simple joys

Oh life

So much chaos

So much confusion

School and homework overload

Forgetting responsibilities

Sunburns at the beach

Caught up in the good times

Emotions running high

Trying to find myself

Dating life yet to be found

Perspectives change

Hate to play the guessing game

Drama everywhere you turn

Sacrificing sleep for memories

Inside jokes

Making friends

Changing friends

Late for class

Missing class

Acing tests

Failing tests

Complete frustration

Beaming happiness

Sweating out the stress

New adventures

Bursting laughter

Full of light

Accepting being young and innocent

and Enjoying life as we know it.

My mind is full all the day long

But the world stops with just one song

Taylor and my emotions become one

When her lyrics have been sung

Long board night rides

With my besties by my side

Laying in the uncomfortable grass

While watching the clouds pass

Shooting stars and palm trees in the sky

And listening to Taylor while closing my eyes

All my worries settle down

As I contemplate and sort things around

But in the end I know things will be right

With one thing in mind, and He is Christ

perfect day at waimea bay

Yesterday Kellie, Preston, Bri, Crystal, and I were planning on going to the surf competition in the morning. Well we got on the bus but didn't end up going to the competition because we missed the stop and we didn't see any people out surfing. The waves were way too calm for surfing. So we ended up at Waimea Bay! The water was completely calm, with no wind, warm sunshine, and very few people on this beautiful beach! We couldn't have had it any better. We all jumped off the rock a few times and one time when we were standing on the rock, Bri spotted a turtle by a reef not too far from where we were. So we jumped off, swam to the reef and watched two turtles swimming around us! The turtles were probably two feet in diameter. The water was so clear that we could see the turtles pretty easily in the water. After that, Bri and Preston went home and Kellie, Crystal and I stayed to soak up some sun! What a great day to be at the beach! :)

The reef with the turtles!

The rock we jumped off is on the left and the reef with the turtles is on the right

roommies! :)

haha I was wearing Crystals broken sunglasses

being stupid

best job ever

As you may know, I am working as the athletic driver, driving the athletic teams to and from the airport when needed. This past week I got a new job working in the Aloha Center (student center) at the information desk. I have to either work the desk and answer people's questions about campus, or sell tickets at school events such as games, concerts, dances, etc. On Thursday, I was asked by my boss of the driving job to help out at the womens soccer tournament. Our womens soccer team had a winning season record so we hosted the region tournament in Waipio. Me and three other students rode in a van with my boss down to the tournament. Spencer and I sold admission tickets, and Micaela and Jeremy sold concessions. At half time, Spencer and I got to go to concessions and help them sell stuff. While selling food, we were able to have front row seats to watch the game! It was the best. My co-workers are so fun and my boss is way chill. We were having a blast. After the game, we cleaned up and went out to dinner... on the clock and paid for by the school. It was the best day of work ever!!

remember, remember the 5th of november!

Last weekend was a fun filled weekend! On friday, it was Tyson's birthday so we had a party complete with cake, ice cream, and a pinata! After the indoor activities, we all went out to the beach under the moon light and had a beach bonfire dance party! It was so fantastic. Not to mention there was a little bit of night swimming involved haha. It was awesome though. Something you don't normally do every day. On saturday, Bri, Preston, Tyson, and I went to a lunch at Kahuku Grill and then to Castles Beach. After the beach, we hitch-hiked home and got cleaned up because a bunch of us had planned on riding the bus into town to go ice skating!! Ice skating in Hawaii??? Who knew? It was fun none the less! We took a two and a half hour bus adventure into town, playing truth or dare on the way, went ice skating, missed the bus for the way home, and ended up wandering around town trying to figure out a way home. Luckily we knew a few good friends with cars that were willing to make the trip and pick us up! While waiting for our rides, we had some fun scavenging for food and entertaining ourselves. It was quite the weekend! Here are some pictures to illustrate...

Starting to start the fire despite the wind

Dance party!

Spencer, Preston, me, and Kellie

me, Crystal, and Kellie

Preston, Bri, and Me

Preston opening a coconut

Bathrooms... which one is which? Turtle or dolphin?

Nice pose Tyson

The group: going clockwise from the bottom - Crystal, Kellie, me, Preston, Devan, Tyson, Bri, Ally

We are awesome!

Oh Devan

LOVE this picture. so happy :)

NiGhTlY eXtRaVaGaNzA

Most of the fun things in college happen late at night! One thing that we like to do at night is to go for night rides on the street. Grab your longboards, grab your bikes, and lets go! There is something compelling about going out at night and longboarding down the temple street and seeing it all lit up. We do have a lot of fun though. Here is a little bit of what happens on our nightly extravaganzas...

BFFs

Kellie and Tyson

Our two ginger friends Preston (left) and Tyson (right) :)

TYSON!

Crystal:  "Who has a toooaaadd??"

Hahaha! Gotta love late nights at the swings. Oh Crystal

There I go!

