decoratin'

The holidays came out of nowhere this year. I can't believe it's almost Christmas!

a weekend away

I just love this girl.

going up

Yikes, it has been a long time since I've visited the blog world. Here's a video of what I did with sister last weekend:

they're back, baby!

Ah, football. This post is in thanks to the discovery of free LIVE online football that I so happily found tonight! Oh man, I was seriously so pumped that I got to watch a game tonight. I love football.

Since I was in high school, I have been a big Chargers fan, thanks to my dad. I remember coming home from church every Sunday and looking forward to cheering on our San Diego team with him. Then I went to college and kept the tradition. I'd go to church, then come back to spend HOURS watching football and *ahem* doing homework. I used to have the NFL song on my iPod and even made it to a couple games. When I decided to stay in LA, one of the [bigger] perks for me was being able to watch the Chargers games! Now, if only we had cable...

[all dressed up for the game in 2007]

 [on our road trip from Indiana to California, John and I went to a Chargers game in Kansas City. I cannot tell you how incredibly COLD it was and it was also an incredibly close game. Really, Chargers? Against the Chiefs? But we pulled through]

 [I went on vacation to Indiana in September 2009 and watched the Chargers game with Chris at Buffalo Wild Wings]

 [watching the game at John's house]

 [please note my classy Chargers slippers]



how to enjoy a hot summer day with your sister:

one: hit up Red Robin. DUH.

two: celebrate your childhood by eating some "Hello Panda's" and remember how delish they are

three: go swimming and take lots of pictures

four: curl sister's hair



...and then laugh about how I used to do sister's hair. Ah, the perks of being the older sibling.

letting the spider win

This morning, I woke up to a very unpleasant surprise. I had just gotten out of the shower and was getting ready for work when I almost died. I started walking down the stairs and saw a huuuuuuuge spider on the wall. Blelasldfjifagha. I freaked out and ran back up the stairs into my room. Obvi. I started weighing my options, of which I quickly realized there were none because I couldn't leave the house without going downstairs [unleeeeess, I jump out the window onto the futon in our patio and over the fence...hmm, no, no]. Okay, I put on my brave face and ran downstairs. With my eyes almost closed because if I can't SEE the spider, it's not there.

I texted my brave roommate after I left and told her to save me from certain death by killing that damned spider. She couldn't find it, which now leaves me in a permanent state of anxiety that'll probably last for a few days until the stupid bug shows up again and gives me a heart attack. Something else ridiculous? I went to drop of my rent check after I left the house and almost ran into a spider hanging on it's stupid web. And THEN, I stopped to get gas and as I was stepping out of my car, there was a HUGE [and I mean, HUGE] bug on the ground below my foot. At a glance, it looked like a preying mantis or a dragonfly, but I almost slammed the door so quickly on my foot to speed off that I didn't get a good look at it. Seriously. It was not my morning.

Maybe someday I won't let spiders ruin my morning or keep me out of the bathroom for two days or make me waste an hour deciding if I'm brave enough to kill it. Maybe. But probably not.

You should read this. She gets me.

the summer i took 2,022 pictures

The summer after my first year of college. When I still kept in touch with all of my high school friends and hung out with them as much as I could, realizing the difficulty of finding brand new friends when you go to a college 2,000 miles away.

[trips to Oceanside, wearing the same suit (really? we did that?)]

[hanging out in the street next to my house]

 [Oceanside again]

 [driving to Laguna Beach and getting lost forEVER looking for this school that we just HAD to find it after stumbling upon the show Laguna Beach while on our senior trip in DC]

 [taking pictures in the mall and trying to re-create pictures we see in the stores and then having an older woman walk by and ask us if we want her to take our picture...cue laughing embarrassingly and saying no thanks as we try to walk away and pretend we weren't just doing that]

 [taking the bus to the Del Mar Fair]

[celebrating the 4th of July on the Midway in San Diego]

[watching a movie with a bunch of random friends...I WISH I could remember what movie it was]

[wasting time playing dress up in ridiculous clothes because there's nothing else to do in Escondido]

[church with Erin every Sunday]

 [distracting Erin while she was "cleaning" her room]

[being camp counselors at Hume Lake for high school freshman girls]

[jumping off Riley's roof into the pool]

 [beautiful sunsets in Esondido (who would have thought?)]

