Day 217-- holy shnykies

I have been terrible about taking pictures and about blogging! Cole and I have been up to a lot. I wish I would have kept better track. It's been two months since the last post!!

Here's everything that's happened...

1) My parents and youngest brother came to visit us. They stayed in our house for the first few days, and then in a hotel in Waikiki for the second half. Based on their visit, a week is not enough!! It came so fast and made me realize how much I miss family. We had a blast. They all came scuba diving with us and were great sports. My mom kept floating to the top- good thing we weren't very deep- it was hilarious. Both my dad and my brother kept themselves down on the bottom :) Afterwards, Taylor asked if they were certified now. Pretty cute.

2) We went dirt biking on a big track they have up on the North Shore in a place called Kahuku. Why they put a track in the rainiest part of the island where the clay turns to glass when it's wet, is beyond me, except that it is so much fun when it's not wet!

3) Cole spoiled me for my birthday. Homemade ice cream cake, volleyball on the beach, dinner at my favorite restaurant, and gifts. My parents also took me to Cheesecake Factory for my birthday which was great.

4) One year anniversary. Cole surprised me with a dinner cruise to watch Friday Night Fireworks on Waikiki

5) We are planning to move to California to work in the Bakersfield office. The time frame is unsure, but since we have to be ready to move, we ended our lease, shipped 80% of our stuff, and moved in with friends so we could leave at a moments notice. This has been super stressful, but we finally got everything situated except for the move itself.

6) We went to Kauai for a weekend. Legit. It's so different there than here. THAT is the island experience. Although Oahu is fun, you don't find much peace and quiet. Cole and I went with our boss Blake, and it was difficult to get us all to talk much. We just relaxed and layed on the beach almost the whole weekend. Except when I made the boys go on a hike with me. It was the only thing I wanted to do there before we left.

7) I died my hair blonde

8) We are about to have the third 3 day weekend since moving to Hawaii-- and already we have scuba planned and dirt biking. I'm so excited!

9) My sister had the first grandbaby on my side!! She's adorable and wonderful and has a big dimple just like me :) She's so cute, I'm in love. ( and no, Cole and I aren't having kids yet or for a long time, lol, I knew you'd ask)

We're excited to potentially see a lot of our friends and family soon! We'll keep everyone posted.

Day 155

It's been a while since I've written a blog post, sorry about that. However, I'm getting a little bit better at making sure we take pictures! So, that will at least make this one more interesting. I hope.

Cole and I are still finding adventures all the time. Even with just one day off a week, we definitely have learned how to fit in a lot of stuff into one day. We do have to go to bed between 8:30 and 9:30 almost every night though in order to make sure we can work hard and play hard to the fullest. A couple of weekends ago, Cole and I met up with some of the people from work and their friends to play sand volleyball and lay on the beach. We ended up renting paddle board, which I've been wanting to do forever, and took some pretty cool photos.

We also stole a baby, or so it looks like, and played around with him in the water. It was pretty hilarious watching this kid. Cole took some cool panoramics and other pictures.

We also had our friend Amy come out, which was super fun. 

We went all over the island and to a lot of beaches. We were also able to go sky diving! It was my first time and I always told Cole he had to make me do it. So I did. Awesome. We jumped from 14,000 feet and the drop before pulling the shoot was for a full minute. We got up to 120 miles per hour. Let me tell you, the pictures of a person going 120 miles per hour are a little crazy. We didn't buy any of the pictures though, so I don't have any to show you. But it was sweet. From up there you can see both side of the island, whales, the whole north shore is below. It was incredible.

We have been getting quite a bit of dirt biking in. I'm definitely still learning. I'm getting a pretty good arm work out in because I have to lift my bike out of little ravines and up hills a lot. I can't count how many times I fell in the mud last sunday. No one would be proud except of my last hill climb. No no, it wasn't successful really, but I made it. All by myself. So I was proud. It was a rough one. Every one is still saying the only reason I made it is because I cursed Cole's name the whole time! Not true, but funny. I made it because I was sick of being beaten. "anything you can do, I can do better" right? :)

This month I also ran the Hapalua Half Marathon. Yes! This was my first bucket list item for Hawaii.  

