Veteran's Day

Hello Again,
So for the first time since school started we actually went to North Shore. It took us until November to make the journey. We woke up to this beautiful morning and our awesome view. Its okay to be jealous because Hawaii is definitely a beautiful place. ;)
We got on the bus at the mall and met Jon downtown. This picture is of on the bus before Jon got on. We were so excited. Afterall for all of us we can count the amount of times we've been to the beach this semester on one hand. Its so much different from the amount of times we went to the beach last year.

Since we were heading to the North Shore of course we had to stop for shave ice. I always think that its funny because everyone else will get a large and I get a small and I'm always the last to finish. Its because I provide entertainment and usually don't shut up so it takes me longer. We were really excited can't you tell?

We decided to go to Waimea bay.

There were signs posted about the dangerous shore break for that day and the lifeguards kept anouncing that. But Tami, Jon and I all went for a swim and let me tell you it was intense but so much fun. We each ended up with like a pound of sand in our bottoms by the end. Then we went and laid down to soak up the sun for the rest of the day.

See the shorebreak was pretty crazy and that wasn't even the worst of it.

We had to get a good group shot since we haven't had one in a while. This was the best picture of the day.

We decided in an effort to save money we'd pack a lunch for the day. We had sandwiches, chips and granola bars for our lunch. We were all thinking that we should have done it last year since it was a lot of fun and we didn't have to leave after we got to the beach. For all of us it was a much needed break from school. We all didn't want to leave the beach since it was so nice not to have to worry about school and other stuff. Hope you enjoyed the pictures. Sending you warm wishes and aloha kisses.

Lots of Cookies!!!!

Hello,
So I decided back in September that I was going to make sugar cookies for Halloween. The Monday before Halloween and right after my first onsite clinical I took over the kitchen and made 10 dozen sugar cookies. It was a few more than I planned to make and I still had left over dough that I froze so I can make cookies for Thanksgiving. Enjoy the pictures of my day of baking.
My spot for rolling and cutting the cookies.

Alex came home while I was in the middle of baking so she was taking pictures.

While the cookies were cooling I mixed the colors in the frosting.

I took over the table to frost the cookies. I had 4 different cookie cutters so I had 30 cookies of each shape.

Here's the view from the other side of the table.

I did the base layer of frosting on the cookies before we ate dinner.

While Tami and Alex had some fun with the frosting.

Alex decorated 3 cats.

But when it got to the fine details I had to put my headphones in to block out their silliness so I wouldn't screw up. I was serious about my cookies.

Here's some of the pumpkins and cats before the details.

Here's cats and ghosts after details were added.

The happy pumpkins.

The finished bats and some more cats.

More pumpkins and ghosts. I took some of the cookies to work for our Halloween potluck on the Friday before Halloween. Making all these cookies was a much needed stress reliever for myself. I had a lot of fun plus everyone loved them. Sending you warm wishes and aloha kisses. :) Jessica

Carving Pumpkins

Hello Everyone,

So I finally got time to write my blogs about Halloween and it's almost Thanksgiving :D. Oh well at least I got it up here. So Tami, Alex and I decided that we were going to carve pumpkins the weekend before Halloween. This was Alex's first time carving a pumpkin so we were definitely excited for her. I hope you enjoy the pictures.



We're all ready to go.

Alex was so excited she was going to eat her pumpkin.

Or at least the pumpkin guts.

This was our fantastic view while we carved pumpkins.

We got all the guts out and then it was time to actually start carving.

After almost 5 hours we finally finished the carving. Here's my pumpkin. Since we have no lights out on the lanais we had to improvise and put desk lamps outside so we could finish after the sun went down.

Here's all 3 of our pumpkins. Tami's is the house and Alex's is Glee because she absolutely loves the show Glee as do we all.

Sadly we found out pumpkins don't last very long in Hawaii. These were our pumpkins after 2 days.

These were our pumpkins 4 days after carving them when we threw them away. They didn't even make it to Halloween but we still had a lot of fun. Sending you warm wishes and aloha kisses. :) Jessica

