One More Day to Leave it All Behind To Go Where You Have Never Even Tried

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So welcome back to the roller coaster that is my mind and my emotions. Today you find me in a good mood and my spirits high. I am on the final day of a 5 day long weekend and I only have 3 more days left at work before I am off for a whole month!

MOTH Dude and I have spent the weekend cleaning, doing laundry, gardening, visiting friends and family and catching up on much needed sleep and our favorite TV shows.

We are both nearly giddy at the thought of our upcoming travel plans! Saturday we are having a van pick us up and then we are off to SYD to catch our JetStar flight to Honolulu. We arrive at about 6:30am Saturday morning where we will head through customs and then catch a flight to Kauai where we will meet up with my Mom and Dad. From there we will head to our favorite condo ever (see image above, it's called Whalers Cove and it's in Poipu) and spend 8 days snorkeling, tanning, stand up paddle boarding, and hanging out.

After that we head to San Francisco for a few days where we plan on walking over the GG Bridge again, eating at our favorite restaurants, doing some shopping, meeting with a potential wedding photographer, and hitting up an SF Giants baseball game-MOTH's first ever!

After San Francisco, we will head down to Santa Cruz to hang out, visit potential wedding spots, meet our wedding coordinator, hang with some of my parents' really fun and nice neighbors, beach walk, meet other potential wedding vendors, and eat at all of our favorite places. Bun and Markie may also come up for a visit so we can show them around and so that they can finally experience staying in the awesome pool house at Mom and Dad's.

We are also planning on a very quick road trip down to Orange County to meet with our other potential wedding photographers, as well as to visit my Gma and ask my Godfather to be our wedding officiant!

We have so much to do in the three weeks we will be back in California and I really want to get as much wedding stuff nailed down as possible because it may be the last time we/MOTH Dude will be there before the wedding (eeeek!). I'm sure we will be coming back from our trip as worn out as when we left, but in a good way. I can't wait to meet all the people who are potentially going to make our wedding day so special. I also can't wait to see how much all of this is going to cost us. I am sure we are in for some sticker shock!

I really wish Nae could be with us in Kauai and for wedding planning since she's my Maid of Honor (or as I like to call her, the Maid of Horror since she thinks I'm going to be a bridezilla, haha), but she is swamped with tracking sharks and working on her dissertation so I am hoping that MOTH Dude and I (or at least I) can get back at Christmas time when she is planning on a visit.

In other news, my sister who is not really my sister, aka the Camp Counselor is going to be watching the pets while we are in Kauai. She is then leaving with her real family for a trip to Australia the day after we get in to Santa Cruz and as (bad) luck would have it, she'll be arriving back to the U.S. on the day that MOTH and I arrive back to Sydney! I can't believe the timing of it!

Stay tuned for all the exciting (at least to me) updates and photos.

Home is Waiting Here for You When You Return

Nae has made it back safe and sound to Santa Cruz. I spoke to her earlier today, after 30 hours of flying and stops in Dakar, Senegal and Washington, D.C. She sounded happy and not at all tired. She said she misses South Africa already and would like to move there. Maybe someday she will find a way to. I was glad to hear her voice again and to hear more details about some of the things she saw and did. The fire has been lit under her bum to pursue grad school so that she can propose a cool project idea and get back down to S.A. to study sharks upclose and personal again.

Anyway, these pictures have nothing to do with Nae's return, but are from walks I've taken over the past few days. I hope you enjoy. (Be warned, you might get bored-there are lots of mushroom pictures! Haha, I don't know why I think they are so neat.)

An area that has become a swamp where there was never water last year.

Kookaburra blending in with the trees and grey sky.

The little flash of color in the top left is one of two rainbow lorikeets that flew past me as I walked close to their nesting spot.

There are tons of ugly termite mounds on trees along the path.

The only bright spot in our backyard.

Looks like we will have a few more bananas this year.

I think this might be garlic. We have a garlic plant in our front yard at home and these flowers look really similar.

Someone thought it would be a good idea to try and build a castle in our neighborhood. They ran out of money and it was never completed.

Isn't this one freaky? I've never seen a mushroom like it. It looks like it should be from a Super Mario Brothers game. There is a little fly on top and I don't know if this mushroom was its home or its deathtrap.

I'm Walkin On Sunshine

I've walked about 25 miles this week...that's 5 miles every day so far or 10,000 steps a day. It's a lot of work and I'm normally out with my Dad about 2 hours each day walking all over the place. Whether I am in Australia or Santa Cruz, I live in two really beautiful places, but sometimes even that is not enough to motivate me to get out there and get moving. For those days my Dad and I chant this mantra: "I don't have to like it, I just have to do it." And sometimes I am motivated to get out the door but then hate every single one of those 10,000 steps I have to take and for those times Dad and I chant: "Every step I take is making my ass look better" (seriously and we probably say this chant at least 3 times per walk). When I think about it in those terms, it makes me feel a little better. I am noticing some changes in my body and I've lost about 7 pounds so far so that is helping to keep me motivated, as well.

Here are some pictures I took from our walk on Thursday:

Oystercatchers

Sandpipers

Hundreds of these crab shells have washed up on the beach over the past two weeks.

A whole sand dollar, one of the first I've seen this year.

You can't really tell the scale on this picture, but this clam shell is as big as the palm of my hand and super heavy.

Super low tide on the beach (the best time to walk it so it doesn't feel like you are walking 5 miles in wet cement!)

Bubbles!

One of the few crab carcasses that have washed up whole.

Dad likes to collect all the broken sand dollars and use them as frisbees to throw out over the water.

Super, super low tide

I tried to get down to eye level with all the shore birds, but in doing so I spooked them so here are the birds flying away from me instead.

Lupines in the campground.

I know this one is kindof blurry, but I thought it was cool because it shows the whole field behind it

Some kind of cool red grass.

Interesting driftwood...I have a thing for driftwood.

Crab shell and the tiniest sand dollar I have ever seen- it's about the size of a nickel.

California poppies

I don't know what these are, but they are neat.

Wildflowers in the campground

I would hate to fall on this guy...ouch!

More lupines

Ornamental cherry tree I think

My ring and the sand dollar next to each other for scale.

I think these are Rock Roses? I just like how they look like tissue paper when they start to fade.