Hawaiian Surprise

I know, I know. It's been a while since I last blogged, but I promise I haven't been avoiding you! The last post From the Top of the Maze should have clued you in on what's been happening in my life.

You see, all summer long I have been getting asked left and right about whether or not I was going to be able to buy a ticket to go with some family friends to Hawaii. Well, I got my ticket about 2 or 3 weeks before everyone was leaving, but I thought it'd be fun to surprise the kids the day of the trip, so I had been avoiding questions and changing topics like crazy whenever Hawaii would be brought up in conversation. I found out pretty quickly that being excited about something that you can't talk about makes the excitement almost unbearable. The night before the trip, all I could do as I was getting ready for bed was think about how awful it was that I couldn't call anyone up on the phone to exchange packing lists and excited laughter.

To make matters worse, the whole week before I left, Best Friend kept calling and texting me to try to set up a time we could get together because we hadn't seen each other in weeks, and I couldn't say anything because she was away at camp with a bunch of junior high girls (one of whom I was trying to surprise!)

I was afraid that my secret might slip out or be overheard, and I wasn't ready to let 2 weeks worth of secret keeping be put to waste! I had bitten my tongue so many times and lied about why I couldn't afford the trip (which I feel awful about by the way), and I didn't want my 2 weeks of silent misery to be wiped away. Plus, I selfishly wanted to see the girls' faces when they realized I'd be tagging along.

I finally called Best Friend and made sure she was away from eavesdropping ears, so I could explain to her that I wasn't trying to avoid her. All was right in the world, and she, because she's an awesome friend, was excited for me.

On the morning that everyone was scheduled to leave, my parents drove down to pick up some donuts, so I could take them with me to meet up with everyone to go to the airport. The girls frowned at me and asked if I was going. I just carried the box of donuts and kept my duffle bag in the trunk of Mom's car, so my secret wouldn't be revealed too quickly. I told them I was there to send them off (which I totally wouldn't have done if I wasn't going because, let's be honest, it wasn't even 6 am yet and that's just not a social hour).

One girl (let's call her Car-car because she's sweet 16 with her very 1st car) complained about my showing up without a bigger surprise than donuts.

"No," Car-car said, "You're only supposed to bring donuts if you're going with us!"

To which I responded, "Well that's good 'cuz I am."

To which they responded:

(see: picture; insert screams)

My weeks of secret-keeping and lying paid off. I had to apologize to Car-car because she had gotten a little too close to finding out my secret, and I had tried to throw her off my trail by saying I had job interviews all week around the Los Angeles area--total lie. 

My Al-bug (in the purple skirt above) was so surprised that her hand started shaking, and she almost spilled her tea. She told me that she had been getting ready for bed the night before and thought that I might be going, but she didn't want to get her hopes up, so she tried convincing herself that there was no chance it would happen.

Best. Surprise. Ever. 

I did feel somewhat bad for the neighbors since a group of girls were screaming, and it was barely 6 am...but I didn't feel too bad for them.

The trip was a blast, and there is so much that happened that I don't know how I'll ever be able to share it all here, but I'll just summarize for now and say that we saw many beautiful sea turtles,

jumped off the oh-so-high rock in Waimea Bay,

hijacked the suburban from the parentals to hike a beautiful trail that looked out to the ocean and then wound back into a mist-filled valley, 

snorkeled all week around Alligator Rock, ate delicious coconut Shave Ice with ice cream, and visited the Dole Pineapple Plantation for some sweet-tasting Pineapple Whip. 

I can't believe the trip already came and went, but I hope that I'll get to go back soon--and drag my parents along, too! 

Oh! And did I mention that we brought the Shake-Face to Hawaii? Because we totally did!

Hawaii Fun!!

