Back to the rewinding.....I do have a friend!!!!

 Okay, now back to the rewinding of the past year, my friend from college came to visit me for Spring Break....it was just like old times. You know, the old times, where you dare your friend to stand under someone's ridiculously oversized umbrella.....

Or the old times where you feed each other shaved ice....

Perhaps the old times, where we paddled to nowhere in a fake canoe...

Or the old times where we gathered under a rock to make a poorly joined heart....

(Pretty sure if making hearts was a thing back then, we would have sucked at it just as bad back then, as we do now....so at least our old hasn't changed the core of us!)

Or perhaps recreate that famous scene from Titanic...

Oh wait, that movie wasn't out when we were in college!!

I'm not a horrible friend, I did take her to see some sites...

You know, the sites like the rain in a big lava field....

Or the inside of my car....that view is pretty spectacular!

Okay, Shane did score her a pretty awesome sight...

He's pretty good like that! We had a fantastic visit with Holly and I felt like a teenager again, well, I usually feel like a teenager anyway (well, except first thing in the morning when I have to do hand stretches to get my hands to be somewhat useable because of my arthritis.....but other than that, totally a teenager!)

In other news, before our visit from Holly, Buddy drove me in the truck...

(Seriously, I have no idea why I took this picture, but it looks like a good time)!

The house had a main water line leak so I spent two weeks digging up my front yard....

It was great fun, apparently....

In other news,  Buddy has been getting lots of practice with his salt gun to kill flies in our house....this particular one shot wonder had a wonderful assist from Shane's head!

Lastly, Shane took me on a hot date...

Shane made a cup, I made a paperweight....I was finally warm after I had been freezing for 2 months straight....what can I say, winter and acclimation are a real thing...

So all in all a super fantastic, totally getting there....but not sure where there is, day!

Pausing the rewind to unwind...

     Last week one of Shane's co-workers invited us down to hang out with them at their camping spot near our house. Shane had to google map from the air to figure out which lava rock path to take to get us there, then we had to use his truck in a fancy mode (don't ask me, Buddy was in charge of the gear changes and the button pushes) to take us up and down a super sketchy path! Seriously, I walk there and back from the highway because I don't want the stress of riding in the truck.....the boys of course love it! 

    Anyway,  Shane's friends told us that they like to go camping there and have been going for years, but since it's so remote most people don't know about it so they have the whole beach to themselves.....Well, as soon as we left that day we decided that we should go camping there the next weekend! It's the next weekend! We high tailed it to the spot as soon as Shane got off of work so we could get there before sunset....not sure if the truck would have survived otherwise.  I off course got dropped off at the highway and took the tent since going by foot is way faster and I wanted to make sure the tent was up before we lost light....

                                    

Made it, just in time for the most important event of the night, fire making....

 

Seriously, if there was an amusement park of just going different places to make fires, pretty positive the boys would think that was the most amazing thing ever! The next  morning I woke up to the boys already out fishing....

Shane allegedly caught a really big fish on one of his first reels out and threw it back thinking he was going to get something bigger.....he, in fact, did not get something bigger.....he also had no witnesses to the event and the fish wasn't talking. Shane and I did a little bit of snorkeling and then I took off to adventure. When I returned, the Budster joined me for a hammock nap/wind escape event!

The wind did get really bad for a bit, and after all the morning sun, even Shane had to escape for a little bit...

In my defense, I did offer the hammock to him too....at least I think I did. The Civil Defense sent a little alert to my phone warning about flooding on all shores of the island, which seemed a little off! Usually it's a hurricane or tropical storm, otherwise it's just sections of the island. Since there wasn't a cloud in the sky and my personal weatherman (that would be Shane) did some research and thought the alert was a mistake, we decided to stay. Thank goodness we did because Buddy wanted to gather (and eat) Opihi. Opihi is a shellfish that clings to the rocks getting ocean spray. You have to climb down and use a knife to pry them off of the rock wall (they are super suckers for sure). Since lowtide wasn't till nighttime, we decided that lowering high tide and sunlight was for the best....We had to google up a few things about the opihi, matter of fact I made a Facebook post and quickly turned it off thinking we had gathered them illegally. Turns out they just needed to be at least 1 1/2 inches in diameter in order to harvest them, which is what we did (and why we only have 3 because getting the easier to reach ones were to small and the larger ones that lived lower down were too dangerous to reach), I just had tumbled down a weird post that made it seem otherwise!

 Then I used my new bestie, google to figure out how to really cook these things.....the answer, fire....of course.....

 

None of us had tried Opihi before...so of course Buddy had to sniff it....

Thankfully, it passed the sniff test!

It was delicious! Shane refused to try his, so I ate his portion like a super trooper....really, it was delicious! Then we were gifted another amazing sunset....

Now we are back home again....that is after I walked myself to the highway! The boys were nice enough to pick me up while they were driving by! 

So all in all a super fantastic, ready to sleep in a real bed, day (or night)!

Still holding the rewind button!

So, in my attempt to document the missing last year, I'm continuing our rewind journey. Last month, in order to meet up with our friends in Vegas, Buddy thought it would be a great idea to ride the train from Seattle to Salt Lake City.....

