How Are We Going To Get To Hawaii

Many of you already know that Cole and I are up and leaving our current life and taking a sabbatical, or something, to Hawaii for a year or two. If you don't know, Cole and I are abandoning our current life: house, friends, cars, jobs, stuff, everything and flying to Hawaii on November 4th with one way tickets. By the way, huge thing I always wanted to do was buy a one way ticket to some place without any plans of where I'm going to live, where I'm going to work, or what I'm going to do. CHECK! Off the list :)

So what are we going to do? Well first we have to get ready. I know you're probably surprised now that we're planning at all. Even being crazy requires some level of planning. Here's what's happened so far:

• Saved our pre-allotted amount of money we decided we had to have in the bank before deciding to leave
• Quit our jobs. Wow. Nuts.
• Got renters for our house
• Lost the renters for our house
• Posted our house again to hopefully get new renters
• Packed 1/3 of our stuff to be put into storage
• Had full physicals to make sure nothing medical or surprising can come up anytime soon (all levels look good!)
• Both been to the dentist for a full check up (no fillings for me! yay! Cole had a couple but he nitro'd it up and probably had a decent time haha)
• Found a storage unit
• Sold: washer and dryer, the truck (poor Leo!), Tyler's mini-- sending him a couple hundred bucks! I'm so proud of how handy Cole was when he just up and fixed it one day, a hand gun, a motorcycle, and probably some other things I'm forgetting
• Bought a back packing tent

What do we have left to do:

• Sell our remaining sellable items: dirt bike, TV, Wii, and anything else we can think of--hopefully have a garage sale? Or just go to DI
• Buy some back packing packs
• Reserve a campground in Hawaii
• Reserve spots at Hostels in Hawaii on Wednesdays and Thursdays when you can't camp, if we can reserve those spots. Don't worry we're not becoming permanent members of a commune or anything
• Get a rental car for the first week
• Get renters for our house
• Pack our crap
• Clean up the house one last time
• Leave for California
• Fly to Hawaii

Once we get to Hawaii our plan is:

• To first pick up our rental car
• Second go set up our tent at our campsite
• Find an old beat up truck of some sort to buy
• Take back the rental car
• Find a place to live
• Move into place
• Get internet
• Find jobs
• Big goal-- don't anger the locals. We don't want to get beat up every day for being white. Thanks for the heads up Troy! ;)

Please know that all in here is tons of playing :) We want to get scuba certified (officially--finally!) and play on the beach, camp a lot, mountain bike, and whatever else we can think of.

I think our families will be glad to hear we plan on working full time out there. Originally we thought we would screw off for the year and just work crappy jobs that would pay the bills. I think Cole and I are too driven to do that, so we'll be looking for full time jobs in our field.

Honestly, most of the hard work is already over :)

We will be missing our friends. I know Logan and Lisa and their little baby will be in our thoughts, and the Huntington's especially. I don't know what I'm going to do without Megan! I'm going to have to skype her while I work out or something. But Cole and I hope to make lots of new friends in Hawaii.

So why are we doing this? Cole and I want to live more simply. We also want to be able to say we did this! It's perfect timing. A big adventure before having a family and maybe not getting to travel and live to rootless anymore. We're really excited and hope that we get plenty of visitors out there!

A Trip To St. George

Last weekend was the second (my first) Smith girls only trip. Super well planned, as expected, and an all around good trip. I regret not taking more pictures! Sunny, Lisa, Addie, Janae and I all traveled together to meet the California girls, Adrienne, Barabara and Amanda. It was weird when we reached them--because there were no children around! Some part of me still expected to see them once we got there (even though we were missing all of Sunny and Janae's kids). Let's not ask how my brain works, because I'm pretty sure it's a moving target.

The first day we got there, we played racquetball. Cutthroat style. Adrienne, Sunny and I were the first match-- um hello Sunny, your serve is amazing. I could barely keep up with them, if you even call what I did keeping up. Adrienne's pregnant and was still holding her own. -- No I didn't hit her with the racquetball on purpose. I was probably going blind from losing, but it wasn't on purpose. :)

After racquetball, the girls wanted to swim. I didn't move from one spot on the pool chair. Just laid there until we went out to Texas Roadhouse for dinner.  PS I love Texas Roadhouse. It was an awesome choice ladies.

Saturday we hiked at Zion's. Lisa had an extra heater on her front (named Addie) that didn't make the hike super easy. But it was a good hike and a great way for us all to hang out in the sun.

Sunday was the Brigham City temple dedication. The girls all went, and I stayed home with Addie. Cole and Marcos came to hang out with me, and we took Addie down to the racquetball courts and took turns playing racquetball or playing with Addie. That little burrito is adorable!

That afternoon, Lisa, Sunny, Marcos, Cole and I all played tennis. Again, Sunny you totally wooped everyone. Nice job :) And that night we had Peach Kuchin! Which has become my very favorite dessert and vice. I saved myself all weekend for that dessert and didn't hold back.

We can include a lot of other things in here: shopping, staying up late talking to Amanda, going running, and lot of other little things--but hey, it's a girls weekend and I'm not going to spill everything!

After we all left the condo, Cole, Marcos and I left to drive up to Brianhead by Cedar City. Once there we rented mountain bikes and had the rental guy drop us off at the top of the mountain with a map to Panguich 13 miles away, and we took off. Yes yes, it was my first time. And I want to do it again and again!! I was glad the boys were patient with me, it definitely was a learning experience. I would definitely compare it to snowboarding. Super hard in the beginning because you don't have the skill to go fast, but going slow is actually harder than going fast once you learn how. It's not the same as when you go snowboarding your first time, you're on your butt all day. I only fell twice and they weren't that bad. One fall actually knocked my shoulder back in place as it was kinda off since a bad collision in soccer. Kinda funny. The ride was beautiful! Cold at first, freezing actually... I was wearing sweats and a pair of jeans to keep warm. The boys chose snowboarding helmets instead of bike helmets to help with heat. But after the first 20 minutes or so, we were definitely warm.

Once we were done mountain biking, it was off to Dixie National something or other, where we were going to camp for the night. While we were setting up, we had to keep taking breaks for thunder storms to pass over. They were really cool to watch, and thank goodness they passed over quickly!!  Cole tried to take pictures of the storm with his camera. This picture turned out great, even though it wasn't of the lightening.

Camp fires are one of my favorite things!! We stayed up late around the fire, finally crashed in the tent, and then finally headed home that day (Tuesday) around noon. Overall, it was a great weekend warrior trip.