Scared.

In December I wrote an article for University Relations that got published in the Church News!Check it out at http://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/61847/BYU-Hawaii-Ground-broken-for-campus-expansion-project.html

Right now I am the Editor-in-Chief of multimedia at the Kealakai ( our school newspaper) and I have lots of hopes and dreams for the upcoming semester. I have ideas for two new news shows and I would LOVE to get them broadcast on our university channel.

In this new position I am kinda having a hard time finding my footing, I always worry that people think I am mean or lazy or not thinking things through all the way. Part of it , I think, is that there are lots of little details to attend to and it's hard to take care of all of them when I have tons of homework and classwork... I think I am just going to have to accept that I am not going to be able to treat this like a full-time job, because it's not!

After we get these new shows off the ground and settle in a little I am hoping to start writing more stories. The nice thing is that I get to pick and choose what I write so I am really hoping I will have the time to focus on a few important stories for my portfolio. Yikes! Real life really is creeping up on me I think, soon I will be out in the world trying to get my foot in the door as a journalist and,I'll admit it, I'm scared!!!

What to do in Hawaii : Part I :Adventure

I plan on making this into a series and hopefully the process will cause me to explore more than I have done already but I've decided to highlight a few of my favorite North and East(ish) Shore (Oahu) adventure activities first. If you are planning a trip to Oahu, it might be worth considering splitting your time between Waikiki and another part of the island, with this in mind I've chosen to dedicate part one to the area from Chinaman's Hat north to the Dillingham arifield. There are a lot of exciting things to do when you remove yourself from the city and to me they make traveling so far worth while. Let's start with an adventurous activity from our two "book-end" sites.

Chinaman's Hat--

On my first trip to Hawaii my Mom bought a children' book that told of the story of Chinaman' Hat. It went something like this...
                      
                      There once was a young Chinese boy who was very small. From early on he forged a deep friendship with a young girl in the village who loved to weave [Chinaman-style] hats, she even wove a very special one for him. As they grew older, the boy wanted to impress the girl but felt he couldn't because he was too small to do handstands or reach out and pick flowers from the trees like the other boys. Resolving that making himself bigger was the only option, he found himself asking a wise man in the village for help. The wise man offered to give him the leaves of a certain tree which grew and grew over thousands of years. He told the boy that if he made a tiny bit of those leaves into tea, he would grow just the right amount. He cautioned the boy not to use more than a tiny bit. The boy made his tea, but then he decided to add a little more leaf because, after all, he was very small. He added a bit more and more until he had used all the leaves. Then he drank the tea and immediately he started to grow. The problem was he didn't stop! He grew and grew until he was taller than all the tree's surrounding the village. like the ancient trees he grew older too, he even grew a long beard, sadly, frightened and unsure he ran. As he ran he looked down and saw the tiny hat his friend had woven for him, he tied it safely to his beard. He ran and ran until he reached the ocean and then somehow he reached the faraway shores of Hawaii. There he met a village-full of new people including a great chief. The people helped him and in return he gave him the little hat his friend had woven. Soon afterward the chief and the people wove him a hat just like the little one, but much much bigger to fit! Soon afterward, the Chinaman grew sleepy ( just like those ancient old trees) and drifted down to the bottom of the ocean, where he will remain until Father time comes to wake up all the ancient things once more.

I love impressing my friends with this little story whenever we drive past Chinaman's Hat...I'm pretty sure it annoys them. Anyway, more about the adventure part... Despite having been to Chinaman's Hat several times before, our last trip was as fun as ever. The little island is about 3/4 mile ( I am totally guessing here) off-shore and how you get there depends on the tide. If the tide is low, you can totally walk right out there as it won't be more than knee-deep at the deepest points. Just be sure to wear water shoes ( I use a pair of old tennies) because there is coral all the way out and it is SHARP! If the tide is medium-high you can paddle out on surfboards ( probably not advisable to use surfboards in low tide as their bottoms will get scraped up on the coral). Either way you can use a kayak ( so long as you aren't super anal about the possibility of a small scratch or two) and I have to say that kayaking is my favorite, the paddling is an ab workout for people like me who tend to focus more on aerobic excercise, and the water is usually clear so you can see little fishes swimmin' while you paddle. I would not suggest paddling around the island , it gets pretty wavy and sharp-rocky, just paddle into the little stretch of beach sand that faces the shore.

Here is some video footage of our trip ( please excuse our goofiness...actually don't--that's who we are!)

As we headed back to where we shored our kayak I just couldn't help but snap a picture, look how gorgeous it all was!

