Day Ten

Today is officially day ten since we left Utah. It's been a great little vacation so far--because it still feels like vacation! That's going to be nice until reality sets in I suppose.

Since last week, Cole and I have done quite a bit. Thursday, the next day after going to Universal Studios. Cole and I hung out with Adrienne during the day, but then once she went to school, it was just Cole, me, Thatcher and Truman. Look out. We took the boys to their school for trick or treating. Thatcher was a karate kid and Truman was a soccer player.

We walked them around from class to class to get their goodies. The sad part was--no one gave out any candy!!! Everyone gave them toys or little activities.

We consoled them by taking them to McDonald's for dinner and they ate and played on the big toy. Truman was starting to crash by 7, so we hurried to take them home and put them to bed. It was so much fun hanging out with them and they were so good all night, but putting them to bed was super fun. We read them stories and tucked them in.

The next morning, Cole and I got up early and went to Magic Mountain. We went two years ago and the lines were so long that over the course of the entire day we only rode 2 rides!!! So this year, we went on ten to make up for it. By far my favorite ride is the X2. Cole's also. It's not just the best ride at Magic Mountain, it's probably the best ride anywhere. 

Most of the lines we waited in were under 15 minutes. We had to wait an hour for this bad boy, but it was worth it.

We celebrated the day by going to eat at our favorite Mexican restaurant nearby. It was perfect. We then went back to Adrienne's to pack up our things, we drove down to Mission Viejo to drop off some things, and then on to Oceanside to crash in the guest bedroom of Matt and Amanda. 

We've been in Oceanside since that day. Saturday we woke up and went to watch Skyler play soccer. His team was on their way to winning the tournament that weekend with 3 wins and 0 losses that Saturday. After soccer we all went to eat at Famous Dave's BBQ-- mostly because of the corn bread muffins!

On Sunday, Cole and I went out to breakfast at our favorite restaurant Beach Break. We had the best meal of a Sante Fe omelette with Chirizo and home potatos. We get this because our favorite meal doesn't come with a side of coffee cake and the coffee cake is a must. Then we get banana crunch french toast. In case you can't see from the picture, there are little pieces of crunchy rolled or honey bunches or oats or something. Then topped with bananas. 

After we hung out on the beach for a bit, we came back to the house--and I can't believe I didn't take pictures. Barbara and Scott came down and we had dinner, but the best part is that we made some epic carmel apples. The first layer was of course carmel, but then we could add about 5 different candy/nut variations and choose melted chocolate as well. We really should have taken pictures of that night.

By Monday, a cold that Cole had been fighting took over. We hung out around the house during the day. Amanda and I went running, which was so nice! I love that California is still warm. By evening--it was time to eat dinner and carve pumpkins. Amanda made the best barbeque chicken salad I've ever had in my life. Always put bbq sauce in your dressing! And garlic. Not to mention the crispy onion fries she put on top. Cole hasn't stopped raving about it!

After dinner we all started carving pumpkins. Skylar completely independent, got his pumpkin done pretty fast. Sierra was busy teaching us the newest and coolest vocabulary: everything was tot's hilar, and tot's awesome. Raven didn't get help for a while, but once she got her pumpkin gutted and a design drawn on hers, she took off. Summer was hilarious and completed her pumpkin complete with heart designs in the cheeks. Here are the final products (Cole and I are super proud of our pumpkins. He did Batman, and I did Bane)

Today, Cole woke up sick. So after Amanda and I went running we took him to the doctor and got a Z pak. Yay! No more sick Cole. After that we went down to San Diego to look at the seals.

The little blonde seal totally reminded us of a stuffed animal :)

So for the rest of the week, we are going to a girls soccer game in LA, then to Disneyland, then doing one more day with the whole family--and after that it will be Sunday and time to take off to Hawaii!

Day Three Into Our Trip

Day one was the toughest of days, to begin our trip. Cole and I woke up to Logan and Lisa asking if we wanted to go to breakfast one last time before we left. Logan had texted us the night before and it seemed it had finally hit him too that we were really leaving. So Cole and I pulled ourselves out of bed with tired and sore bodies from going to the dunes the day before and got ready from our already packed clothes to go to breakfast. We met the next door Smith's at Jim's. What's funny, Jim's Family Restaurant is the first place I ever went to breakfast with Logan and Lisa when Cole and I first started dating. It was Halloween morning of 2010. So almost 2 years to the date we recreated our first breakfast with them. Full of laughing and staring at Addie (which is really hard not to do) we put off the plans of leaving that day.

After breakfast, we all went back to the house. Although Cole and I had been working for weeks to get ready to go, we still had some essential cleaning and packing to do before we could leave the house. To my absolute happiness, Lisa volunteered their help! As soon as we walked in, we put on sweats and put our hair up and began to work. Lisa was the lady of the hour. She cleaned everything in the kitchen that I hadn't been able to get to, worked on cleaning the bathroom with me, and wiped baseboards for at least 2 or 3 hours. It saved us so much time. Logan went to work too--also helping with the bathtub scrubbing, and loading the last bit that needed to go to the storage unit and letting us borrow his truck. As soon as everything was packed, and only the floor had left to be mopped. We loaded up the truck and made the final trip to the storage unit with our bed, the quad and just a few other things. Upon getting back home, mopped the floor, put the final bags in the car, and vacuumed our room. Then we slowly started turning off lights in the house. It was so sad! I was tearing up but not wanting to actually cry the whole time. Cole and I stood outside the car and agreed on one final look, so we went in and stood in the doorway for a few minutes, turned around, and locked the door for the final time. We passed a big for rent sign in the yard and sat in the car.

