Hello! I'm back after my week hiatus while I was in Hawaii. It was awesome. But more about it later. I am feeling chatty tonight so this could be a long one. Let's get rollin'...
1. Yesterday I took #1 and her best friend, Megan, plus their sisters and we did some fall senior pictures downtown. We had so much fun! The girls are really so funny and I learned some new words from the Urban Dictionary. For instance, I now know if I look stuntin' or I'm flexin'. Plus, I know how to spot an Insta Baddie. (They are so sorry they taught me those words. I love it!)
After we were finished, the hubby and the littles met us down there so we could shoot our family pictures. Of course as luck would have it, it started misting and then sprinkling right when we started shooting. Oy! I think I took about 5 pictures of our family and cranked out a few pics of each of the girls before I had to get my camera covered up. Oh well. We tried. Not sure if they turned out or not? I haven't had time to upload them just yet. But the night was salvaged. We tried eating at Parlor but they were closed this weekend so we ended up at Mission Taco, instead. I highly recommend it. The food was awesome, my margarita was killer, and the service was fantastic!
2. This morning I spent two hours in the kitchen doing meal prep for the week. I am really excited about the menu, so I'm going to share it with you all.
Sunday: Stuffed Spaghetti Squash 4-Cheese Pesto Lasagna (the littles had butter noodles - can't please 'em all)
Monday: Slow Cooker Herbed Chicken and Rice Pilaf + Roasted Asparagus
Tuesday: Cheddar Apple Butternut Squash Soup with Cinnamon Pecan Crumble + Roasted Broccoli + Baguette (hint: I made it this morning and it's delish)
Wednesday: Crockpot Potato Soup + Salad + Baguette (an oldie but goodie - but not the healthiest I've ever made. Cream cheese. Yum.)
Thursday: Sheet Pan Sticky Pomegranate Chicken and Honey Roasted Squash with Rice (I'll do cauliflower rice. The fam will do brown rice)
Friday: Carry-out pizza due to a 5:55pm soccer game
3. Speaking of meal prep, I still make my kids's lunches. I know they are all fully capable of doing it. But you know what? I like the feeling I get when I make their lunch. Do I like making their lunches? Not exactly. But I like knowing what they are eating and if it's healthy. Plus, this year I instituted "Mom Doesn't Make Friday Lunch" and it's the best thing EVER. I know they appreciate what I do Monday through Thursday so much more when they have to make their lunch once a week!
4. I was listening to Jordin Silver and Friends one morning this week on the way to work. (96.5 the Buzz) Anyway, Jordin said something about her Top 5 All-Time Favorite Songs. It got me thinking about it and we discussed it as a family (and played music REALLY LOUD on our way home from dinner last night). I can come up with four songs but the pressure to name the 5th is really, really hard. (Also, #1 and #2 wholeheartedly agree with my first two picks but weren't familiar with the last two.) And I don't think I've landed on the final song just yet. So here are my first four, in no particular order:
U2 - With or Without You
The Killers - Mr. Brightside
The Samples - Feel Us Shaking
Eric Clapton (the 24 Nights version) Wonderful Tonight
I'd love to know what you consider your Top 5 Faves?!
5. The Littles thoroughly enjoyed Halloween this year! #3 was a Skittle with a bunch of girls from middle school and #4 was a chef. They each went trick-or-treating with friends and the rest of us had a quiet night at home. (I don't know if we even had 15 trick-or-treaters!)
6. We promptly took down Halloween decorations on Thursday. They had been up the entire month and I was ready to be done with them. We don't really do much for Thanksgiving but I did arrange the mantle:
We are hosting Thanksgiving again this year and I need to get working on the menu. I feel like I might add one or two new sides this year. And I'm thinking of making a signature cocktail for the afternoon!
BONUS #7! Hawaii recap time. Short version: She loves the University of Hawaii - Manoa and is dying to go. Long version:
We flew out at 6am Thursday morning the 25th. It was really smooth - we flew through Seattle and landed in Honolulu at 1pm. We couldn't find an Uber so we took a taxi to our hotel and changed our clothes and dropped off our luggage and made our way directly to the beach. We were only 3 blocks to the beach and it was awesome!
