Trampoline Backflip

This year's trampoline backflip! Done back in August when I was about 3 months preggo. :)

Am I embarrassed that I was making dumb commentary to myself as well as awkward faces? Yes.

Camping!

Brian and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary back in April. It was fun to reflect on the year and exchange gifts of paper per the traditional theme gift list. My gift to Brian was a camping permit for the Malaekahana State Campground in Laie, which is close to the North Shore. I hadn't been camping since I was a kid, so it was fantastic to get outdoors, set-up the tent, and just forget about the hustle and bustle of our regular lives.

schlepping our stuff

Turkey modeling with our brand new tent!

hammock. yes!

the whole enchilada!

The cool thing about camping in Hawaii is that you can be by the beach! It was amazing to be able to fall asleep to the crashing waves. Plus, the dogs got to play in the sand. :)

This is most likely the best face Storm has ever made.

It was a great time and I hope we go again!

Luau

So, when you think 'Hawaii,' you think Luau, right? Yeah, me too. So before moving here Brian and I registered on our Honeyfund for tickets to a Luau. The Southworth fam hooked us up, so after getting settled in after a few months of living here, we finally signed up for the Chief's Luau at Sea Life Park.

Overall, I'm glad we did it to have the experience, but if I'm being honest, it wasn't as great as I thought it would be. The entire evening was highly touristified. That wasn't a problem in and of itself, but when you're processing a hundred or two people through your system, the authenticity/quality drops dramatically. For instance, they did show us the traditional method of roasting the pig in the ground, but what we ending up actually eating was just cafeteria style food.

If any of you know me, you know I'm a food enthusiast. So this was probably the biggest let down because I was envisioning eating the best pork of my life, but instead all I got was this ghost butter cup. (That was just funny.)

Craft time before all the action started was a highlight. Brian and I made our own head pieces. :)

When the sun went down that's when things got really exciting. The show performances with traditional dances being demonstrated were quite interesting and they did a good job bringing a lot of humor to the show. For the grand finale, the fire dancers/twirlers were quite spectacular. Great evening overall, just be warned that if you ever want to attend one, it might not be as you were picturing.

File Pile Riddance

Hey Bloggerverse, I'm back! Reeeeeally got off track with this stuff, but Tory reminded me that there are only a few weeks left until the 1001 days are complete! Time to catch up!...

Here's a boring one to get out of the way. Number 79, stay on top of filing. This was something I was genuinely terrible at. Such a simple task of taking a bill, statement, or whatever, and placing it right away in it's appropriate folder was something I just couldn't handle apparently. I would always just create a pile of papers on top of my filing boxes. Eventually, the papers would pile up to the point of falling off then I would begrudgingly file the pile for about an hour. Ridiculous. But file piles are no more! Turns out it's so much easier to just file right away! This goal was a real toughy because it was a habit breaker, but I'm proud to say I'm a changed woman! :)

Current status of file tower...pile free!

South Mountain Hike with Mom

On my last trip home I got to cross #81 off of the list- hike South Mountain with Mom. We'd been talking about doing it for quite awhile so I was excited that that it was finally happening! Despite having lived in Phoenix for 18 years, I had never been!

(Mom, hates when I take secret pictures of her :)

It was a bright one! You can see Camelback behind us on the right.

Playing with the Panorama

Camelback money shot

Mom the Adventurer money shot :)

As the grand finale to our outing, we stopped for lunch at The Farm on the way home. 

Fresh, locally grown sandwiches and salads. It was delish!

Chain Painting

Gosh, I'm terrible at staying on top of blogging. Good news is that in the long gaps in between posts, I get a lot of goals done! :)  This particular project went (embarrassingly) unfinished for YEARS. I wish that was an exaggeration, but I literally started it in May of 2008 and just finished it on January 24, 2013. And to be honest, I really could/should work on it more, but I'm peace with it for now. The thing that finally got me to pick up a brush was because my mother hung it on the wall! You can't hang a painting that's only 87% done! (Yep, I did precise calculations on that. ;) I just hated that people were seeing it unfinished, so on my last trip home I packed my paints!

The ironic thing about the painting, is that I was trying to finish it fast. I even set up a camera to take time lapse shots of it as I progressed. Here are the shots in a little movie format:

A little bit about the painting: When I was at school in Savannah, GA, I took a picture of this chain which is on a swing on Tybee beach. At the time I was in this little book club that was reading "The Artists's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity" by Julia Cameron. It's was a pretty inspiring book, and one of the exercises that I enjoyed was the challenge of doing something to get out of your routine. One morning I woke up to use the restroom at like 4AM. Instead of falling back into bed like any sane college student would do, I grabbed my camera, jumped in my car, and headed to the beach to catch the sunrise! It was an exhilarating experience, so I painting this image to remind me of that.

698 days down, so 303 to go!

I was randomly feeling a sense of time running out on this project this past week, and realized that I didn't even know what my 1001st day was! So today I crunched the numbers and figured out that November 14th will be my last day. That's more time than I thought I had, so I'm encouraged to keep on trucking through these ol' goals o' mine!