JOURNAL 6/52: (Christmas) Best Thing That Happened This Week

Dec 28, 2017 | Journal, Lifestyle

It’s the week between two of my favorite holidays – Christmas and New Year – so it’s only natural that the best thing that happened this week was Christmas Day. It was just a perfect day. Breakfast on the balcony (my fave). And our last day of advent gifts. Bittersweet because it’s been so fun to give and get little thoughtful gifts daily!

And I just want to share… YOU GUYS, I got a BCD! It was hilarious – we opened our envelope of clues and I could not for the life of me figure out where my gift was. Ian gave me a hint. I could see it from where I was standing. I scanned the entire house and still nothing. Ian started laughing harder and I followed his eyes OUTSIDE – and finally laid my eyes on a gift FLOATING in the lagoon! I ran out and saw my gift was atop a boogie board tied up to a nearby mangrove. I kind of already knew what it was, and I was beyond thrilled when I tore it open right then and there. A shiny new BCD that fit perfectly! We already made plans to go SUPing so next week, I’m starting 2018 off with a scuba dive!

We joined our friends and neighbors for a community brunch. Ian made baby back ribs, mmm! Then we all gathered on the beach for a group photo to be shared with fam and friends near and far.

And probably the best part of the day was out on the water. I wanted to take a ‘family photo’ and since our pets are known for their love of the ocean, we grabbed our SUP and kayak and took Yodi and Officer Scruffles out for a swim. We hung out just beyond the reef. I saw a shark for the first time in the wild!!! A friendly black tip reef shark, so no biggie really, but it still made my heart pump. And swam with a bunch of sea turtles. Like I said, it was perfect.

Here’s a sneak peek of our family photos, (and you can find the rest of them by clicking here).

Thank you Louise for helping take these photos!

And while I’m writing this, I want to give a shout out to the Man with the plan, the Reason for the season, Jesus Christ. Thank you for your life that gave me mine. And thanks for another beautiful day.

Excerpts from a Chill Christmas Eve

Dec 27, 2017 | Lifestyle

An excerpt of my Christmas Eve photo diary.

Breakfast. Ian took the moto out to buy bread while I fried some eggs.

The north wind on the porch has been so refreshing.

Opened our second to last advent gifts. Snazzy speaker for me and Surf trip for Ian.

Tidied up the house, and Ian worked on my car.

Went SUPing past the reef and saw 7 turtles. 7 wishes.

Yodi swam out with us. Such a beautiful calm day. I got a tan.

Last minute groceries and gift wrapping.

Church Christmas service, games, and filipino food. Mom and dad are back.

Home by midnight, and obligatory family photo.

zZz, see you tomorrow!

PHOTO DIARY: Aoloau Lights

Dec 27, 2017 | Lifestyle

A super cute night, all lit up with Christmas magic at Aoloau. I’m so glad that I’m not the only one who felt super Christmas-y this year, because the entire village of Aoloau got together and each family decorated a “tree” made up of lights and garlands along the road up to the lookout that oversees the Tafuna plains.

xoxo

Life Lately: Mid-September

Sep 18, 2017 | Lifestyle

Can you believe it’s already mid-September?! Less than 100 days till all my favorite holidays!

Lately, I’m learning to live slow. I have this tendency to do too much, wasting time on things that don’t matter and don’t build me up. I still need to rid the habit of multitasking, and focus myself on my priorities.

This is my life lately in photos and paragraphs.

Process.

I love spending time in the studio, aka my 2nd happy place (the first being my bed, obviously). It’s an organized mess right now, and every day it looks a little different depending on my mood. I’ve been going through my old journals, reading my favorite blogs, binding notebooks, and sewing cotton plastic bag dispensers. I have a lot of personal projects that are on my list of creative to-do’s, and since part of slow living is appreciating the process, I’ll be sharing some photos along the way.

When the workbench gets cluttered and I don’t want to put things away just yet, I’ll move some work to the floor.

The yellow fabric was from my natural turmeric dye project (read more about it here).

Ian made me spicy saimin with eggs and my favorite thick cut Daily’s bacon.

Speaking of projects.

One of my personal projects is binding notebooks by hand. I scanned, printed, and binded this traveler’s insert notebook. The painting was from last year and I’ve been meaning to scan it and do something with it, so here it is. I was thinking of selling these on Etsy eventually because I’ve been making a whole bunch. Should I?

It’s almost Officer Scruffles’ birthday.

He’ll be 2 human years next month and I still can’t believe I’ve adopted this furball. He’s such a rascal sometimes but he’s also very sweet. Gotta love his dirty little paws too. As much as I try to keep him indoors, he’s always sneaking out on a new adventure, hanging out with his puppy friends, pouncing on anything he finds suspicious, and then coming back home and spending the evening licking his dirty paws.

Ian-credible eats.

Ian has been on a cooking kick all week–he made all our food this week!! It’s so nice to come home from work to a handsome guy and a homemade meal. I am so spoiled and in love. We usually watch Netflix while we eat, but since we finished Limitless and Narcos season 3, we’re on a binge break. That means more balcony brunch dates and conversations.

Disconnect.

I always wake up and check my phone even before getting out of bed, and before I know it I’ve been scrolling for half an hour. It’s a bad habit I’ve been trying to kick, or at least control, so I don’t waste my morning staring at a screen.

Listening.

