Chillin like a Villin

CAT IS HERE! yup my bestie from cali is visiting! wahoo one fun filled week of sun, sand, and shenanigans.

Well this is all after a fun filled week that i spent in Washington visiting my brother and family and playing with a friend :). I LOVE WASHINGTON! i had never really been there besides for soccer and we were in and out in a matter of days. It is so cool. Saw a bunch of different wildlife: a Bald eagle, mountain sheep, black tail deer, golden finch, just to name a few. However Mount. Rainier is still a mystery mountain to me. We took the Chanook pass not once but TWICE to see a great view of this mountain and it failed. Never saw it!! Guess i will have to go back... I think im ok with that! I also went kayaking, mountain biking, and shot some GUNS!!

yup i was packin! hahaha yeah finally shot something bigger than a bee-bee gun and im not that bad of a shot if i do say so myself. Hit my very first pigeon like the very first one thrown for me! yea-ya! i was hit and miss after that but went three for three at the end!! WHOOT WHOOT! yup had a blast going to Seattle and eating at a bunch of different places.

Had a blast with the brother and family. LOVED playing with baby Karys and chatting it up with Kassy. I froze on the fourth of July waiting for the fireworks. Mind you it was probably only like 65 degrees outside. (i dont really know the temperature but it was really cold!!!). Yeah i loved Washington! and now i get to have a blast with Cat Cat!

Good news: sent the camera in to get it fixed... well hopefully it will get fixed if the warranty is still good and they like me. so then i can post pictures. eventually this will once again be more than just words.... eventually.

I am Alive!!!

So since the computer break down i have not posted due to the lack of a personal computer and i didnt want to sit on my roommates to post. But.... My computer is BACK! thats right! so I was blessed yesterday finding a garage sale that had a monitor for sale so i now have my ten dollar monitor and accomplish all of my computer necessities!!

So updates.....

I bought my first car... well truck! yup i now am the proud owner of Jude: the gold '93 ford ranger!

This is Jude!

Next: I got a new job! thats right i quit my old job and got a new one as a tutor in the reading and writing center. This is totally a blessing! i am so excited to learn how to tutor and understand all this fun grammar and be able to continue using all of this through my career as a English Teacher.

Finally i had some visitors come and we got to play all week. My brother Dallin and wifey Cindy and her parents came to my island and we had loads of fun! but unfortunately my camera broke so i don't have any pictures from our adventures. I am so grateful that they came out and that they have been happily married for 5 years!

I will be posting more pictures later of some of the fun things we did before my camera died!

Broken :(

So the computer is broken. Yup sad day especially when it was during the middle of finals and i still had like 5 more papers to write. Not fun. Luckily though it is just my backlight that is going out so if i get a monitor then i can still use my computer! wheww. So thats why there are no posts lately cause i don't like using my sweet roommates computers all the time. So once i figure out the situation there will be some back posts, and more frequent posts as well.

PS. Good thing my favorite computer technician, and lovely wifey, are coming out to visit!

Our life is a PARTY when there is no school!

4 Day weekend fun in pictures and videos.

I Like To Ride My Bicycle, I Like To Ride My Bike

Today was the dedication of the bike path that has been built between Kahuku and Laie, and it was a PARTY. If you have had any experience with Hawaiians this is what they know how to P-A-R-T-Y!!! Well we walk up and of course we are not only greeted by the delicious smells of BBQ but see 4 pigs roasting on a spit. Yup. it was a great greeting.

And then we all got to go and watch and listen to the program and culturally uplifting event. My hopes of going to this is the enticings of a winning a free bike. But we left when they started eating because there was a huge line and were not present for the drawing for the 15 bikes they had to give away because we had a ward BBQ to get to. It was great to see the integration of culture into the simple dedication of a mile and a half bike path.

enjoy the little taste of the culture in the video of the Keiki ("children" in Hawaiian) and the others involved in the ceremony.

Walking in the Moonlight!

For the record sized moon we decided to do something adventurous so we went on a hike. Our original plan: to hike by moonlight. However, the tree canopy and clouds thought differently. so luckily 3 out of the 12 people that went had flashlights (well it was like 2 flashlights and a bike light that worked like a candle). Add limited lighting to mounds of muck and mud with a rewarding waterfall at the end and you have out adventure.

It was so much fun even though i was throughly creeped out the entire time. Thankfully i was able to cling on to my roommate, Whit-nasty. She was one of the lucky ones who got to use a flashlight since she is pretty much legally BLIND in the dark. We are proud to say though that out of the 7 girls that went were were the only two who did not slip and fall on our butts. OH YEAH!!! But Whit-nasty did happen to step into mud that was ankle deep and run smack into a tree (like i said legally blind). Well since it was dark we ended up wandering around and got lost quite a bit....yea I know.. a little worrisome but still we got to the waterfall ( and home too). Of course i couldn't do all the work and walking without a reward so i got over my anxiety and went swimming in a big deep dark freezing pond in the moon light and jumped off the lower portion right next to the falls. Amazing. i am so happy that i actually went swimming and jumped or else i would have been pissed at myself.

