightning got closer and closer. It was so awesome. It lit up the whole sky, and it apparently set off some sort of siren that echoed off the apartment complex because Steve and I both swore it was coming from opposite directions. Finally, not only did the lightning catch up to us, but so did the rain. It started out as a light sprinkle, but that didn't last long. Luckil
y we were all done eating and could start to rap up the food before the real rain hit. And oh man did it hit! The sprinkles didn't last very long, pretty soon after it sprinkled, it poured. It didn't phase us too much, but we did decide to move everything back. We moved the tables and grill back onto the patio. Some of the people stayed out to "frolic" in the rain, but Alysha and I headed back inside once everything was cleaned up.The rain really wasn't that cold, but when we walked into our air conditioned apartment, we were shivering. We hurried up and changed into warm pajamas and got ready for bed. Except that in the process of getting ready for bed, Alysha and I both peeked our heads out into the hall to inform the other one that we weren't tired yet. We knew we had to wake up early and so it wasn't smart to stay up, but there was no way we were going to bed right then. We decided that we would move our mattresses out into the living room for a little slumber party and turn on a movie that we could fall asleep to. So we did. We put on "A Knight's Tale" and I didn't last a super long time before I fell asleep, but it was fun.
We woke up early because Alysha wanted to go to Macy's grocery store to get a free french toast breakfast before going to work, and I was going to accompany her to breakfast and then head back to meet up with some people for the parade. We got up and went to breakfast. Once we got to the front of the line, we only had 5 or so minutes to eat so we scarfed down our food and then went our separate ways.
When I got back I went out to the patio to meet up with some people in the ward so that we could go watch the parade. I'm not going to lie, the parade wasn't all that great. The beginning wa
s TERRIBLE, it was just emergency vehicles with their sirens on honking their horns. It was torture. It started to get better after that, but still, not super fantastic. The best float was the MTC float with a whole trail of missionaries behind it. I saw Elder Richardson (one of the Elders that comes over to teach Alysha) and missed the next float because I was so excited to text Alysha to tell her that Elder Richardson was in the parade.After the parade a smaller group of us went down town to check out the carnival/fair thing going on. That for sure was not fun. It was just a bunch of shops set up, but I wasn't interested in buying anything from them. In all honesty, out of the four of us that went, I'm pretty sure only one guy enjoyed himself while the others of us were waiting for it to be over.
After the shop thing we went to, I came back home, called to wish Mom a happy birthday, did something else, and napped. I was so tired. After 15 minutes or so I heard Alysha come home, and I announced that she didn't have to try too hard to be quiet because I was already up. But, as soon as she dropped off her stuff, we both napped (since our beds were still out in the living room).
We woke up with enough time to grab a quick bite to eat and head up to the "Y". Our next 4th of July activity was to put on blue clothes and hike the "Y" where we would meet up with other people wearing blue, and others wearing red and all of us together would turn the "Y" into an American Flag. Poor Alysha is not so great at the whole hiking thing. She had a jacket tied around her waist and I would hold onto the ends of it and honestly pull her up the mountain at steep areas. Poor girl, she did not thoroughly enjoy that hike. Once we got up there, I helped the people set up, and talked to some of the people that were there. It turns out that two people from the ward I lived in the Spring term after my freshman year were there, and one of them recognized me (I didn't see the other one). We waited a while before it was finally time for everyone to get into places. There were not as many people there as had signed up for it, or as many people as we really needed, but apparently it still looked pretty good. It sounds like they want to keep doing this every year (this was the first time it'd been done) and so hopefully next year it will look better because more people will show up.
Once we were done taking pictures, we had some serious time to kill before the fireworks starte
d. Alysha and I just talked, listened to some music, watched the sun go down, and watched the lightning striking off in the distance. Eventually the fireworks started. I have to admit, it wasn't as cool as I thought it would be to watch them from up high. Fireworks are more impressive when they are large and above you. Oops. Oh well, it was still good. After the fireworks show was over, it was time to hike back down. I had to hold Alysha's arm the whole time because she is not very steady and she for sure would have slid down the mountain.I was a little worried about the traffic getting home because everyone would be leaving the Stadium of Fire, plus other people who were just camped out watching the fireworks. We headed out, and in the beginning it wasn't so bad, so I was pretty hopeful. Then we hit a dead stop. It took us over an hour to go the two miles we had left to get home. I was NOT happy about that one.
As soon as we got back I showered and collapsed on my bed (still in the living room), making sure to set my alarm first so that I wouldn't miss church. I was so exhausted that I was able to fall asleep without a problem, but I guess that I rejuvenated pretty quickly because early in the morning, I woke up because Alysha was snoring like an animal. If I had really been that exhausted, I would have been able to ignore it, that's why I say that my body regenerated pretty well. Alysha woke me up with her snoring in Florida too, so she told me I had permission to shake her a little to wake her up. I tried that. It didn't work. I tried gently nudging her with my leg- NOTHING. I tried poking her in the arm- NOTHING. Then I tried shaking her a little- still NOTHING. Finally I put my hand up against her mouth (she could still breath, don't worry, I did it super lightly and with the back of my hand so it wasn't sealed on). She stop
ped snoring and started waking up a little and so I turned over, but couldn't help but laugh that that was what finally did it. The softest touch of all and that's what woke her up. She stopped snoring long enough for me to fall back asleep, but it took me a while because I was almost fully awake with all the effort it took to shut her up :o)So, like I said, it was a super long, super fun Fourth of July!
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