Ode To The Wild Grapes

The Wild Grapes - Shelby, Ann, Tamara, Me, Brittany

This is a picture of the Wild Grapes taken 20+ years ago at EFY. This is the name people called us and referred to us as. Dorky or not, that's how it was. That's how it is. The Wild Grapes were my bestfriends growing up. We clicked. We had fun. We went to church together. To early morning seminary. To mutual. To dances. To school. We spent the weekends together meeting and hanging out with boys. We snuck out. We t.ped. We even liked some of the same boys eh hem, Kevin Lowe).They made high school bareable and fun. I loved them then and I love them now. We've gotten out of touch throughout the years and we've gotten back in touch, but whether we're in touch or not they'll always have a special place in my heart.

Instead of going to our official 20 year high school reunion (some of us couldn't make it), we had our own little reunion with just the 5 of us. Here are The Grapes now:


Shelby, Me, Ann, Brittany, Tamara


Spending this last weekend with them was SO. MUCH. FUN. It was a blast from the past. We looked at old photos, talked late into the night, got caught up on each others lives and the lives of old friends. We laughed so hard we had tears in our eyes and our stomachs hurt (at least I did). There's something comforting being with old friends, with those who knew you when you were young and awkward. When you had bad perms and braces and when you wore your pants too high with floral shirts (exhibit A: top photo). They accepted you then, and they accept you now. Although we've all gone through different life experiences, at the core we're still the same. We're still faithful in the gospel. We all married awesome husbands and have amazing children. It's refreshing.

Another highlight of my trip to Cali was seeing many of the adults that in their own way helped raise me. My parents did most the raising, but really, there were many people who were involved with that process. The Parmleys. The Jacksons. The Reeves. Just to name a few. I went to the old ward on Sunday and saw many familiar faces from 20 years ago and I couldn't help but get teary eyed. They all had a part in helping me become me. It helped me remember what an important part we all play in each others lives. This life is all about relationships and the love we show for each other. That's why we're here: To love.

Ok, I'll stop being cheesy now...Here are some more pics from the trip:

The first night. Barbeque with the Reeve Clan. In true Linda fashion there were rented tables and chairs and white table cloths. Love it. I LOVE the Reeves. If I could be a member of their family I would.

Pedicures!

Brunch with Rebecca and her newest member of the family, Kirabo. You can see him in the photo gettin comfy on the bench.

This picture was the source of some serious laughter. It was a self timed photo and I literally had 2 seconds to get back to the bench before the camera snapped a picture. In the rush I pushed the bench against the wall and inadvertently smashed Britt's hand between the bench and the wall. I felt horrible about hurting her but when we saw what the camera captured we laughed until we cried. You can see it in Britt's face. Hilarious.

And in true Wendy fashion, I must. not. offend. anyone. So if you're reading this post and wonder why you weren't mentioned, just know that you too have had an impact on my life, but today, this post is all about The Grapes.

5 Minutes of Fame

I love seeing Gavin's reaction to seeing me on T.V.



This will probably be the first and last time I'm on T.V. (unless it's on Wheel of Fortune - I'm still wanting to get on that show very badly). I had the privledge of talking to Carolyn Holly today. She's actually really friendly and easy to talk to. I appreciated that. She interviewed me, Megan, and Maureen about our stories we wrote in the Book of Mom. The interview was short and sweet, and little did I know it'd be live! I give all credit to Megan (the one in blue) who, through her connections, set up the interview for us. She's cool like that. :)

What was cool about being interviewed with Maureen and Megan is that each of us come from different sides of the adoption spectrum. Megan is a birthmother, Maureen is an adoptee, and I'm of course an adoptive mother. It's really amazing to see how each of us has been blessed by adoption in totally different ways.

The three of us arrived early, sat in the lobby, and chatted, which helped me feel less nervous. That's also when I found out it'd be live. Scary! When they took us back to the studio, it was nothing fancy, we just walked passed all the news people's cubicles. We sat around the table while they put our microphones on and we tried to help each other look presentable by making sure we didn't have lipstick on our teeth and that our hair was laying nicely. Carolyn shouted at us from across the room from her news desk (in a nice way, of course) to make sure she knew who each of us were, we watched Larry Gebert give his meteorologist schpiel, and I watched as Carolyn went through her notes and formulized questions in her head (I could just see it in her eyes). Then she came over and officially met us and shook our hands. We asked her things like where to place our hands and where to look and then we were on and 5 minutes later we were off. Botta boom, botta bang. Easy.