 

Merry Christmas to me!

Longboard/Surf shop

This year Santa came early for me! I decided that a much needed/desired toy that I wanted here in Hawaii would be a longboard! So Kellie and I took a girls day trip on the bus to a town called Haleiwa to see if they had any longboards that I could just get here in Hawaii so I could save on shipping if I got it anywhere else. The bus ride wasn't too bad because it was a beautiful day outside and the waves were HUGE! Lucky the bus goes along the coast so we were able to watch the surfers from the window :) We got to Haleiwa and wanted to eat lunch at our favorite Thai food place but it was closed.. so we ate at Pizza Bobs. After lunch we wandered around through the surf shops in town, we eventually found the jackpot where they sell longboards!! For those of you that don't know what a longboard is, it is basically a skateboard but... longer! I found the one that I wanted and made the Christmas purchase :) Mine is 46". The longer they are, the smoother and easier the ride. In return for buying the board, the seller gave me and Kellie passes for free shaved ice! Perfect touch to a fantastic day. Kellie and I got back on the bus and slept all the way home. It was such a good day :) I love my bestie Kellie!!

  

* inner tube polo *

Here at BYUH we do things a little differently... Instead of having intramurals with your own created team, they do a few days of one sport and it is ward vs. ward. Crystal, Bri, Preston, and I decided to join in the water polo intramurals. My roommate Bri played polo in high school but as for the rest of us, it was the first time! But it turned out that we ended up being on a pretty good team! We played 3 games in a row and then made it to the championship. Things got pretty heated in this game but we unfortunately lost :( It was still way fun though. As you can see from the pictures, we had a good time haha. The next day we were all pretty sore. It was awesome :)                     

Me and Crystal

Preston

Roadtrip on an island???... Possible!

Yesterday I literally worked all day long!! 11.5 hours to be precise. Both the men and women's soccer teams traveled to the Big Island and back in one day. So in the morning I had to make two trips to the airport taking both teams, and then at night I had to go pick them up from the airport! I was working for 5.5 hours in the morning and 6 in the evening. It was a crazy day driving from one end of the island to the other end 4 times haha. I think I have it memorized by now. But its a good thing the scenery wasn't boring. Half of the drive is right between the shore and the huge green mountains! So pretty :)
In the middle of the day, I had a few hours break so Kellie and I carved pumpkins for Halloween. It was really fun but lets not pretend that we are master carvers. Our pumpkins struggled a little bit. Kellie carved a pirate but wasn't satisfied how it looked so she carved a dinosaur on the back haha. And I carved Squidward from Spongebob. Creative or what? You don't have to tell me twice :)

Squidward (left) and Pirate (right)

On my evening drive when I was driving the guys team back to campus, we all stopped for dinner at this new place called Surfin' Tacos. Its basically CAFE RIO - Hawaiian style!!! Best meal I have had in a long time, plus it was paid for by the school, and I was also getting paid while eating it on the job :) That right there completed the whole day! I had a long day and was tired by the end but it actually turned out to be a pretty good day. This just goes to prove that road trips are possible on an island..... if you drive to the other side and back 4 times :)

House of the Lord!

As you all probably know, the Laie Hawaii Temple is open to the public for the open house. Each night they need volunteers to come clean inside and out of the temple to keep everything perfect due to the thousands of people that go through everyday. My ward was assigned a night to clean it and people were asked to volunteer and to come at 9:30pm - 11:30pm. I was one of 30 people that volunteered to go. When we got there, we got a personal tour through the temple and got to see the remodeled inside, learn about all the symbolism, and hear some stories that aren't normally told to the public. It was a very cool experience, especially since there were only about 30 of us in the entire temple. I felt the spirit so strong and it was an awesome experience to be a part of. After the tour, we were all assigned areas to clean and I was assigned to wipe down the light posts and railings outside the entrance of the temple. The temple is so pretty and its cool how it is the highest point in Laie so we could look out and see everything. Since Laie is a small city with hardly any city lights, I can always see the temple just glowing in the night sky on the hill from wherever I am. I love being so close to the temple. I can't wait to go do baptisms in it around Thanksgiving!

school, beach, and much much more

Well school has been in session for about a month now and it is going great. This semester has probably been my easiest semester so far class wise, not to mention I have no class Tuesdays and Thursdays! So I have a lot of free time on my hands. This can be good and bad in many ways but I am figuring out how to keep myself busy :) One thing that has kept me somewhat busy is a program that I volunteered for through one of my classes. It is a program at the local elementary school working with fifth graders in their fitness room. There are a few students, including me, from BYUH that are helpers with this program. Each fifth grade class is split into two groups and they come in for 15 minutes at a time. We assign one child to each station such as treadmill, aerobic resistance bands, push ups, wall sit, stationary bike, triceps, Bosu balance ball, etc. They are at each station for 1 minute and we are there to just assist them and make sure they are doing the stations correctly. One time I was monitoring the Bosu balance ball, which is just a rubber ball cut in half but on the top is a hard plastic surface where you stand and balance on the rubber round part. One boy was on it and he was having no problem balancing. I was pretty impressed so I said, "Wow you have really good balance!" And he just replied, "Yeah, I am a surfer. I go surfing with my dad." It was pretty cute, but you would only hear that kind of thing in Hawaii. It is pretty fun to see and work with these cute kids twice a week. They work really hard and are usually pretty sweaty by the time the 15 minutes is over!

