Sacred Heart Sisters : Part 3 of 5 (Caitlin)

We got up early this morning and made a run to our new favorite coffee place, which is much better than Starbucks (blasphemy, I know!!). We picked up my Aunt Amy from the airport. She and Amanda are twins. The dynamic that these two women create with my mother is hilarious. I have never giggled so much in my life…
We went off to breakfast at the Naked Café again, and presented Amy with the present that we bought for her! … And ourselves (hehe!). Before Amy got here, my mother, Amanda, and I bought four matching sacred heart necklaces to symbolize our bond to each other, and our aspiration toward personal and spiritual growth. None of us are Catholic, but these little necklaces symbolize something beautiful for each of us. If I can help it, I will never take mine off. My mother and her sisters have indoctrinated me as a "chosen sister", and we have come to call ourselves the Sacred Heart Sisters. Cute, huh? :)
We are all women that are easily distracted, so once we decided to visit the thrift store down the street, we were doomed not to. We stopped off at several other stores before we began to loose steam, and decided to go to the beach instead. We stayed at the beach for a few hours before looking at each other and realizing that we were turning a scary shade of red. We spent the next hour or two trying to shower and shake the sand out of our ears, and ended up at a wonderful Thai restaurant.
We ended the night watching Where the Wild Things Are and eating Amanda’s wonderful peach kuchen until we passed out... Mom and I are in love with that movie. Because of it, we have a habit of howling at each other (a form of “I love you”) before leaving the house each day. Owouuuuuuuu, mommy!

Arriving and Day 1: Part 2 of 5 (Caitlin)

Carlsbad is beautiful. I couldn’t tell much driving here last night since it was around 11pm. I could however see the palm trees. I had no idea they could grow to be so tall! I fell asleep on the drive here, waking for a moment to listen to my mother and aunt giggling in the front seat. When we arrived at my Aunt Amanda’s house, I had a huge stomach ache: probably from the awkward combination of French fries and a turbulent plane ride. But if anyone ever wanted to have a stomach ache, it should be around southern women. If you’ve got an ache in your body, they’ve got a remedy. We proceeded to spend the night talking about our lives; the newest (and might I say wonderful) thing in my life being Peter. We finally slid into bed around 2 or 3am, and then slept our guts out. Or at least I did. I didn’t wake the next morning until 1pm. We hurried ourselves to shower and get dressed before the Naked Café restaurant thingy closed at 2:30. We ate, and then went to the beach. It was wonderful. I haven’t touched a REAL sandy beach since I was four or five in Hawaii. We got some really cute pictures, and spent the day lying in the sun. After some Mexican food, we satisfied my mother’s mocha addiction and headed home to watch Crazy Heart. It gave me a stomach ache again, but not the kind that can be cured with a little pill and some ginger ale. The movie was very inspiring though. I can’t wait for Amy – my other aunt – to get here tomorrow! Our girl vacation can REALLY start then!

California - The Flight Over: Part 1 of 5 (Caitlin)

You never know how many baseball fields are strewn across the face of Colorado until you fly west out of Denver after dark. The eye is drawn to them like a mole among street light freckles and winding lines of headlights like wrinkles. My mother is sleeping next to me. I am peering out the window, trying to convince myself to read the book I have clutched in my lap. The Secret Lives of People in Love. I am thinking about Peter. Specifically his mannerisms. The precision of his words. His eyes - definitely his eyes, and his smile. The way it appears slowly and carefully each time I make him laugh. I lean my head against the cabin wall and think about the 6 inches that is separating me from an amount of pressure and cold wind so enormous that it would sweep the life from my body. The stewardess inserts her thin polished fingers into my line of sight, wiggling them.
"Snacks?" she giggles, and hands me a package of 100 calorie Cheese Nips. I open the package. They definitely taste like they're healthy; it's a problem. I move onto the French fries I bought in the airport grill. I am thinking about Katie now, and the refrigerator magnet we found at the dollar store last year. The words, You're STILL eating?? printed upon a cow. I am laughing and the man sitting on the other side of my mother is staring at me with a curious look on his face.

Annoying Movie Theater People (Katie)

I went to the premier of Twilight Eclipse. Maybe it was the blogger inside saying “HEY! You’ll have a lot of annoying things to write about if you go”, or maybe I just really wanted to see it before my little sister. If it was my inner blogger, she was right. I have never been around a more annoying group of parents and kids. So I have now decided to make a list of 10 things you should not do at a theater unless you want people wishing death on you.

1. DO NOT scream when the lights dim, the movie starts, or when a hot guy steps on screen. It’s annoying. I can’t hear the movie and then I get pissed.

2. DO NOT get up and down 15 billion times before the movie starts to pee, get popcorn, walk around, go talk to a friend or anything else. Quite frankly I like my toes intact. Get your seats, save them, get your food and drink, sit down and STAY. Difficult? I think not.

3. DO NOT answer phone calls, text, or even look at the time on your phone. I hope I don’t have to explain why answering call is annoying. Now texting and checking the time doesn’t require you to talk BUT the light makes me want to punch you in the face.

4. DO NOT talk during the movie. I went to the karate kid and this dad and his kids talked through the whole thing. It’s so distracting. You may think your conversation is important but what you don’t know is the other 100 people in the theater want to all pitch in to buy Duct Tape.