The best news of all was that Ethan was proud of his dear ole mom (he's at that age you know, when parents can be so embarassing). The day before the interview I talked with Ethan about being on the news and he said, and I quote, "Mom, I really don't want you to make a fool of this family." Ethan, I'm pretty sure I done ya proud (at least this time). Given 5 more minutes and it could've been a different outcome.



 

Expect To Be Surprised

I recently watched one of my all time favorite movies, Dan In Real Life. One of the closing lines of the movie is when Steve Carell "Dan" is talking about what to tell your children about life. He says, (not a direct quote, but really close) "teach them that life is full of surprises. Expect to be surprised." That line has really never stuck with me in the past, but this time it stuck and has never made more sense than it does now.

About a month ago Chad and I put our house on the market. We've been scouring the area looking for the perfect house, in the perfect neighborhood, in the perfect school district, in the perfect ward where we'd make perfect friends. All the while keeping the house ready to show with a two year old who likes to undo my doing while I'm doing it. It's not easy! It also felt like we were pushing a square peg in a round hole. Something about it just didn't fit and recently we were on the fence about whether it was time to move or not (truthfully, in my heart of hearts I didn't think we would end up moving, but was something I seemed to push out of my mind sometimes).

A surprise recently came when many ward boundaries in our stake changed, ours being one of them. About 80% of our ward broke off and became its own ward. The 20% where I live has now been combined between 3 different wards. We now even attend church in a different building. The change felt exciting, and because I knew we would be moving it didn't totally affect me all that much. Chad and I got called into the Bishop's office early Sunday morning to receive callings. On the car ride over I very confidently said, "You know what's cool about getting callings when you're moving, you get easy callings." (BTW, NEVER say that). So you can imagine my shock when I was called as the Relief Society President. Surprise!  And I bet the reaction I gave the Bishop was every Bishop's dream reaction to such a calling, "You're kidding, right? This is a joke."(repeat 3x) On Monday our For Sale sign came down. Surprise! We're not moving...The Lord had other plans.

BTW the way, the look on Steve Carell's face in that picture is not at all related to how I feel about my new calling, unless he looks overwhelmed, than it's very much related to how I feel. :)

Technically, I'm a Published Writer

I like the sound of that. I don't have a novel on the NY Times Best-Selling list or anything like that, but I have written a story about me and it's been compiled into a book with 9 other stories of motherhood. It's a Chicken Soup for the Soul type of book. Feel goods, I think. I actually haven't seen the book yet, it just got published on Friday, but it's in the mail and I can't wait to get my hands on it.

All the stories are different, but they're all centered on motherhood. My story is about experiencing infertility and how that led us to adopt our baby Gavin. The pain, the trials of faith while we waited, and the joy of holding him in our arms. It's a story that friends and family have heard parts of, but probably never knew the whole of. So here it comes world, my simple story for all to see. Honestly, it makes me feel a little vulnerable, but my hope is maybe my experience can be helpful to someone else. If nothing else, maybe it'll help them not feel so alone, as I often felt during that time.

This has been such an exciting project for me to be a part of. So, here's to marking that off my bucket list. Published writer. Check.

Feel free to buy a copy! Click HERE. Or you should be able to find it directly on Amazon in the next few days or in e-reader format too.

Aloha & Mahaho Part 3

 DAY 5
We started out our day by going down to the beach and snorkeling. Then we headed a few miles down to Pipeline. They were having a junior surfing tournament so we sat on the beach for a while and watched. Chad probably could have spent all day at Pipeline. He LOVES watching surfing. Just ask our Netflix queue. If he can't watch it in real life you can find him watching it on tv.

Then we headed to Waimea Falls. It was about a mile walk on a paved path up to a waterfall. This tree was amazing.

I loved seeing this peacock wandering around.

 Chad and Justin braved the cold water, but Lori and I decided to skip it.

Lori and I hanging out on the rocks. Yes we were wimps, but I didn't regret it. The cons definitely outweighed the pros. Admittedly, it was cool to see the waterfall, but I don't know if it was worth the $15 each entry fee. Just sayin...

Seeing this rooster made me happy because he reminded me of Kauai.

Lori heard someone talking about a bunch of sea turtles hanging out on the beach down the road, so we hopped in the car to go find them. These were the only two still on the beach, but they were cool to watch and you could see a bunch swimming in the water near the shore. Do you know why they're called Green Sea Turtles? Because their innards are green. Just a little tidbit for ya.

 Then we headed to the cute little town of Haleiwa and of course went to the infamous Motsumotos for some more shave ice with ice cream. Holy cow that was sweet! But of course tasty.

DAY 6
We went down to the beach and relaxed and snorkeled. As we were laying there a woman not to far from us, down by the water called for help and yelled that someone needed CPR. We don't know what was wrong but a man kept going in and out of conscientousness. An ambulance came and picked him up, we never knew what happened to him. So that was...eventful.