So for this whole trip including a 45 min drive there a mile and a half hike a little time at the falls the hike back and the 45 min drive home, it took us a grand total of 5 &1/2 hours!!! now in perspective thats us getting lost and hiking for 4 HOURS, thats over a hour to walk ONE mile. oops oh well! hahah

Me after being frozen and swimming in the pond.
Most of our group riding up in Vicky. Yeah i know i look like a retard, but this is the only picture that i am actually in with our whole group. at least it is a struggle for everyone :)

A hitch-hikers guide to Hawaii (look for the big blue van!)

First meet vicky:

a 1983 blue Volkswagen Vanagon that my neighbor bought and named Vicky. She is a PARTY on wheels! She only had a long bench in the very back and two front seats when he bought her. But because of our large family, aka the compound, we needed more seating. So to fix this solution, on a middle of the week midnight walmart run we found a corner piece to a large sectional on the side of the road and picked it up, graffiti and all. to fix this nasty solution we put a tye-dyed cover on both the couch and the back seat, with aloha print seat covers for the front. We sure did make her into the perfect hippie crusin' Hawaiian ride that we love to take on adventures!

So now that you have met Vicky you can hear about the adventure that occurred last Saturday. Pretty much everyone in the compound decided to ride the bus to Kailua for the afternoon but didn't leave until around 1 in the afternoon. NOT a good idea in my mind so i stayed home to catch some rays at good ol Hukilau beach. But Vicky had other ideas. Me and one of my other roommates (Vicky's "mother" or better known as the owners girlfriend :) decided to stay and that we would go get acai bowls from our favorite old local joint since it reopened recently. Our original plan was to hitch-hike there but having some girlfriend privileges my neighbor offered Vicky for our assistance and told us to "take other people with us and get to know them" well we both failed and fulfilled this request. We left Laie, with only the two of us in the car... and soon filled her with 6 other passengers along the road. Yup we picked up 6 hitch-hikers on the way to our sweet treats. (ok mother before you freak out, i knew 2 of the girls and they were all BYUH students too) once we filled our craving for our missing friend the acai bowl, we decided to "take pictures, and cool shots" since it was just the two of us...we FAILED miserably. Whit took a total of 2 pictures and i took barely any while driving. So we decided to just go home... but we wernt done picking up friends. YUP we picked up more hitch-hikers . our first treasure was a French man on Holiday that came to surf. It was interesting to chat it up a little with him and to hear his rockin accent. While he was still in the car we stopped and picked up 5 more BYUH students bringing our grand total to 12 accidental passengers. :) what a great weekend!!

A little clip of our ride :) yeah we are that cool.

P.S. those were not my shades they came with Vicky and i had the urge to wear them for the video.

A few great pictures that were successes of Waimea showing the great weather and time we had

For Free

A little catchup...

I found my camera so there will be pictures included :) wheeew

Recently i have found my new favorite thing is to go on to craigslist and see what i can get for free. This all started from me finding a tv and entertainment center for free and now i am hooked. I have to look on craigslist at least 4-5 times a day or more: aka every time i get online :) but i have found some cool things but cant get them unfortunately cause my roommates car is broken but we will start picking more things up once we get it fixed.

Also new to my life is a new roommate. My old roommate Alexis left us so she was replaced this month by ALEX. She is an off track student from BYUI who is out here to have fun and live it up with us. It has been fun getting to know her and to and a new flavor into our house :)

We also had one of Cami's old companions come and visit for 11 days and so we have had a blast showing her around th island and taking her to our favorite places.

School is going we are currently in the middle of Midterms and trying to remember why we are going to school and that there is a light at the end of the tunnel of all this work. It is crazy to think that i will be graduating from College in a little more than 1 year!!! thats right ONE YEAR!!!! wahooooo. Anyone who wants to save up some pesos and come visit lovely Hawaii next spring is welcome and we will have one great big party.

Here is the picture of the free TV and Entertainment center :)

Another Fun Saturday

Well sorry no pictures but my camera is MIA right now which is tragic, but today was fun! first I need to say that our house is blessed. We all got so many blessings these past couple days: first i found out that my appeal to get my scholarship that was revoked got approved so i get my scholarship!!! and My roommate finally got hey check that she has been waiting for ever for. And not only that she bought her car finally so she has a cute little truck and then my neighbor bought the coolest old Volkswagen van! and its blue. We are all so blessed. So we all decided to go to Waimea, laid out on the beach and then went to Stortos (our favorite sandwich shop in Haleiwa). Then we hit up Matsumotos (The famous Shaved Ice place!) and then came home. What a great weekend! i will try to post photos soon!

Update

Sorry no Pictures this post but i will work on that.

Well everyone is back! YEA!!! and by everyone i mean new and old people. I got 3 new house-mates Becky, Whitney (aka Whitnasty) and Cami (she kinda actually already lived here but didnt pay rent, she was just always over :)) but they are back and of course now that we are all here and that school has started the problems have started as well.

First problem: OUR FRIDGE/FREEZER BROKE!!!!! oh nooooo!!! its been crazy trying to figure out where to fit our food in other peoples fridges and stuff but hopefully we manage through this one.

Problem number two is more of a time issue: I have to read 22 NOVELS in 14 weeks ahhhh. Now many of you know that i love to read. BUT when i am told what and when i have to read i struggle so bad at reading the books. So im just gonna have to kick myself in the but and Do it!

well thats about all i can think of right now so.... See ya!