There are more pictures, but they are on Cole's phone, and I haven't uploaded them yet. So this little video of my run across the finish line will have to do. I must say, I owe the entire run to 5 Hour Energy. If you have never ran after drinking one of these, or downed one towards the end (I did both), you are missing out. I had to drink so much water at the end to compensate though. That will definitely dehydrate you! My time was 2:03 (which seems wrong because the finishing time says 2:04 and it took me far more than 1 minute to cross the start line after the "go", but I'll let it go for now). This means I had a 9:23 mile through the race. I'm proud. It's one minute faster than my fastest one. Talk about pacing, I've got that crap down. Anyway, it was super fun, and I'm considering doing a full marathon in December, but it sounds awful so I don't know.

My second bucket list item while in Hawaii was to paint a mural on a surf board. The day before the race I needed to relax and get ready, so I finished my mural. I'm so excited about it :) Scott if you read this, thank you for calling me! I just realized I haven't called you back yet, but I will.

We're still having little adventures all the time. My parents are coming out next Thursday and staying for a week, and then it will be my birthday, and then... our 1 year anniversary. Ya, we made it. I can't believe you voted against us! :) just kidding. It's been a really really fun, and probably unconventional, first year. I hate to be sappy, but I love Cole more and more all the time.

Day 107 Are You Serious?

So it's Saturday, Cole is at work and so I'm left to my own devices. I'm guessing most people are wondering what I've been doing these days while Cole works a million hours a day. I try to stay busy! My sister sent a calendar to us with a bunch of family pictures, so I've been using it to track productive things: like my running schedule, and my appointments for work (I'll get to that).

It's been really helpful. At least it feels good to put check marks down. Well, in one effort to actually be of worth, I got a job as a sales rep at Vivint Solar.  I got a sale! It cancelled. I slowly stopped knocking, and finally started the job hunt again. I was kinda embarrassed because I have this reputation as being tough, and also good at sales, well... that reputation has been tarnished. Instead of looking at it that way, I try and think that I'm getting more mature because I didn't let my pride get in the way of me finding a job I actually wanted. That's what I tell myself anyway.

On the job hunt, I went to a temp agency, I interviewed for a Director of Marketing position, I sent resumes to all of the resorts close by, and wound up with... a job at a temp agency who's never called. Awesome. I was talking to Cole's boss about what I was going to do, and he offered me a job as an Office Assistant. Excellent :) Employed, and employed with people I know. Couldn't have asked for better! So I start Monday. I've been spending the last few days doing online OSHA training. UGHH. Terrible. I just finished the final exam so I'm done! What an office assistant needs OSHA training for, I'll never know. Maybe I'll hurt my finger typing too fast or something.

Today, although I had to finish my OSHA test, I also decided to not clean the house (which is steadily making me more and more crazy, so I'll get to it soon) and paint. Cole bought a surfboard a while back so that I could paint it for our living room. The paints (thanks mom and dad) got here a couple of weeks ago:

But today I finally feel like I've been productive enough to have some down time. So painting it is. This is the picture that I found that I would like to try and copy. 

So I primed the surfboard down and set up shop in our little living room, on top of a japanese table I bought. We don't have a dining room, and I was sick of eating on the couch.

That camping chair is style right? :)

I do have one really exciting piece of news! Cole and all the guys have been looking for dirt bikes for a couple weeks now... and we found one for me! It's just a little guy, Cole keeps calling it a mini, but it's great for me because it's not too heavy, and I'm still on my tip toes when I sit on it. I've been riding it around Cole's boss's neighborhood because I don't have gear yet and I can't take it out to the trails alone. I think we're going to name it David Banner, or the Ocelot's name from Archer, Baboo. Haha. Cole really wants Baboo, and I love David Banner. So we'll see.

You can see in the picture above that it's not very tall, especially next to Cole. But the same thing happens when I stand next to Cole, so that's ok. :) That's all for now!