Rock Climbing at Mokuleia--

On the other end of the North Shore you can indulge in another adventurous part of Hawaii, the Mokuleia rock climbing routes. There are a bunch of routes at varying skill levels, and it is a blast! I am no rock climber but I must say I thouroughly enjoyed letting our friend Zach (acting as my belayer) pull me up the mountain. Justin brought his r.c. plane up there and hit some "sweet thermals" ( translation sea breeze+hot air = shutting off the motor riding the wind with your plane) To get to Mokuleia from Laie we drove up the North Shore , past Haleiwa , took a right turn somewhere and ended up near Camp Erdman where we took the steep hike up from Farrington highway. Here's us having an awesom time climbing!

clipped all of our rings to zach's awesome backpack clip! (BTWs All the Rockclimbing photos are by Zach AKA Zachary Zimmerman Photographer Extraordinaire)

 mmmmmm...check out the tone in those legs, I love me some power !!!!!! Can't you just see him owning everyone in a steeplechase or a 10 k...yes you can...because he does.

 We saw whales!!!! Check it out you can just make out the spout and the curve of its back!

Matt (one of my BFF Lacee's hubby)  learned to belay that day...notice that he and I both fit into the same harness...the pink,girl one.

I found a blog called Aloha from 808 that describes a Mokuleia adventure, as well as plenty of other outdoor adventures on Oahu:http://www.alohafrom808.com/2011/08/mokuleia-crag-rock-climbing-august-7-2011/

Christmas in Hawaii

It turns out that Christmas in Hawaii was actually awesome. We had my sister's car for the break and we made sure to do lots of fun things. Most of all, though, it was a tender and wonderful time to jus be with each other. Above is a picture on the way to the mall the the weekend after finals...we had a little bit of Christmas shopping to catch up on.

At the mall there was a beautiful Christmas tree that did wonders for my Christmas spirit, as did the look on that little boy's face when it started SNOW--ing!

Perhaps you have noticed a change in the quality of my photos? I borrowed one of the Kealakai's ( the student newspaper at which I am an editor///brag time I was recently promoted to editor-in-cheif over multimedia -also I was in charge over Christmas break) sweet Nikons and started clicking away. I don't think I quite have the photographer's touch yet but maybe someday...

We had a Christmas party on Christmas eve and it went really well. Justin and I teamed up to put together homemade stocking stuffers for our guests to take home. We filled them with carmel popcorn balls ( Lacee and I made them a few days before), hard candy from Costco, hand-folded pochibukuro with pennies inside ( we made them with wrapping paper using this tutorial ( learn how to fold your own courtesy of a little girl speaking a different language http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTaCCYsoKLE(portuguese??),a secret homemade present (soon to be revealed) and cuties ( the cheap way of giving people oaranges for their stockings). They were a hit I think. I printed the cute little to-from tags from brooklynlimestone.com. , they are the same ones I used on the invites (see my earlier post for a pic. ) I will post pictures of all my Christmas crafts in a separate post so stay tuned!

We acted out the nativity underneath a tarp Justin and I spent forever hanging. This is baby Jesus, also known as Kaito. His mom Madoka is from Japan ( which is why we included the pochibukuro in the stocking bags) and his dad, Risky, is from Indonesia. This picture definitely does not do his eyelashes justice, they are so adorably long it makes your heart skip a beat. CHALLENGE:We videoed our play, I will post it if I get five comments telling me to.

Matt  ( Lacee's husband) being pensive as he watches Charly Brown Christmas

We drew our parts out of a hat ( besides Madoka and Risky and Kaito who were Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus) p.s. Matt totally wanted to be baby Jesus. Justin and I were Shepherds /film crew.

We grinched our tree! Our friends Brandon and Lacey went on a cruise this Christmas and they let us borrow their tree. We used a red ribbon I originally bought for the door for the top, and added 2 dollars worth of our own ornaments to those the Krouts had already put up along with the lights. Then we used batting and smooshed it onto the branches here and there to make it look snowy. I bought some little mini nativity art seens and hole punched them, then tied them to the tree with black ribbon for the final touch.It was such a beautiful tree, I was so worried our Christmas would be cheesy, that I wasn't mature enough to do Christmas right, but man that tree just told me something about myself. Guess what? I can put together beautiful decor, and awesome parties. It's something I am very pleasantly surprised to find out!

Matt and Lacee hosted Christmas dinner, I made bell pepper soup with a recipe I found on pinterest...I was looking forward to the leftovers but I accidently left the soup there! Dang it!