Trains are always a good idea in his book! I was excited to ride the Coastal Starlight track because a big chunk of it goes right along the seaboard....turns out that section was after we had to disembark in Sacramento for our connecting train to Utah. Apparently doing research beforehand is a thing!!! Oh well, next time! Anyway, we ended up in Salt Lake at something horrible like 4 am...unfortunately we were supposed to be there at 2 which meant my dad and sister were hanging out at the train station for way too long, but at least they were rewarded with a bunch of ambulances and fire trucks meeting our train. We all have no idea what happened, but Buddy and I sure did come up with quite a few unbelievable stories to go along with it....most of them ended up with a corpse on the train! 

While we were in Utah, I was given the royal treatment....as one would expect of my station...

We celebrated Father's Day a week early, since we were trying to get home to Shane for his first Father's Day without his dad (spoiler alert, we made it back), so I got my dad some of his favorite things....me and Oatmeal Creme Pies. In that order!

Buddy visited with his brother Kevin....

And we went on a family walk while my sister wore the best shirt ever!!! 

If you can zoom into that awesome thing, you'd see a picture of me hugging a cow! She's had that shirt for six months now and told me that was the first time she'd ever worn it.....appalling! She apparently doesn't know good fashion when she see's it! Just for that I'll get her matching pants and socks!

The visit was just waaayy too short, so hopefully I'll be making it back to see my dad soon! 

In other news, we are headed out this evening to our camping spot that we found last week...I'm super excited and I know Buddy is too. This is the first time in a very long time that we are camping and not backpacking into a camping spot so we actually get to bring real meals instead of the dehydrated ones we usually hike with!

So all in all, a super fantastic, googling "easy camping meals", day!  

 

Rewinding on vacation?

     Since I'm a year late....and always a dollar short, I figured to best way to catch up is to rewind a bit starting with the most recent happenings. I got a phone call from an old friend a few months ago. She is the mom to one of Buddy's best friends from middle school. The boys did everything together for a few years...that is until they lamed out on us and moved back to Florida because of the dad's work. Anyway, I digress, she wanted to talk about their vacation to the Southern Utah/Arizona area that they were planning. She thought since I had been there so many times I could give them some great travel trips.....at least I think she was wanting travel tips. Instead somehow got us tagging along to part of their vacation and I don't regret a second of it!

    Buddy and I had taken a train from Seattle to Utah (because, duh, trains) which I'll post about later, then we rented a car to Las Vegas (our meeting point) so I could scratch something off of my bucket list....Antelope Canyon! I got us a tour of the Upper and Lower Canyon since I figured the Budster would want to take a few pictures....

I was right! After we were done with our tours, we headed back into the car and drove the rest of the way to Vegas! That is, after stopping off for a healthy and delicious lunch complements of the King of Burgers!

Anyway, we finally arrived in Vegas and I was so sick of driving in the Vegas traffic that as soon as I got to the hotel I paid for Valet just so I didn't have to drive anymore! (seriously, we got in at 10 pm on a Thursday and it was sooo crazy-there was even a young lady trying to walk in front of our fast moving car while we were on the highway....thankfully, she had ninja reflexes but I do worry about her vision because it was a close one). I got us a room at the Excalibur, because I know my boy....

He's a fan of all things medieval! We even went to the show Tournament of Kings with our friends one night, which was one of the highlights of Buddy's Vegas vacation. Buddy wasn't a huge fan of Vegas, or the casino for that matter. As soon as we walked in, he remarked on the pungent aroma of urine and cigarettes....he wasn't wrong! Then after walking around, he decided that Vegas was, and I quote "was like a big arcade room for sad and lonely people".  That didn't stop him for wanting to buy poker chip pillow...

                                                

    Thankfully, our friends weren't big Vegas fans either (although I'll be honest, I did want to walk around and check out a few adventurous things to do.....Okay, I wanted one of those ridiculously fattening doughnuts from Saint Honore Doughnuts and Beignets! We ended up going to the Valley of Fire State Park instead...

        

  Which was way better....especially since we didn't die! 

                                        

    The boys were sure to ham it up about their height difference since once upon a time, Buddy was the taller one in this duo and Jordan has shot up since the last time we had seen him!

                                                     

                                      

It was pretty and awesome... so, pretty awesome!

The next day we drove off to our next destination, Havasu City to see the London Bridge!

Yes, the London Bridge...in Arizona! The boys hammed up the height difference more, we sweated a ton and then geared up for the next day of adventure and Buddy's absolutely favorite part of our self-invited vacation....

That would be boating on Lake Havasu! Buddy got to drive the boat more than half the time, which I think Jordan's dad was super happy about since Buddy could pull him along so he could enjoy some tubing too! 

We all had such a great time on our vacation together that the boys decided that we should do one involving cold weather and snow, so they are currently working on a plan over Christmas break to do some snowboarding....I'll be working on my plan to buy as many blankets and coats that I can afford between now and then!

    So all in all a super fantastic, who knew inviting yourself to other people's vacations could be so much fun, day!