I’m still new to podcasts, but my current favorite is RadioLab. We were driving around the east side one rainy weekend and I decided to stream RadioLab on Spotify, and was blown away for the next 3 hours listening to these podcasts:

/ Where The Sun Don’t Shine

/ Truth Warriors

/ Breaking News

/ The Ceremony

/ Revising The Fault Line

End Ugly Instas:

I just found out about this awesome app called UNUM. It’s a free Instagram grid planner app by Adobe (which I didn’t know existed) but basically the app will automatically load all your photos onto a grid, and you can import other photos to essentially plan how your feed will look, and turn it into an #insta worthy gallery. If you couldn’t tell, I really really like aesthetically pleasing things so I just wanted to share this. I’ll probs be curating my insta with this now so you can go ahead and follow me now, it’s gonna be epic 😛

*This isn’t an ad or anything, I’m honestly just impressed with the app*

Quality time with the Que’s

Aug 15, 2017 | Lifestyle

Hello! As I mentioned in my last blog post, my week has been filled with cute kids and too-hot-to-do-anything-except-swimming temperatures. It’s been mostly uneventful, and I got to spend a lot of much needed quality time with my family. I wanted to keep a clear schedule so I could truly have a little vacation from my usual go-go-go schedule during vacations. I didn’t even tell my Arizona friends I was in town, which I probably should have, but I just really felt like I needed this time to retreat and restore.

Isaac’s first day of pre-school

We woke up early, and strapped the kids into the car. Isaac was reading one of his favorite books on the drive over, and Rachel sat calmly staring out the window. We arrived at the school and Isaac followed his mommy along while licking his “pop pop” that mommy gave him that morning. His teacher greeted us at the door and Lyn signed him in. My sister let go of his hand and he immediately reached for her hand again. He cried on his first day of school, just like I did. My heart melted, but we knew he was in good hands. When we picked him up we had another special pop pop.

Got my 13” MacBook Pro laptop screen fixed for free!

If you have a 13” MacBook Pro retina display laptop, you might have encountered a stain on your screen that won’t go away. After a quick google search, I learned that a bunch of other customers had this same problem. It was referred to as #StainGate. It was a flaw in Apple’s manufacturing of the display screens. I booked a repair appointment online at https://getsupport.apple.com/ and got it fixed in a day!

Arizona heat is no joke

All week, there was 100-degree dry heat. I had no desire to leave the house. Well, one day I did go window shopping at an indoor mall (so that I could practice resisting the urge to buy things, I told myself). My parents bought a big beautiful home in Arizona and the pool is so key in the summer. We spent a lot of time swimming with my nephew whose favorite thing was jumping in the deep end doing funny poses. My baby niece joined in too and relaxed hardcore in a little floaty.

All you can eat sushi

This place is awesome. Akita Sushi is an all-you-can-eat sushi spot in Scottsdale. Lunch is $13.95 per person and dinner is $21.95. It’s so worth it if you know you’re hungry and you’re craving sushi – which is like, all the time for me. I scarfed down a bowl of miso soup and 3 delicious specialty rolls, and I wasn’t even that hungry. There are also unlimited nigiri and hand rolls. My brother introduced us to the place so when he raved about the green tea ice cream and fried banana desserts, we had to try it… and it did not disappoint!

Let’s Go Dbacks

My brother and I watched the Diamondbacks vs Cubs game. He gets a student discount on ticket prices, so we only paid $5 each! The seats were way up on the bleachers, but we had a really good view of everything from up there.

It’s getting harder to say goodbye

My flight departing Arizona was at 5am, so the night before, I gave my nephew and niece kisses before they went to bed and hugged my sister and brother tight. I live so far away, it’s not easy to just stop by for a visit. And each year I come to visit so many things change. It was so good to be with them again, and I wish I could see them more often.

Fast kine in Hawai’i

Aug 8, 2017 | Lifestyle, Travel

Photos from my first couple days of vacation in Hawaii.

After flying in at 6am, we headed straight to Laie where my colleague Line lives in a beautiful house by the beach. We caught up over breakfast then played with her awesome 4 kiddos bodysurfing the choppy little waves. I unfortunately did not take any photos while we were in Laie because I was starting to get sick and I barely slept on the flight.

Later we made it to the very hip Kailua area to be reunited with a couple of our AmSam friends, Tim and Brenda, who recently relocated to Oahu. In the evening, we picnicked on sushi and red wine, and laughed at the stars outside of a Jack Johnson concert.

The next day consisted of a lot of waiting around for buses, but we got to eat some fresh ahi and salmon poke(!), did some errands, and checked out Kaimana beach to meet up with Ian’s college friend, where two monk seals crashed the scene!

The downside to visiting Hawai’i is that it’s always too short, but the upside means that I get to spend quality time with my family in Arizona before jetsetting off to Bali next week!

Moon over Diamondhead mountains in Hawaii

Photo Diary: Auckland

Jan 13, 2017 | Travel

13

JAN 2017

Travel

Auckland is one of those places you either love or you hate. I didn’t do much research beforehand and had no expectations for the “City of Sails”, but after spending the first few days of my quick New Zealand tour in Auckland, I was definitely getting good vibes! We stayed in a beautiful AirBnB that was a 5 minute walk from Takapuna Beach, took the ferry to the city, drank a lot of coffee and good brew, and omg the food! Everywhere we went, all the food we tried… everything was so good! And my favorite was the incredible “gastro experience” at the Sugar Club at the top of the Auckland Skytower (thanks to Polly and Rick!).