Our wrapping paper pile, we were so lucky to have presents sent to us from so many family members! Thanks everyone!!!! Especially Mom! (She sent A LOT of presents)

(Below) On the way to Kaneohe...It is so beautiful here I have made a New Year's resolution to share Hawaii more fully with my blog readers, you guys deserve it !!! In honor of this decision I will soon present an awesome post that does just that...stay tuned!

Christmas post on it's way

Ok guys I know I am a terrible blogger for not having my Christmas special up yet but trust me when I say that my Christmas was fantastic and worthy of a magnificent post! I will cover everything from our sweet  little tree and paper fireplace, to our christmas party details, to the late night Christmas snuggles! I even borrowed an awesome camera to capture it all! In fact, I will be using said camera to capture New Years as well. So after the fireworks and resolutions have settled expect a brilliantly wonderful post from yours truly!

The Catastrophic Events of the Week : How NOT to Make Coconut Brittle

My entire body ached even though I haven't exercised in the last two weeks--welll besides all the walking back and forth between classes and the grocery store and whatnot ,thanks again bikethief-!-I seriously feel like I just went nine rounds of girl-boxing. Of course this is nothing more than I expected, just doing the rounds right? Oh Finals why must you make me so sick to my stomach?See the thing is that this semester I took serveral of my upper level communications classes and, while I loved every minute of them that meant turning in 8 page papers instead of taking an exam. I love writing don't get me wrong, but keep in mind here that I also write for the newspaper and that the professor I have for two classes happens to be a pretty strict grader. AKA I was up all night for much of this week trying to hit deadlines, and it doesn't help that I am a bit of a perfectionist about written assignments. Anyway Wedneday night I finished with one of the essays and my dear friend Michelle came over to borrow a Christmas card ( oh crap I still haven't sent those out) and found me proudly patting the top of the microwave. "What are you doing?" "MAKING COCONUT BRITTLE IN THE MICROWAVE!" I shouted excitedly. She looked over my shoulder and raised her eyebrows appraisingly , my smile faltered , that her communication was wordless did not diminish its effect. A few minutes later I opened the door cautiously ...something smelled funny. See below for what I saw. I figured, well if at first you don't suceed try try again right? Haha FAIL. We worked together this time, bending over the stove and trying to figure out if the syrup had turned gold enough. Yeah it was gold enough ...immediately it started to go brown so we tried pouring in the baking soda as quick as we could and it puffed way way up! We were yelling and running around trying to pour it into the pan when it happened...I BURNED MICHELLE!!! I was trying to frantically scoop the puffyness out of the pan and some flicked right onto her finger. She looked at me with this sad desperate look and said in her Meeshy way of saying things "um...ow" and then "um ow ow ow ow ow" with this look in her eye that said "What do I do what do I do What do I do?" and I reacted on gut instinct. It was go-time. I grabbed her hand and ripped that sticky burning ooze right off. I turned the water on cool (not cold, because that would be too harsh of a temperature change) and ran her hand under it. It seemed like I had four arms flailing around because somehow I managed to turn the sink on and pull a bag of peas out of the freezer simultaneously. Long story short my fast reaction didn't seem to do much good, she ended up with a huge blister. She forgave me though...I think.
After that I gave on up brittle, and moved on to bigger and better things like writing essays and studying for exams. 12 noon on Friday finally rolled around and I was finished. I sat there for a good hour, numb, like I said finals are exhausting for no apparent reason. Now that it was all over I needed a good night's sleep, but alas fate decided against it. Justin didn't finish his last final until around 7:30 p.m. and it was torture waiting to find out how he did...things didn't go well. His professor hadn't told them about the two-hour time limit and , welll, Justin likes to take things slow when it comes to taking a test or picking out a can of refried beans. He didn't even make it to the last page. Needless to say he was pretty forlorn by the time he made it back to me and that was NOT a good thing. See at this point neither of us had gotten proper sleep in a while and to top it off , we were finally able to bring our borrowed Christmas tree home. I had been running around all day on half -empty and the thought of decorating that tree was the only thing that got me through it., my Christmas spirit was (IS!) in a state of fragility, I keep getting so nervous that Christmas can't exist without my family ...all of this to say that Justin coming home and effectively fire-hosing my teetering happiness was just about the last straw. Poor guy. I had tried cheering him up by smiling, telling him forget about grades it's Christmas, tickling him, and holding him close but he couldn't pull himself out of that dark cloud. I got really quiet, and, well, alright fine I was sulky. He took a walk and when he came back he gave me a hug and said sorry. I don't know if he was ready for what happened next -- I broke down crying in his arms, I can't quite explain what I was feeling except for that I wanted to have Christmas really mean something for us this year, I wanted to be a full functioning adult and throw a party and beautifully decorate a tree. I wanted to show people, especially Justin, that I was all grown up and creative and whatever else your supposed to be in this world. As I rested my cheek against his shoulder, however,  fighting down the sobs that kept rising higher and higher in my chest, I couldn't help but think I am just too little for this, too young , I just need someone else to do it all. I hated that I thought it, hated that all those judgemental people who tried to shove their opinions in my face might have been right, but there you  have it, the life of a young wife.