You see, we hadn't planned the rest of our trip yet!! We knew we wanted to meet our friend Marcos in St. George and camp with him, but the plans weren't 100% set yet on anything! So we drove over to Logan and Lisa's to say goodbye. We each held sweet little Addie and hugged Logan and Lisa. We then got into our car, and drove away.

Since we had no plans, we stopped by at Target. I was still in sweats from cleaning all day and I didn't want to unpack anything, so I bought a new outfit. Or outfits. I found two shirts, a pair of jeans (miracle), and a hat. Lasted me the whole road trip-plus some. Awesome. After the Target trip, we began driving. After going back and forth on what we should do, we ended up deciding that we would stay the night in Vegas. We got a room for $23, and we pulled in around 8--I think. Time and days are very lost to me as we haven't had jobs to help me keep track! The hotel we stayed at was right off Freemont Street. So the first thing we saw when we stepped out was this:

After people watching on Freemont Street for a bit, we hit the craps and black jack tables-- and I hit Jackpot Party, my favorite slot machine, but that's all I'm going to tell you about my slot addiction. We played for 3 hours I think before realizing it was no longer going up, but steadily going down. So we went up to our room.

The next day, we got up and hit a buffet (a must in Vegas) where we saw cowboys everywhere! It's the National Bull Riding Championship today in Vegas and the cowboys were all just arriving. I don't know why but a girl loves to see cowboys! After breakfast slash lunch, we drove the rest of the way to California. That night we hung out with Cole's parents and went to dinner and a movie. Atlas Shrugged II--unfortunately I have to recommend you don't see it. It has a great message, but was done so badly that it's really not worth your time. Just read the book.

Tuesday Cole and I went to Huntington Beach and had breakfast at the Sugar Shack for my first time. The french toast was wonderful! I had this egg thing will Hollandaise sauce that was to die for also. We did a little shopping and riding our bikes around, and hit the beach for a little relaxing.

After Huntington Beach, we went straight to Adrienne's house up in LA to hang with her and the boys. Truman instantly fell in love with Cole! We aren't sure if it was because Tyler has been gone or if he truly does love him, but it was adorable. Thatcher had us reading spanish books to him right off the bat. Since he's in Spanish emersion school, he gets to read Spanish every day at home. None of us, including Truman, knew what was being said and we wished Logan was there to pronounce everything correctly, but it was still fun.

Before going to bed, the boys came out with their toothbrushes and had us brush their teeth! Haha it was pretty funny watching Cole brush Truman's teeth :)

Today we woke up and went to Universal Studios! Cole had never been, and I only went about 15 years ago once with my family. I remember the Jurassic Park ride vividly, but nothing else. So today, we did the whole park. It's actually a pretty small park-totally doable in one day. 

Tomorrow starts day four, and hopefully I'll be able to keep up the days of our adventures all posted here on our blog.

In Our Final Moments

Well it's almost been 6 weeks, maybe 7 weeks, that I haven't had a job now. Cole is almost at 4 weeks. For the most part we've been able to keep ourselves pretty entertained. I work out with Megan as much as I can. Cole's friend Danny is back in town from the summer. We are so glad he's back--we missed him a ton. We've had a couple of little trips, played soccer about 3 times a week, and had a lot of good friends to hang out with and keep us busy. Not to mention all of the preparing for our move we've had to do! Tons and tons of little things. We lost our renters so we had to hire a property management company to take care of our house: which we both actually love. It's a huge relief.

We have about 6 days--and counting. We have a little bit left to pack, but after tomorrow everything will be completely packed except for the bags we are taking with us. How crazy is that??

Although I make it sound like we've been pretty busy, being without a job has been a little boring. It's sometimes hard to find things that will keep us entertained and from just staring at the wall. We watched all of How I Met Your Mother, but now that this is over, there's little left to really consume our time.

One of my favorite things to do by myself when I'm bored is play with Apple's Photobooth. I seriously just crack up by myself at all of the faces and distortions you can make with this program! So if you thought you'd get a good blog post out of me today, you were wrong, because all I really wanted to do was post the pictures that I took today that made me laugh for a good half hour or more:

If anything, hopefully now when you miss me you'll have something to look at to remind you how big of a nerd I am :) 

The Places I've Been

I realize as I'm posting this, that it doesn't 100% include Cole. But in my defense, if it did include Cole--all the places I've been would be totally swallowed by the traveling Cole has done. I made a map today, thanks to a quick app from Travelocity--and the fact that I ran today and can't seem to be able to do anything until I cool down and get my energy back--of all the places I've been! I'm sure I'm missing a few, but I haven't really been to too many places. I need to get Cole to do this, and then you'll really have something cool to see :)

1. Honolulu, HI, USA
2. Anaheim, CA, USA
3. Las Vegas, NV, USA
4. Cancun, Mexico

• Create your own travel map.

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.