I also recently got a job as a driver for the athletic teams. Haha. I drive the athletic teams to and from the airport when needed. It is a pretty easy and chill job so its pretty fun. The Laie Temple open house starts on October 22 and goes through November 13. We are going to get tickets to attend that and then have the privilege of being here over Thanksgiving when the temple is rededicated! We are so excited about that. There are also volunteering positions that I will be involved in for the temple such as night cleaning inside the temple, cleaning and taking care of the grounds, and possibly being an usher for the open house. It is going to be fun to be a part of this event.

To have fun around here, me and my roommates have done a few different things including crabbing and going to the Haunted Lagoon at the PCC. Kellie came up with the idea of catching crabs at the beach because she had previously done it in Texas. So we went to Foodland, got some raw chicken legs, tied string to the chicken legs and hucked them out into the ocean just like fishing haha. It was pretty fantastic! We went out at sunset so of course there were couples on the beach trying to have a romantic evening but don't mind us... we are just crabbing! Haha we got some pretty strange looks but we didn't care. Unfortunately we didn't catch any crabs that night, but we will be back! Last week, my roommates and I went to the Haunted Lagoon. It is similar to a Haunted forest but on canoes. There were about 20 people in each canoe and the canoe pusher pushed us down a lazy river with creepy music, zombies, and various characters/scenes happening on the banks of the river. There were also zombies in the water that would creep up to the canoe and jump in and scare everyone. It was loads of fun and also pretty dang scary!! Here are a few pictures from the past month:

The entrance to Bikini Beach

Bikini Beach! Although we were not wearing bikinis... unfortunately ;)

Tying the string to the chicken leg for our crabbing bait

here we are trying to catch our crabs haha

Me, Kellie, and Bri

So... Kellie accidentally let go of her string in the water. A few minutes later I thought I caught something but come to find out, I had just caught Kellie's chicken leg string... haha we laughed pretty hard

One of many geckos living in our house! This was a pretty one

And we caught him!

All these birds always follow the lawn mowers on campus to eat the insects that are stirred up from the freshly cut grass. It is so funny to watch. I think they are going to get run over because they are always in the way!

Skydiving!!!

Yesterday was definitely a full but very awesome day. In the morning, I caught the bus with Kellie and my roommate from last year, Micaela, to go Skydiving!!! We took the bus to a town called Haleiwa to a McDonalds where the Skydive Hawaii van picked us up, which was very convenient since we don't have a car here and the bus doesn't go by the Skydiving location. Micaela and I were going to Skydive but Kellie didn't have the money so she ended up being the picture taker. When we got there we had to watch a ten minute video on skydiving and basically sign our life away on seven pages saying that we were ok with taking the risk that the plane may malfunction and that the parachute might not work and that we were willingly risking our lives doing this :) Pretty scary... especially when we realized that we were doing this on 9/11 haha. But about five minutes after that, our tandem partner guide strapped us up and we were on our way to the runway to catch the plane! I wasn't nervous at all but just completely excited!! We loaded the plane and there were two benches we sat on. I was sitting right in front of my instructor and we were hooked together. The view from the airplane was amazing flying over the Hawaii coast and looking through the clear water. Then they opened the door and it was time to go! The first tandem group jumped and that's when I got a little nervous thinking "Holy crap they just jumped out of an airplane... no big deal!" I was like the 4th person to go. We actually jumped out backwards and did two back-flips out of the airplane. It was nuts! But as soon as we straightened out we were free-falling for about 20 seconds before the parachute came out and then we glided to the bottom. It was sooo crazy but so incredible. The adrenaline rush mixed with the view of the mountains and ocean right below me was the coolest thing ever. My instructor gave me the reigns and I was able to steer the parachute for a little bit. We came to our landing and I safely landed on my feet. It was the coolest thing I have ever done!
After that we shopped around in Haleiwa and then ate lunch at a Thai food place called Haleiwa Eats. After that we rode the bus home and went to the beach. Pretty much the best day I've had yet here in Hawaii!!

This was the sweet rainbow van that picked us up from McDonalds!

Micaela and I

Signing my life away!! EEEP!

Getting ready to go!

Micaela and her instructor

Micaela, me, and Kellie

Walking out to the plane

Getting on the plane! No turning back now :)

Micaela on her way down

Me!!

We landed safely! So awesome :)

Hahaha look at our messed up hair

We were so excited we did it! We even got a certificate to prove it :)