Hey everyone!! I am Allie Fernandez....one of Lauren's good friends, except that I am only thirteen. Lauren asked me to write, but I am not quite sure what to write! This week we are in Hawaii. It is so beautiful and we are so lucky to be here. We have done a lot so far, even though today is only our second whole day. We have gone swimming, snorkeling, paddle boarding, workouts, reading, card playing, eating, and having a blast!

Okay, so its all relaxing, but it's great!! Isn't that what vacation is about- relaxation!! The view from our balcony is amazing and we spend a lot of our day just staring out into the ocean looking at the beauty! This morning we woke up to a rainbow across the ocean. It was so pretty! I love Hawaii so much! I am hoping to learn how to surf which would be a lot of fun. Well gotta go enjoy the waves. Bye!!

Don't like bugs, but I LOVE this hike

I've become somewhat obsessed with a certain hike in our local mountains; it's not strenuous by any means, although the last 0.6 mile is tough because it's all uphill and usually in the sun.

It's more of a walk than a hike, but it has some amazing scenery. My parents first took me on the hike a few years ago, and I remembered how much I loved it when some high school girls I hang out with were telling me about a hike they loved in Deukmejian. One of the girls tried to explain how part of the hike looked like Scotland, and the other girl rolled her eyes. Then I remembered all about the hike at Chantry Flat that my parents had taken me to, and I figured that if they wanted pretty green scenery, then I should take them on this hike.

So I went and bought a day pass, but after day one of hiking, the girls and I decided that I should go back to Sport Chalet and buy the Adventure Pass so we could hike for a full year for only $30.

We got the pass, and I can't count the number of times we've used it this summer. Mostly we hiked to Sturtevant's Falls which is only about a 2 mile hike, but this last week we decided to hike down to the first water trail, which led us to this beautiful natural water-slide. 

(Above: Strangers on the slide;

Below: We take over the water)

The first water-slide fed into a small, waist-deep rock basin that spilled over into a larger and longer slide; it was much steeper and scarier, and it fed into a freezing, deep pool of water, but it was amazing fun!

Beautiful, right?

We had a blast, and I was glad that we finally made a trip to the "big water-slide" (something I'd been wanting to do for a while).

However, my favorite hike is still the one up to the falls, and I'm not even sure it's the hike so much as it is the conversations I get to have with my girls when we go.

I pack the basics when we hike: a towel for all of us to sit on, water for myself and a spare bottle for anyone else, a snack (almonds or a granola bar), and a book for devotion time.

We stop at a small little water-slide and pool that we have to hike off the trail to get to, and the girls and I set up camp for a bit, play in the water, and have a brief devotion.

 Sometimes we walk down to the bottom of our small waterfall, but we can also just slide down, too!

 After some play time, we pick our spots and sit and talk.

We talk about whatever needs talking about, and then we pack up our stuff and head on out to finish our hike. 

Cute pictures in front of the falls!

 The girls named these steps the "Stairs of Success" which I think is fitting since we're dead tired from the last half mile by the time we reach them.

Adventure Pass: $30 + Devotion book: $5.99 = best use of my money in a long time.

Even though I'm not a big nature person (it's the critters that give me the creeps!), I do love being in the outdoors, and I can't thank these girls enough for reminding me about this gem of a hike that practically in our own backyards.

House-Hunters: Unaffordable

I grew up on construction sites. My dad owns a construction company, and as a kid I'd ride along in his truck to go check on houses, close down job sites at the end of the day, or take lunch to his workers. And some of my favorite memories are of the nights when my parents would pack all of us kids up into the car with our pillows, blankets, and the bulky TV/VCR combo we used to own. 

We'd pull our car into the driveway of whatever house my dad was building, unload of all our stuff, schlep it all into the house, and set up camp near a power outlet. Mom and dad would spend all night working and cleaning, and I'd snuggle down into blankets with my sister and brother and watch movies. It might sound strange, but there was something comforting about looking through the darkness of the house and seeing a dim light glowing out from the room where my dad was working. Mom would be around the corner in another lit up room--sweeping, dusting, cleaning windows; and I'd sit bundled in my blankies, comforted by the darkness of the house that wrapped staircases in black silence and filled hallways with mystery.