Then we got changed and headed up to check out the temple.

 

 We spent the rest of the day and evening at the Polynesian Cultural Center. This was the boat parade. Pretty cool.

Here we are at the Luau

 This is where we met the taro roll. I don't know what taro is but it makes tasty purple rolls.

 After the Luau we went to the big production. It was pretty cool, especially when they started throwing fire.

DAY 7 (Don't worry, I'm almost done)

Our trip to Hanauma Bay. They had tons of space for snorkeling. We only covered about two of the sections. I heard some kids next to us touting that they'd seen a sea turtle, which got me excited, but I never got to see one.

This seal was taking a break on the beach near us.

DAY 8

 This is the last time we saw this view from our hotel room. It was bittersweet. I was sad to go but happy to get home to my kids. About a week after getting home I was ready to come back.

ALOHA HAWAII!

MAHALO for letting me reminisce about my trip.

Aloha & Mahalo Part 2

Day 3
We got up early to catch a boat tour on a catamaran going up the Nepali Coast. It's on the west side of the island where no one lives. The cliffs were amazing and it was so cool to see the sea life. Plus, another bonus, neither of us got seasick. Some did and they got to hang out at the back of the boat with a bucket. Not the way I'd like to spend 5 hours and $300.

It wasn't long after we got going that we ran into a huge pod of dolphins. There were at least 50 of them and they just hung out by our boat for a while. Our captain said they like to be pushed by the boat, it gives them momentum.

If you look close enough you can see one on the right side of the picture.

 

We caught the tail end of whale season so we got to see a bunch of whales. Even from the shore, if we looked long enough we'd always see whale spouts or tails off in the distance, but it was cool to get a closer look at them. We even got to see one breach. Whale sightings never got old. I loved it every time I got to see even just a spout in the distance.

 





The Nepali Cliffs were beautiful. Apparently they've filmed many movies on the Nepali Coast. Jurassic Park, at least one of the Indiana Jones', and more I can't think of right now.

The catamaran tour was probably one of my highlights on Kauai. We got to see many whales, dolphins, a sea turtle, many fish as we went snorkeling off the boat, and a flying fish. So cool!

 

Day 4

 

We left Kauai and headed back to Oahu. Before we left Kauai, I experienced a little bit of trauma. We were just about finished packing up, Chad put the covers back on the bed and there it was, a humongous spider crawling across our bed. I'm talking the size of a tarantula. Eek! Even now, writing about it makes my stomach queasy. I hate spiders and the thought that we had been sleeping with one for four nights makes me sick. I admit, even while on the other island and in a different hotel, I feared there may be some eight legged guest lurking in our room. We didn't kill it, we didn't tell anyone about it. We just left. I still feel bad about that. But it had disappeared somewhere and there's no way I was staying in that room a second longer with that thing in there. I grabbed my luggage and stuff and finished packing in the hall.

 

Now, on to happier memories...We picked up our friends Lori & Justin at their hotel in Honolulu and made our first stop at the restaurant Dukes on Waikiki Beach. It came highly recommended and we were told we must eat the Hula Pie. And that we did. Happily.

 

We then walked along the very crowded and unappealing Waikiki Beach. Holy Cow, you've gotta like crowds to hang out on that beach. I was happy we weren't staying in downtown Honolulu and we headed up to our resort at Turtle Bay on the North Shore. We loved staying in Turtle Bay. It was far away from the city, and quiet, and it reminded me a lot of Kauai with it's greenery.

This chapel was on the resort. I loved the view from inside.

 

BUT, before we even got to the resort we made two pit stops. We had to stop at the Dole plantation and check out the infamous pineapple ice cream we'd heard so much about (Apparently the all you can eat buffet lunch and gigantic Hula Pie we just ate an hour before didn't quite fill us up). It was definitely yummy. And lest I forget, I won a free box of chocolate macadamia nuts for picking the right key for the box (If you'd like me to expand I will, but not on this blog. Just know, it was very exciting for me. I love to win free things).

 This is the only picture I have of the Dole Plantation. These coy fish were crazy. They climbed over each other with their little mouths open wide, waiting for us to drop anything into them. Honestly, they freaked me out a little.

Then, on our way to the hotel we made another stop at Sunset Beach and watched the big waves. You can see Chad off to the left sitting on the sidewalk. No doubt, Chad could have just sat there for many more hours.

 

We finished our day off by wandering around the resort and on the reef by the resort, and of course hitting the pool and hot tub.

 

Must. Stop. Blogging. Now. Part 3 to come...