New Year

I'm going to be deleting everything on this blog starting January 1st. It's time to refresh, start anew, and being a year with a clean slate.

Christmas this year was quiet and nice, and this break home has been relaxing and awakening. I have some ideas for new years resolutions, and I look forward to exploring these ideas.

As for now, I have one more week of vacation and I plan to take advantage of it, adventures from San Antonio, Texas, to come soon!

karma

my brother got a dog about four months ago, a little puppy named Karma. she's a yellow lab and super adorable, but SO full of energy. Super mischevious, for sure. Just now, she got a running start from my brothers bedroom and bolted across the house, only to throw herself onto the door to where the cats live and where the dog food is.

It definitely makes me appeciate my family dog, Mickey, who is very well trained, NEVER barks, is polite, and when he takes a treat, he doesn't chomp your hand off. He's more my kind of dog.

puppies!

working really hard...

a journey

Tonight marks the first night in my current residence that I have ever slept alone.

Let me rephrase. It used to be my grandma's house. I spent most of my life coming here to visit, always with my Grandma or a family member here. Now I live here with roommate(s) and since it's the holidays, roommate(s) have left. So here I sit on a Saturday night in a big empty house (which I may or may not think might have a... spirit) and I'm totally awake and thinking. Luckily, tomorrow I get to go home and see my family and my animals and meet the new addition to my family, my brother's puppy Karma.

Anyway.

I went to a holiday party tonight, hosted my college roommate. She's married now, and has been for nearly two years now, I guess it is. Let me back up. Way back when, in 2003, I was barely a high school graduate when I had to come down to my college for a family day thing. We got tours, meet and greets, the whole shebang. Throughout the course of the day I met lots of people and remembered, oh, about two peoples names. By the end of the day, i was done. I was tired and cranky and over meeting new people, when I met Alexis and Lindsay. Long story short, Lindsay was this cool rocker chick with a nose ring without the parental units and an attitude, and Alexis was this shy girl who sat in between her mom and dad. I thought for sure Lindsay and I would be friends, since I was ready to shed my goodie two shoes personality I'd aquired in high school.

Long story short, I never saw lindsay again, minus the one time I saw her drunkenly stumbling home from a party, and Alexis became one of my very best friends. Freshman year, we'd sit in the hallway and in the fire exit staircase crying about our problems and the ways of the world. Eventually, we decided to be roommates over pepperoni rolls at the local pizza place for the next year.

We went to dorm picks and picked a room, and just as we were signing our names for the room we wanted, this girl ran up and started crying, "oh we wanted that room, those our are friends etc" because it was a suite. We didn't really care, so we gave her the room and looked to see what others were available when we saw the name, "kanani," a girl we knew from bible study.

Another long story short: we ended up being suitemates with Kanani for a year, and for our third year we decided to move into an apartment together. Alexis suggested we get a fourth roommate, a girl who had been dating Alexis' friend and suitemate named Shannon. We agreed and that became A-4. For two years we lived in this dumpy campus apartment and it was the best two years of my life.

Christmas 2005

We shared everything: food, toilet paper, stories, tears, laughter, alcohol, weddings, bachelorette parties, thursday nights, pain, loss, deception, studies, fears, travels, breakups, hookups, all-nighters, and at the end of four long years, we graduated.

lots of laughter

Alexis' bridal shower, 2006

Alexis' Bachelorette Party, 2006




Christmas 2006
Graduation, 2007


Alexis is now married to her high school sweetheart and works for this non-profit that works primarily with homeless people. Kanani has traveled the globe and got her masters at Georgetown last year and currently works for the Smithsonian in DC. Shannon is engaged to a boat captain who doubles as a talented actor, and is in the middle of getting her masters degree in creative writing.

And then there's me, and well, we all know what I'm up to these days. But point being, I have been lucky to be friends with these three ladies for more than five years and we have been through it all, the thick and the thin. Honestly, between our living situations, jobs, schools, lives and whatnot, we don't get together all that often but we do our best.

Tonight was one of those nights, and it was rather lovely being able to spend time with these women who saw me through some of my darkest and brightest times, and to see that a year and a half after turning in our keys to apartment A-4 and moving all across the country (no joke, Kanani in DC, Shannon in Hawaii, and Lex and myself in OC), we are still interconnected and that they will forever and always, be my sisters.

boat parade

The Newport Boat Parade would have been awesome, had it not been pouring. But J and I braved the weather (it hardly ever rains in Southern California and the one day it did, I just so happened to have outdoor plans), bundled up and boarded the Western Pride. We putted around the harbor for an hour or so, got totally soaked, and had a blast.

The houses were SO pretty and super neat with all the lights, and I've never really spent any time in the harbor. A bunch of party poopers were taking a vote on whether to turn around and go back or not, we voted no. We wanted to stay and boat around the harbor. But we were outvoted, so we went back. And actually, another hour in the cold and rain would have been a little much. So I thanked the deckhands and said, "sorry people are party poopers" and happily accepted the free whale watching passes we got for getting soaked.

And this morning, on the way to work, I was pleasantly surprised to see SNOW on all the mountains that surround my house! :)

christmas trees

this is probably one of the silliest things i could say, but I've always wanted one of those "couples" pictures in front of a Christmas tree. and this year, i got one. :) the city of Orange had the annual tree lighting ceremony, and a group of us went and watched and listened to the choirs sing. It was cold out, but i got to take advantage of my new (fake, don't worry) furry coat. each year in my hometown there is a tree lighting ceremony and a big parade that takes over the city, and while I'm sad I missed it again this year, this was a nice alternative.

Afterwards, when I got home, I had tried figuring out chords on my guitar and keyboard for this Christmas song I want to sing for Christmas, and I showed them to James. He's a wizard when it comes to the guitar and piano, and transposed the song for me and played it much better than I ever could have. I'm hoping to record him playing, or get my brother to play it live for the Christmas Eve service at my church :)

side note: send good thoughts James' way, as he starts two weeks of law school finals this week!