This is Waikiki and it ALWAYS full of surfers. No joke. They are up in the water by 6am.
We didn't feel like showering and getting ready so we just picked up Poke Bowls and Sashimi from this little hole-in-the-wall place called Mauro Brothers and it was THE BEST! We just ate it on our balcony and for dessert we had chocolate covered macadamia nuts.
This was my view while drinking my coffee Friday morning. If you look closely, you can see the ocean in between the buildings:
This is the view looking down the street the other way:
We spent the whole day Friday on campus. We did the tour and talked with the Dean of the Spanish department. Sadly, we couldn't make it work to talk with someone in the Interdisciplinary Studies department. Fun fact: there are so many varieties of plants and trees that the campus itself is actually an arboretum! While I found the campus a bit dated, #1 absolutely fell in love.
If you look hard, you can tell it's raining in that picture above. It rained about 500 times on Friday! OK, maybe not 500 but still, a LOT!
This is the original building when the school was founded in 1907. It really was beautiful.
This is a room in the freshman dorm. They all look the same. There are four towers of freshman dorms. They do not have A/C. I think that would be a show-stopper for me but she could care less. Also, this room looks eerily similar to my dorm. In 1992!!! Told you - not exactly updated.
This is a view from the roof of one of the freshmen towers:
That round building in the bottom left of the frame is one of the freshman towers.
After the tours we shopped at the bookstore (pretty small compared to Nebraska) and headed back to the hotel to change. We grabbed dinner at a fun little Italian restaurant before taking the bus back to the campus to watch the volleyball game. The matches were excellent but we found it hard to keep our eyes open. After all, while it was only 8p in Honolulu, it was 1am back in KC!
Saturday was our total beach day. We surfed in the morning, had lunch, and then she went snorkeling. (Hint: It's not good snorkeling unless you take a boat further out from shore.) We both loved surfing as much as we remembered from our trip to Maui two Christmases ago! And we both agree that the waves in Waikiki were bigger than the waves in Lahaina on Maui. Bigger waves mean bigger wipe-outs but also bigger highs!
We ate dinner at a delicious sushi place that night and it did not disappoint. Doraku Sushi was a winner!
We loved surfing so much we went back for more on Sunday morning. We got to the beach shortly after 7am since that's when the surfboard rental place opened. We were hoping it wouldn't be as busy but it was still pretty crowded. However, we learned where to go to find the best little waves and stay out of the way of the better surfers. I didn't mind the crowd but #1 hated it. She is determined to find the spots away from the crowds if she goes to school there.
This is an alley where locals pay to store their boards. That way they don't have to cart them around town. I think this is genius!
After we finished surfing we were starving and #1 wanted to hit up The Sunrise Shack. It did not disappoint. Their bullet coffee was awesome and we both loved our breakfasts!
Since we had to check out of the hotel by noon, we headed back and showered and got ready. We stored our bags with the Bell Hop and went exploring. We ended up walking to and then hiking up Diamond Head. It's a really easy hike but the views or simply gorgeous!
After our hike we headed back down and found a cute cafe for lunch. We shopped around and walked on the beach one last time before heading to the airport. Our plane took off at 10:30pm and we landed back in KC at 5pm. That's a long day!
As for the trip, I'm glad we went. It is definitely her first choice. However, she will need to get some scholarship money if she wants to go. Their out of state tuition is exactly 3 times their in-state tuition! Not to mention just getting back and forth is much more pricey than a plane ride to say, Denver. I'm really glad I took her because I wasn't sure if she would change her mind after experiencing the travel and the campus in general. Plus, we really can't wait until we find if she gets scholarship money because that won't be until mid-March. I imagine finding plane tickets to Hawaii in a week's notice would not be very cheap! Right now these are her choices, in order:
First - Hawaii
Second - University of Utah
Third is a tie - University of Wyoming or University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
So, only time will tell. She probably won't know where she is heading to college until next March! Yikes. I was hoping to have it nailed down by December. But it's all good. I know it will all work for the best in the end. We just need to have some patience.
Phew! I'm beat and it's 10pm. Time for me to go to bed!
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