After I had had a good cry I told Justin to put his party clothes on, we both needed to forget ourselves and just have fun. We headed to Foodland, as we opened the door to Angel's shave ice I realized I had dropped my wallet. "Could things get any worse? " I thought. Laie isn't the best place to drop a wallet, though it's just a small town theivery seems to be pretty common-place...case-in-point, my friend Lacee's bike was stolen earlier that same day. In any case Justin and I figured we'd better turn around and retrace our tracks ( we were riding on his bike). Just as we were leaving the Foofland parking lot I saw a familiar looking, blue bit of duct tape. "Wait" my brain told me, the guy who had been walking just ahead grabbed a bike from behind a half wall and yes it was LACEE'S BIKE!!! I spoke unhesitatingly "DUDE, That's my friends BIKE!", my hand shot to my mouth in disbelief , I had said it so aggresively. The guy looked at me fearfully, "Oh really, I --uh---found it on the side of the road...do you like...want it?" "Um...Yeaaah." I said grabbing the handlebars. MENTAL FISTPUMP !! I was so excited to surprise her with the recovered bike. We had to ride past the suspected thief again and he shouted at us angrily, but I barely heard him as I wooshed by. It felt like the wind was echoing my jubilation. We even found my wallet on the way back. What a week!!!! Now I am off to write two article that may or may not be appearing in the LDS Church News-- JAZZED!

Christmas Invites/Cards: I am so excited!

Just watched the Men's basketball team and experienced a rush of adrenaline when we got back to the apartment. Twiddled my thumbs on pinterest for a while until I came across this http://lisasayswhybensaysyup.blogspot.com/2011/04/recycling-toilet-paper-rolls.html, which led me to the realization that the "brown package" paper I was looking for was sitting there waiting for me in my teeny tiny bathroom. I couldn't resist putting together a prototype for our Christmas Eve party, and have now decided to make the necessary modifications to turn this baby into the cutest/cheapest Christmas card ever! I downloaded and printed the " North Pole Tracking and Delivery" tag from here : http://www.brooklynlimestone.com/2011/11/naughty-or-nice-christmas-gift-tag.html#.Tt40ilYgYfU
and came up with the poem myself :) In full it reads:
                                  "With Christmas near the list is here and after checking twice
                                   The Royer's have decided that they think you're rather nice
                                   So come on over Christmas Eve at 6 p.m. and then,
                          We all can welcome Santa Clause and the Babe from Bethlehem"
I'll post the final versions when I get them finished but I couldn't help giving you a sneak peek. I am planning on tweaking the poem to fit as our family Christmas card. As pictured I attached tags to the bow which ask the party-comers to bring a scripture or memory to share and cookies for Santa. Is it too presumptuous for the hostess to ask for that much personal investment? Let me know what you think in your comments.

How To: Bridal Shower Invites and Decorations

Some of the stuff I came up with for Katie's shower:

Invites:

          Since I didn't have a lot of time or money, I decided to put my wrapping paper scraps to use. I simply cut invite-sized rectangles out of wrapping paper, cut snowflake-esque designs from white printer paper( I left straight edges in some places so it would look more invitation-y), pasted them on and hand-wrote the information in black ink.


Decorations:

       Lacee was able to score some colored paper from the Education Department, so we put it to good use. The banner is pretty self explanatory. To make the white snowflakes we folded the paper in fourths, pinched the folded corner ( bottom left), rounded ( see picture below) it , then made random two-cut shapes along the edges. Lacee learned to make the purple one on YouTube. Our martinelli bottles from Thanksgiving have become stand-bys for all my decorating needs, and I brought them to Katie's to use as centerpieces. Pictures of all these decorations in action to come.

We hung the snowflakes up with tape and dental floss...desperate times desperate measures.

Glued on either end and wrapped around the bottle to cover the "Martinelli's" sticker

I embellished my homemade bottle cover with little mini snowflakes. This is what I meant by "rounded".In this picture the folded corner is at the top.

   I know they are simplistic but they looked super cute when we were all done decorating. Like I said stay posted for the action shots!