Remi the Rat and Camping on Kuli'ou'ou

 Ayasia and I have met in the Foodland parking lot regularly for the past 6 months at 6 am for our morning run! We hardly ever miss a day. I found myself a lifelong running buddy and friend. We call our runs chatty Cathy runs because we run slow and chat away. We love being chatty Cathy and I have loved talking to Aysia during my morning runs. This particular morning we saw what we thought was a dead rat on the ground of the parking lot. Recently we have loved the "Oh Sh*t a rat" video on youtube. So when we thought we saw a dead rat we immediately started dancing like the man from this YouTube video. It wasn't until we got closer that we realized it was a cat.. a tiny newborn cat that was alive. We skipped our run that morning and brought the cat home. We weren't sure what to do with it but we knew that leaving it in the parking was cruel. Aysia stepped up to the plate to be the mother. She started feeding the cat milk every 2-3 hours from a syringe and wiped its bottom when it had a blowout. She was a trooper. We took the cat rock climbing a few days later where we came up with the name Remi. Like the rat for Ratatoui And oh boy we love Remi. He has quickly become part of the group and has already joined us on a rock climbing adventure. 

September ended with the most insane campouts again.. Earlier this year Sam, Aysia, Kamaua and I all hiked and slept on Kuli'ou'ou Ridge. We had the most intense winds and rainstorm that night and it ended up being one of the craziest nights of our lives. Well, Aysia and I decided we wanted to try to camp here one more time in the hope of redeeming that awful night. The weather forecast for the night looked perfect with a zero chance of rain. We thought this was going to be our night to experience the magic of the mountain.  Ava, Aysia, Gavin, and Gavin's little sister Mya. We had the best weather hiking up. There was so much sun and no wind. I was getting excited to sleep under the stars. At the end of the trail, we put up our tent and climbed inside. We had a perfect sunset and starry night. We didn't even put the rain fly up. We were playing butt clown and eating goldfish and Cheetos having the best night as college students. 

The stars and sky looked amazing. It wasn't till after midnight when we were all about to fall asleep when we started to feel little raindrops through the tent. We all pretended like we were sleeping because none of us wanted to get up and put the rain-fly on. We thought if we didn't acknowledge the problem the storm would go away. We were hoping the rain was going to be one of those quick island drizzles. Sadly this wasn't a quick storm. Within seconds huge wind gusts came and beat against the tent making it shake. I thought the poles were going to snap. Then huge raindrops started pouring into the tent. Gavin gets up and tries to put the rain fly on but he quickly finds there is a huge hole in the fly.... He managed to turn it a certain way to keep most of the rain out of the tent. After hearing him grunt and huff putting up the rain fly he comes back into the tent soaking wet. He was going to lay down next to me but I didn't want to be all wet so I told him to take his shirt off. We all huddled together on my blow-up pad that was soon acting as a raft. We sat like that all night long till it was safe to come out. This is when I decided that camping on Kuli'ou'ou Ridge is not ever going to be a glamorous experience. We all laughed about how crazy our night was the next day. We enjoyed a Costco hot dog before passing out on a beach on the North Shore.

September's Hikes!

 I did so many hikes in September  I basically lived outside. And now that Ava is on the island I want to show her all the beautiful places and explore them with her! We went to Dead Man's catwalk one afternoon with Stacy, Sam, Aysia, and Kadee. And it was deathly hot. I don't think I have ever sweated as much as  I did on this hike. It was dry, hot, and muggy. Also, this hike is illegal and we didn't want to get caught by any neighbors or anything so we hiked around the mountain to get to the top. We were hiking through prickly thorns and dried-up bushes. We drank all our water in the first 30 minutes. There are several lookout points from this hike so were able to see Diamond Head at one point and the East side! I mean look at the color of that water?  On the way down we saw a chameleon in a tree. Look how cute?! We all took turns holding and playing with him. What a cutie! 

I'm guessing this hike is called Dead Man's Cat Walk because you could easily walk off the cliff and die. We didn't however. Since it was so hot Aysia and I rode in the back of Sams's truck on the way home. 

We hiked to Sacred Falls for Ava's 19th Birthday! We went after work and got back just as the sun was setting. We had a huge crowd come to celebrate Ava. Ava is everything good in the world. I have pushed her out of her comfort zone and she is doing it all with a great attitude! As we were hiking on the trail we passed a local family who just killed a pig. They were dragging it back to eat I guess. It was all bloody and covered in bugs. One of the kids was sitting on it while the family was pulling it. Ava hates dead things. I think I saw her gagging in the corner. Besides the rotten pig, I would say our hike to Sacred Falls was pretty grand. One other story about Ava. One day we were driving to Laie and we saw a tortoise on the side of the road. He was crawling right towards traffic and I knew he would get hit if he walked just a little bit further. So I pulled over and picked him up. I wasn't sure what to do with him so Ava Facetimed Sam. He told us to put him in the back of the car and drive him home till we found the owner. We were laughing so hard. We put it in the yard and told Laurie and Hank about it. Next thing we know Hank is in the hard spraying him off with the hose. We about lost it in laughter. The kids at the preschool sure loved watching him while they were playing at recess. I was pretty sad when the owner came to grab him. 

We went on another campout one weekend in September! We decided on the Sunset Pillbox! That way we could wake up to a beautiful sunrise. We left when it was pitch black so were all scrambling up the hill in the dark. Stacy brought her outdoor movie projector. We watched a scary movie that night under the stars. We woke up the next morning to thousands of ants circling us. We left out our strawberry belts out...  

We headed up to Sunset Pill Box later that week to actually watch the sunset! We had Sarah and Anna join us who we met a few days earlier at a waffle party. This was one of their first hikes on Oahu! I always love watching people experience the beauty of Oahu for the first time. They are hilarious twins who get along with Ava and me really well. I swear we had the same childhood! Gavin also tagged along. We met him on Sunday at a spaghetti Come Follow Me Night he hosted. He was a trooper to sit in the car with a bunch of girls! We had to get a picture of our Chacos because that's why we originally went hiking in the first place. I saw them on his porch and said let's hike in our Chacos! 

Kadee and I also went and conquered another peak on the North Shore one evening. We were racing up to see the sunset!