 [spending countless hours at our second home and first real job...and talking about it all the time, while getting yelled at by our other friends who didn't care]

remember that time?

Music is a powerful memory-evoker. I love how songs can take you back.

putting it into perspective

I miss...

: first days of school


: high school projects


: being small enough to do this


: the innocence of childhood


: the cuteness of baby Kristen


It's easy to look back and wish things remained the way they were. I think about being a kid and worrying about nothing but taking care of my fish and eating popsicles in the bathtub and getting lots of presents for Christmas. I think about high school and the great group of friends I had and the homework that was nothing compared to college. Then I think about my college life and the freedom that came with it, the independence and being surrounded with people my own age that were working towards the same goal as me. It's easy to miss all of that stuff.

Yet now, as I've been graduated for two years and have been in the "working world," trying to figure out what my life should/will look like, I wonder what good parts of my life I'm missing by spending too much time in the past. Right now, it's easy to get caught up in all the responsibilities and bills that I have, or my challenging job, or the fact that I STILL don't have bedroom furniture even though we moved here three months ago! But I don't want to reach my thirties and only then realize the happy, memorable, challenging but stretching moments I had in my twenties. I want to cut the cycle. I don't want to miss out on what's happening now because I'm too caught up in what used to be.

Every day is a blessing.

if you were here...

I would call you to talk about what was going on in my life. I would call for advice and for a listening ear. I would call just because you are my mother.

If you were here, I would make sure to end every conversation with I love you because I never want to regret not saying it enough.

If you were here, people would say that I sound like you when I laugh.

If you were here, I would tell you how beautiful you are and how much I look up to you simply because you are my mom, even though I'm sure you'd admit to having some regrets. I would ask to hear your story because there is still so much about you that I don't know. I would tell you how much I appreciate you. Moms don't hear that enough.

If you were here, I would tell you that I love chocolate-covered gummi bears, just like you.

If you were here, you would be 50 years old.

If you were here, we would reminisce about my childhood. You would remind me of embarassing moments, of funny and endearing memories. You would help me remember a part of my life that has turned into only a distant and hazy fog.

If you were here, I hope that I would make you proud of the woman I have become and all that I've accomplished. To hear you say I am proud of you would be the sweetest words.

I miss the mom you were, the mom you could have been.

Wish you were here.

some things [never] change

I love comparing pictures, to see how much has changed and to remember how things used to be.

[this picture started innocently right after we graduated in 2005 and turned into a tradition / to which all of our friends/photographers of the following pictures ask, "So, you're both in the front seat?"]

[my sister used to be a cat]

 [oh, my hair.]

[you can't see her, but I love the picture on the left because my mom is sitting in a chair watching me play / Lake Tahoe vacation with family friends / at Redondo Beach]

[carving a pumpkin / going to see Beauty&TheBeast at The Pantages]

[gymnastics on the lawn / summer after my first semester at college / on top of Half Dome]

[don't you think the girl on the right looks like an alive version of that doll?]

 [my dad recently teased my sister and I about not changing a bit since we were younger / this picture makes me smile and nod my head in agreement]

[i'm glad that some things never change]

[and just because I have years of pictures with this girl]

yosemite: three

We kept it chill on the last day so we could recover. We spent our last few hours at Yosemite in Curry Village, being smart and taking the bus to explore. Our first stop was Happy Isles Nature Center.



We took the bus to the Ahwahnee Hotel to wander around. It was my first time there and it was beautiful, though I don't know that I could justify spending $400 a night to stay there. Outrageous! We saw another Bambi and also a wedding being set up. Presh.



Though we didn't have much time, it was a good last day wandering around the valley. We left around 1230pm and finally made it home about nine hours later. I thought it would feel so good to have a bed, but I really missed the freshness of the mountain air and the easygoing vibe I felt living in nature for four days. Yosemite was good to us and we'll most definitely be back.

yosemite: two

Hiking Half Dome was the plan for the next day. Except, we spontaneously decided to do it in the middle of the night. This was Erin's third time hiking Half Dome, my second time and Detoy's first time. We figured that since Erin and I had gone before, hiking in the dark with no sleep would be a fun adventure. We were hoping to be on the top by sunrise, but also knew that we realistically would probably not be. However, even being at a high elevation for sunrise would still be cool. We went to sleep around 1000pm and woke up to an annoying alarm at 1245am. THREE hours of sleep, which I was not happy about. We grabbed our gear and our food and headed out.