Scrubs and President's Host

Hello,
I know its been a while since I wrote a blog but I really haven't done much except school this year. These pictures are kind of out of order but that's ok. I figured you all would like to hear about the President's Host induction reception and see a picture of me in my scrubs for school. Well the induction reception was Wednesday night on the Hawaii Loa campus. My boss, Noe was there along with the Registrar of the university, Richard and Ashley who is also works in the Registrar's office. She does petitions for graduation. First off I have to tell you about the killer deal I got on my dress and shoes from Sears. I had spent like 2 hours at Ross trying on dresses and didn't find anything that I liked so I decided to go to Sears and I tried on a few dresses and found the one I bought and it was originally $95 but it was on sale for $50 but then when I took it to the cash register it rang up as $15 so I got a super good deal on it and the heels I bought were only $10. I met Noe, Ashley, and Richard at the other campus because I went home after my diet and nutrition class to get ready. They had leis for all the new inductees plus Noe got me one and then everyone else in the Registrar's office put money in to get me one so I had 3. A few people from the Student Life office spoke along with President Wright. Then we got to eat and mingle. I met all kinds of people and had my picture taken with several. This has definitely added some extra fun to my already busy schedule but I'm looking forward to all I get to do. I hope you enjoy the pictures. :)

This is me in my scrubs that I'll be wearing for the next 5 semesters. They have the School of Nursing seal on the top and pants. The seal is also on the nametag and the patch that is on our labcoat. I can't remember if I told you but I got of course a pink stethoscope and pink blood pressure cuff.

Here's a close up of me in my scrubs.
This is my new dress and shoes for President's Host along with all my leis.

All President's Hosts get this same sweatshirt and certificate. There were 58 new inductees for this semester and since they started the program 24 years ago there is a total of over 1200 HPU President's Hosts.

This is my boss, Noe, the one who nominated me.

This is Richard, the Registrar.

This is President Chatt Wright.

I'll hopefully get to write another blog soon. Sending you warm wishes and aloha kisses. :) Jessica

My New Home

Hello,

I know it has been a while since I posted anything. This is a video tour of the apartment that I'm living in for the next year with Alex, Tami and Addison. I moved in on August 1st and have loved living there since. It is definitely a lot better than Kalo Terrace. Addison flew in on the 4th and Alex will be here on the 26th. Tami is not going to be here until the 1st of September since she's in a math class back home in Ohio that doesn't end until the 28th. After everyone is here and settled in I'm going to take pictures and post those ones. I hope you enjoy the video because it'll give you an idea of the place. Sending you warm wishes and aloha kisses :)

Independence Day 2009

Happy 4th of July!!
I had a pretty amazing 4th of July despite celebrating it by myself. During this week I decided to check out what kind of things were planned for the 4th here on the island. To my surprise there is only 1 parade on the entire island. So I went to the 63rd annual Kailua Independence Day Parade. I had to wake up around 7 this morning in order to catch the bus so I would make it to Kailua by the time the parade started. The parade was a little over an hour long but there was plenty to see. Then I got back on the bus and headed towards Ala Moana Shopping Center where I got some lunch before going back to my apartment. I decided to take it easy before heading back to the mall for the fireworks display. Ala Moana Shopping Center hosts the island’s largest fireworks display so I figured that would be the best to go see. I got there about 2 ½ hours before the show started and found a spot to sit in the open parking ramp across from the beach park where the fireworks were to go off. They had different local bands playing music the entire time. It rained on and off the entire time I was there. But it didn’t matter to me because I’ve sat through worse on 4th of July. The show was choregraphed to music like Rhythm & Booms but definitely did not compare to it. There were as many people as there are at Rhythm & Booms and I only saw the people who were in the mall not all the people at the beach park. It was pretty crazy but still a lot of fun. I definitely have to say this is probably going to be one of my favorite days from this summer.
I painted my toes to get in the spirit.

These are the cupcakes that I made for my roommates. They all loved them.

In this picture you can see the Navy's band that started the parade in front of the yellow house.

This is the Royal Hawaiian Band that plays every Friday at Iolani Palace.

Here's one of the Waikiki trolleys that was in the parade.

Its Uncle Sam but I thought for sure that his head was going to fall off because he kept moving it around.

There were quite a few horses in the parade.

This was by far one of my favorite floats. It was done by the Enchanted Lakes Elementary School. They made replicas of all the state quarters that were placed all around the bottom as you can see in the picture below. Of course Wisconsin's quarter was on the other side so I couldn't get a picture of it.

This was the Kailua Mustangs All-Star cheer team that won their division at Nationals last year and you can see some of their trophies below.

Here's more horses and the little girl who ended up in like half my pictures.

And of course I had to take a picture of the cool yellow firetrucks we have here.

This is the parking lot where I sat to watch the fireworks. The stage is where they had performers all day long. This was about an hour and a half before the show started so there were more people there.

Here's the video of the bagpipers that were at the end of the Kailua 4th of July Parade.

Here's video of the frieworks to Lady GaGa's "Just Dance" and Iz's "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"

I hope you enjoyed my pictures and video and I also hope you had a wonderful 4th of July. Sending you warm wishes and aloha kisses. :)