5. DO NOT kick the back of people’s seats. This could possibly be worse than texting or talking. I had a little kid behind me once that kicked my seat mercilessly. I mean, from the time the lights dimmed until I started glaring at the parents this kid did not stop kicking. I get that kids don’t think about the people they’re kicking, but come on parents, PAY ATTENTION. If you hear a thump, thump, thump over and over and over again, maybe you should see if it’s your kid. If you’re an adult and you’re guilty of this…there are no words. Either way, when I feel someone kick my chair over 3 times I start wanting to come back there and kick them.

6. DO NOT laugh at everything. Now, there are those people that have a strange sense of humor or are just the only one that got the joke. This tends to happen at least once to a person in a movie. However, there is a time to stop laughing. For example, if you are a guy and you have been dragged to a chick flick, it’s not a good time to laugh when the really hot guy just died. Death, in general, is not a good point in the movie to laugh. It’s also a really bad time to laugh if you are in a sports movie and the really good player just tore his ACL, just saying.

7. DO NOT talk to the characters. We all know that the blonde girl in the mini skirt, high heels, and push up bra walking in the parking garage is going to die. Don’t scream at her to run. Just so we’re clear, IT’S A MOVIE. They cannot hear you no matter how loud you scream. The story has been set – it’s not changing. We all know that walking down the dark ally is a bad idea, but guess what? THEY’RE GOING TO WALK DOWN IT! How else do you expect them to kill off this character? In an unpredictable way? Come on, you know better than that.

8. DO NOT ignore your height. Hi, my name is Katie Kirk, I am 5 foot 2 inches on a good day. If you are taller than me and you sit directly in front of me, I’m going to get angry. Now, sometimes there’s nothing you can do about it but other times LOOK FOR AN EFFING SEAT IN THE BACK. Or, better yet, look behind you before you sit and make sure there is not an extremely short person behind you. As much as I would love to stare at the back of your head, I did buy tickets to see a movie.

9. DO NOT crowd people. If you walk in the theater and there are only 2 other people in the theater don’t sit right by them!!! Apparently more people than me have had this happen to them. When it happens to me I tend to say things like “GOD THE THEATER IS SOOOOO FULL”. It’s like when you walk into a bathroom, which stall do you take? Do you go into the one that is RIGHT next to someone? Or do you try to give that person and yourself some space? I hope you all answered that you would give them space. Same thing in the theater. I don’t care how good my seat is, you don’t sit right next to me.

10. DO NOT get to comfortable. If you just took your shoes off and set your feet up on my chair, several things just ran through my mind. 1) When was the last time you took a shower? 2) Did you mother never teach you to get your gross feet off the backs of people’s seats? 3) How many toes can I rip off your feet before you move them? 4) If I slam my head into your feet will I get a disease and will I jam your toes? 5) If I turn around and look at you will you even understand why I’m mad?

People are so stupid in theaters, but now you can be smart!

-Katie

Days 7-10 (Katie)

At the Science Center. How much it would cost to send both of us to the moon.
The last 4 days of our trip went so fast. We went to the Science Center and watched a really cool video on the huble space telescope. My favorite brother-in-law and my sister (I can’t pick favorites because I have 2 other sisters that would kill me) took Brandon and I around and showed us some really pretty houses down mansion row. It was a really fun day with family. Brandon and I also went Six Flags for the best anniversary date ever. We screamed and laughed together though the whole day. I also played volleyball with Randi, Rachel, and Bec. It’s been a while since I played and it was nice to both get back out on the court and be out there with family. I played one game with them the first week and one the second. The drive home was awesome. Brandon slept in the back seat while my sister and I caught up on the past 2 years of our lives. Because my 2 older sisters live in Missouri, it’s really hard to keep caught up on what’s going on in our lives.

So, the past 3 days have been filled with hanging out with my older sister. We’re about ready to tackle a painting project together. We are going to take a dresser, sand it, and paint it. Then we are going to paint some flowers on it. Hopefully it turns out really cool. If it doesn’t, I’m sure we’ll have a great time screwing it up.
Here are a few of my favorite stories from the trip:

1) I’m going to be an Aunt!!!!!!! This has to be my number 1 story because I’m excited. Randi got ultrasound pictures and it looks slightly like a baby. So that’s good. If Randi and Paul can train their kid as well as they did their dog, it’ll be my favorite niece or nephew – even though it is only a competition of one.

2) Randi was telling a story about one of the apartments she used to live in. The apartment was right next to a wildlife preserve. She had to sign something saying she would not hunt the animals with blow dart guns and then hang them on her porch. Yes, blow dart guns. Apparently there were some people that lived there before her that hunted turkeys on the wildlife preserve with their blow dart guns and then hung them on their porch.

3) Paul and Randi have a dog, Maggie. Best trained housedog ever. Maggie loves to play, be pet and chew. While we were there she got very attached to Brandon. She would wait for him to come down the stairs in the morning, she would go lay by him, she wouldn’t do anything without him. One day we got back to Randi’s house and Brandon forgot to pet Maggie on his way to go take a nap and she was NOT happy. She sprinted up the stairs and told him off in Maggie fashion. While he laid on the bed, she ran up and over his chest and around his head while barking at him. He never forgot to pet her again.

4) We went to Rachel and Marc’s apartment one night for dinner. First of all, she made AWESOME chicken (this is not to skip Paul’s chicken wings because he made me like mustard for the first time ever). We played rock band and in the middle of a hard core metal song that my sister was screaming the lyrics too, Brandon’s mom called. I’m pretty sure it sounded like we were in a torture chamber.

We’re back home for now. Next trip up: Yellowstone.

-Katie and Brandon