Haha, there is so much to say about our little midnight adventure. First of all, it was PITCH black. We had to walk about a mile to the bottom of the trail and it was completely silent and completely dark. For the beginning of the hike, we were the only ones on the trail and all we could hear was the rushing water running next to us. There were a couple moments when we turned off our [stylish] headlamps and looked up at the stars. To say they were incredible is an understatement. It was beyond beautiful.

Then the fun began. Soon after we started the hike, we lost the trail. Everything looked different in the dark! We wandered off and ended up climbing over huge rocks and fallen trees, which also happened to be RIGHT next to the raging river. We were getting completely soaked with freezing water, while having no idea where we were in the pitch blackness of the night. If you think this sounds dramatic, it was. I insisted on going up higher to get away from the water, even if that meant that we went further away from the trail [which we weren't even on in the first place]. We went higher and Detoy found the trail. We were excited to finally be making some progress uuuuuuuntil we found out that we just made a huge circle. And then my contact randomly fell out. Praise Jesus that I found it.

After making a huge circle, we argued for a couple minutes about whether or not we really did end up back where we started. Yes, we most definitely did and once we hit the trail, we realized that it was a ridiculously OBVIOUS trail. Like I said, everything looks different in the dark. Our detour put us back a little bit and we were also freeeeeezing to death, but happy to be making some progress.

The last couple miles of the hike were definitely the hardest for me. I was slow for the steep ramp and the switchback granite stairs, but the last two miles of hiking up a steady incline really seemed to kill me. Though the sun was comforting to my freezing body, it did start to wear me out and I began feeling completely out of energy. It helps to have small goals. Instead of thinking about being on the top, I made it around the corner. Up the hill. To the shaded rocks. At times it was slow going, but I knew i was going to do it.

When we got to the base of the dome, we had to climb what is called the Granite Staircase. It's a bunch of incredibly steep granite stairs that lead up to the base of the cables. These can be mentally exhausting because they have the potential to be so dangerous. A lot of the granite is layered in loose gravel and one quick slip or one strong wind could leave you falling down the side of the huge boulder. Most likely to your death. But we all made it!

The last leg of the hike were the cables. These go up a steep 400 feet and it takes a lot of strength to pull yourself up. There are wooden planks scattered up the cables to gain footing along the granite dome. It's pretty intimidating to think that your life is literally in your hands because if you let go, you're gone. There's a pile of gloves next to the base of the cables because it's near impossible/very painful to get up the cables without them. I had my own super grippy gloves from Target that were very handy. Erin and Detoy made it up first.

I made it up. Finally. And I was soooo excited to be at the top! There is an amazing 360 degree view. You can see everything and it's exhilarating to be so high up.

We got to the top around 930am, which was CRAZY to me! We hiked 10 miles up to the top of Half Dome before it was even lunchtime. Though getting lost in the dark and being freezing cold for the first part of the trip, I really enjoyed hiking half of it in the middle of the night. It seemed to go by a lot quicker, there were way less people on the cables, and it left a lot of time for error and/or pit stops on the way down.

It was fun to hike down and see everything in the DAYtime. Detoy found where we got lost next to the river and oooooh my goodness. Scary, scary. Seriously, one slip on the mossy rocks could have landed us in the river, where we would have been swiftly swept away. We all decided that we should be on one of those "I Shouldn't Be Alive" shows, for realsies.

I can't even tell you how tired I was at the end of the day. We got back down to the bottom and immediately pulled out our Rainbows to swap our constricting tennis shoes for our comfortable flip-flops. We compared blisters and walked/waddled/limped the last mile back to Curry Village. We celebrated the day by getting pizza and ice cream. When we got back to the campsite, we sat around the fire for a little bit, mostly in silence. The exhaustion of the day outweighed our desire to have any sort of meaningful conversation and we soon resigned ourselves to slumber. Being curled up in a sleeping bag on the ground never felt so good.