Me and my bright ideas!

Now that Hawaii is behind me (*sniff*) I decided to take on a project. Somewhere in my tiny little mind, I decided that my house should no longer be white inside, and that I needed to paint. Instead of buying a gallon of paint and just hitting my kitchen as a small project, I decided to buy 5 gallons of paint and try to do the whole lower half of my house, up the stairs, and in the landing. You know how you can get a hairbrained idea to do something and it seems so do-able before you start it, and then you get in the middle of your project and wish you were dead? Welcome to my world! Here are a few of the "before" pictures, and hopefully before I die, there will be some "after" pictures to post along with them!

Living Room and Kitchen

The city of Kihei in Maui

Here in the top 2 pictures, you can see the view we had from our balcony in our hotel room. The bottom picture was in front of the hotel looking out over the ocean. Rough life huh? :)

Turtles and Seals....

Are these little guys cute or what??? On Sunday we went to turtle beach. When we got down near the shore, there were 4 turtles up on the sand, and there were bunches of turtles just swimming around in the water near the shore. It was cute to watch them swim around, and every once in a while you'd see this little head poke out of the water and look around. They have volunteers on the beach to keep people from bugging the turtles too much. It's actually a $2,000 fine if you are caught picking up or even touching a sea turtle. Just south of Turtle Beach a few miles is Sunset Beach, and they had a Monk Seal up on the shore. She had been there for about 3 days just napping in the sun. They say there are propbably only about 1,800 Monk Seals left in the world. They can be a little agressive if you bother them, so when they are on the beach the park volunteers put up yellow tape to keep people away from them.

More Aloha....

Last Thursday we got up at the very buttcrack of dawn, (3:30 to be exact) and drove to Honolulu to get on the ferry and go to Maui for 2 days. Lets first talk about the ferry. Who invented that thing? It was such a rough ride, I was absolutely green the whole way, and my good friend Lelia was a lot worse off than I was. The ride out was so bad, that it made us dread the trip back. (Although our fear of seasickness made us come up with quite the anti-nausea cocktail, and we did great!) Our main purpose for going to Maui was to drive the road to Hana. Its a 52 mile road that took us about 3 hours to drive due to the fact that the road is very narrow and winding, having 620 curves, 59 bridges-46 of which are one way so you have to take turns crossing. You drive through rainforest's, get to see waterfalls along the way, and there is a black sand beach that we were able to stop at.

Aloha!!

I'm back from Hawaii, I know you all missed me. We had a great trip!! My friend Lelia and I went to visit our friend Julieanne in La'ie on Oahu. We were there for 8 days, but it seemed more like 8 hours. Here are my partners in crime. Lelia is on the left and Julieanne is on the right. Aren't they cute?? This picture was taken at the Polynesian Cultural Center right before we went to our Luau for dinner. MMMMMM, delicious!

Here to the right is a guy that was passing the sacrament on sunday, then we ran into him again at his work. Quite a change I must say! After watching these students in their performances, you know they love their jobs. They were fun to watch.

Here is a little waterfall at the Polynesian Cultural Center that I thought was kind of pretty. Everything there was so beautiful, it was nice to just walk around and enjoy the landscaping as well as going to the different shows. We got to watch them climb a coconut tree, make coconut bread, and I even learned to dance in the Fiji section.....I'm sure it wasn't a pretty sight.

Thought for the day....

It's been a while since I have written, only because I have nothing interesting to say. When I tell people that 14 days from right now I will be in Hawaii, they just don't seem to want to listen. Oh well, it's still fun to say out loud! I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes...

"Just because someone agrees with you doesn't make you right. It just means there's someone else out there as stupid as you." -- Nathan Reed

Have a great weekend!

Seagulls.....from Heaven or Hell?

Animals.....God's creation. Some provide us with comfort, joy, warmth, companionship, even unconditional love. They are happy to see you when you get home, cuddle with you on a cold winter night, or are just content to be wherever you are. However, there are others that have a mean streak and I'm quite certain they were part of the 1/3 of the heavenly hosts that choose to follow Satan. I speak of the seagull. I had nothing against the seagull, until July 1st, 2008 at about 8:06pm. Let me set the stage.....

My alarm went off at 5:30. That time of the morning should be against the law. I hit snooze twice because I just couldn't make myself get out of bed. Due to a late shift at BYU, I rolled into bed at about midnight so I didn't get much sleep. I finally got out of bed and had to hurry to leave on time. I got to work with about 2 minutes to spare, and from the time I logged into my computer and took my first phone call, until I left work 10 hours later, we were busy. We had just taken over dispatch for Lindon that morning, so we were a little bit out of our element but not too bad. It was just a busy stressful day. I had to stop and grab some protein shakes at Sams club on my way home, and I knew it would be packed. I was right. It took me forever to get out of there. I finally got home, scrounged up something to eat, then ran and changed my clothes because I had a meeting with the Stake President at 7:00pm. I really had to go to Wal Mart and pick up a few things. As much as I would have rather had a mammogram than gone shopping, I decided that if I didn't go that night I wouldn't have a chance to go again until Saturday, so off to Wal Mart I went. I was working off of a list, so I wouldn't forget anything, and I could just get in and get right back out. No time would be wasted inside that store. I had some sleep that I needed to be getting and I planned on wasting not one minute. Is there anyone out there in the world that has EVER used the self check out line at a store, and NOT had to fight with it? I strongly believe that they have some internal scanner that can detect your stress level, and from there it decides the degree of difficulty you are about to have during your transaction. Every single time I scanned something (and mind you, I probably only had maybe 15 things in my cart) it flashed the 'skip bagging' screen, so I then had to push the 'skip bagging' button and wait for 10 seconds for it to clear and let me continue. Apparently the number of items it will let you push this button on, is one less than what I had, because after the very last item I had to scan it froze up the transaction and then gave me the 'wait for an associate' screen. (Somewhat like getting the blue screen of death on your computer at work.) I learned that the internal scanner that detects your stress level also is the system on which they decide when to send their associates that clear the 'wait for an associate' screen to break. After sitting there for about 5 minutes an associate wandered by, sipping the last of her Mtn Dew and eating her last Frito (typical break food) and cleared it for me, so I was able to continue. I swiped my debit card, grabbed my receipt, and walked out the doors. Finally! I'm on the home stretch, I can almost picture my wiener dog waiting for me at the front door.

As I approach my car I popped the trunk open with my remote in hopes of making a fast getaway. Then it happened... and I actually heard it hit. As I stand there (in clean clothes that I have worn for about 60 minutes at this point) a seagull flies above me, and craps on me as he goes by. It hit the top of my head, splashed (yes I said splashed) onto my arms, and the rest dripped down the front of my shirt and my skirt. Normally I would have been about 4 shades of pissed off at this point, but I just stood there. Frozen in time. Just when you think that your day has been long enough, and you start to see that there is an end in sight, it only takes one little 2 pound seagull to bring you back to reality. Quite a humbling experience I must say.

In the future, I don't believe I will dwell on the fact that my day has been long and stressful, and that I have 20 things to get done after work before I can go home. I'm going to be thankful that I have been able to go one more day without being crapped on. But just in case, I think I'm going to start carrying an umbrella in my purse.....just to be on the safe side.