Something about the emptiness made them seem so big--the houses that is. 

They were big, but they weren't ever scary because even though I couldn't see my parents, I could always hear them. The lights would be dimmed where my siblings and I sat, sometimes my parents turned the lights off completely in the hopes that we'd fall asleep in our pillow land on the floor. Mom and Dad would work late through the night and into the early morning, and we'd drift into our dreams, surrounded by the smell of new carpet and the lingering woodsy scent of swept up sawdust.

To this day I love the smell of new carpet, fresh paint, and sawdust. And almost any clean, empty house can spark a flashback to those childhood days of comfort where the darkness of the houses muffled the sounds of my dad and mom working.

The hallways and cupboards of those houses-not-yet-homes were empty of memories, and my siblings and I got the chance to drop the first memory-pennies into these piggy-bank homes before Dad passed the keys on to another family to let them fill up with the house with their own stories.

When I look back, I know it's these memories that fuel my interest in home design and architecture. But it's not houses in general that interest me, it's empty houses. Houses where furniture and family pictures are absent and in their absence my imagination is free to fill the house with millions of "what-ifs" and "I wonders."

In an empty room, the mind is not confined to the ordinary. A bed in a room typically makes it a bedroom, an oven makes it a kitchen...but an empty room can be anything--all it takes is some imagination.

And, apparently, using the imagination in House-hunting is contagious! At the beginning of summer I made a quick detour with the small group of junior high girls I hang out with. It was a Sunday, and on a whim I took them to an Open House--Sunday's are particularly good Open House hunting days.

Two of my "House-Hunters: Unaffordable"sidekicks.

Even though open houses don't provide the level of freedom and fun that the construction sites of my youth allowed, walking into a good Open House (where they don't stage the rooms) is a fairly decent substitute. It's like sticking a key into the imagination, swinging open the gates, and saying 'have at it, mind!'

Now, personally, I don't like staged houses simply because I don't like when people try to A) tell me what a room should look like and B) try to trick me into thinking it's bigger than it is.

These girls I took with me loved Open House-ing! It was so much fun to see how their minds took off in different directions. When I walk through a house, I see ways I can change the room and create new things, but these girls walk into a house and don't just paint with their imaginations on the walls in the rooms; they imagine whole new lives and stories and then paint themselves into the world they've built around the house.

At one house they decided they would all speak in accents and pretend they were orphans--I have no idea where this idea started! They were from Russia, and their home had been bombed by the communists. At another house they pretended that I was their mother which was one of the more awkward Open House trips. Do I look old enough to have 4 daughters in junior high? I hope not! And still at another house, they went through ways to redecorate the kitchen cabinets and sink fixtures.

This Open House-ing has become something of a habit for us. We usually stop at the Golf n' Grill in town before we go, so we can grab some Mongolian BBQ because, duh! what else would you serve at a Golf n' Grill? If we're lucky and have some money left over, we might stop by Starbucks to get a drink for the road.

(Starbucks and Mongolian--she's really excited for lunch!)

Last weekend, however, we ran into one not-so-dreamy home. We got inside and realized it was far too grandmotherly and full of personal items to let our imaginations go crazy. We got out of there as quick as we could.

As we high-tailed it through the kitchen, however, we got a little side-tracked. There was one redeeming quality to this house: the Wild West style saloon doors leading into the laundry room. We stopped for a photo op:

Every house offers a chance for some kind of fun. You see, there wasn't exactly anything wrong with the decorated home; it's just that we prefer the chance to ponder possibilities. I guess we figure that if we're gonna dream about buying the house, we might as well dream about the priceless treasures we're gonna fill the house up with, too!

This bathroom fit right into our dreams perfectly!

Dreaming is all we can do right now. But maybe someday I'll be able to design my own dream home...and, more importantly, be able to afford it!