Fish Spa

On our first day in Bali we walked over to the "Bali Collection". Just a little group of stores and restaurants. They had an ATM we all needed to get us some "rupia". On our way we walked passed a fish spa. These little fish like to eat dead human skin cells. So you stick your feet in and they go to town. The spa ladies let you put your hands in to see how it feels. We were all freaking out. They feel so funky. You put your hand in and a bunch come swarming.

I was one of the first to put my hand in (don't let Chris try to tell you otherwise). My feet were a whole other issue, since my feet are ridiculously ticklish. Chris refused to put his hand in (he'll try to say otherwise), but I got him to by saying I'd do my feet if he just put his hand in for a second. He finally did it, so I had to live up to my end of the deal. The session lasts 20 minutes. I didn't think I could last one. 

It took me a little bit to get the courage to put my feet in. I was so worried I'd loose control and kill a fish. 

I finally did it and it took me about half the time to get used to the feeling. For the first ten minutes, those fishies lives were in danger. It was so ticklish! The worst is when they went between your toes, or went flying up the middle of your arch.

By the end I was able to sit like a normal person and only freak out when a fish did something crazy. 

They loved Cameo's one leg.

Jenise and Abby went over to the smaller fish. I kinda wanted to try that one, but was afraid of having to brave putting my feet back in, it was really hard! 

The boys loved it too. Graham was all over it. He was the first one to put his hand in out of all of us.

I've never really been interested in a pedicure... but if someone around here had a fish spa, I would totally go. Our feet got pretty beat up from walking around barefoot, so the effect didn't last long. But my feet did look and feel nicer after just 20 minutes of chillin with the little skin eating fish.

Kitchen?

So I'm not so in love with honey oak cabinets... I've been itching to do something but I am too scared. I did a little photoshop... what do you think?

Living Room Update

Last weekend we took on a really fun project. You see the fan in the living room? Well I've been wanting to replace it for a long time. I REALLY wanted to replace it after it was volleyball spiked one night while we were playing the kinnect. Ever since then it has wobbled like crazy unless it is on super low speed. We wanted to get a flush mount fan, to get it closer to the ceiling. And we wanted can lights, so the light fixture didn't stick down. Well take a gander: 

Pretty dang awesome right? It makes the room so much brighter and look a lot taller. I can't even reach the fan now, so I have no worries while I'm working out or dancing on the kinnect.

Step one was, we had to cut the holes. I placed the templates (making sure we cleared all trusses). I started cutting the first one... but Chris finished the rest. It is really hard to cut those dang holes above your head! 

 Next we daisy chained wire around and wired the cans from below. A much better tactic than when we wired the kitchen... those we put the cans up first, then wired them in the attic. Having a ladder for a chair and not breathing insulation most certainly beats wiring in the attic.

Next came pushing the cans in. They went in just fine. We tested them all to make sure they worked. Then according to the direction we were to "push the clips flat to the housing". There are these little clips that you push from the inside of the can and they wrap around and down the outside of the can and push down on the gypsum board ceiling. Pushing them "flat to the housing" was not an easy task. I got lots of pictures of Chris waging full on war with those clips, but I liked this picture... he seems so defeated. However, eventually, we got them all to snap "flat to the housing". By we I should say Chris because I don't think I ever got one to go. 

Next came the fan. We had to switch off the power a lot, so our head lamp came in real handy as you can see here. The fan turned out to be really easy.  Oh and what I didn't mention is that we had to add  a switch for the fan. Since the fan and lights were on the same switch before (since they were the same fixture) and we wanted to be able to run the fan without the lights. Our buddy who's dad is an electrician helped us with the 3-way switch and adding the new switch. Since I demanded to have the new switch in the same faceplate as all the other switches, Chris and Virgil spent who knows how long slowly ripping out the original box so that we could install the new retro fit box. I am very happy we did cause it looks great. And I forgot to mention the can lights are on a dimmer switch, sweet huh?

This is also a new addition to the living room. It's my "Guy-Jah" or elephant (spelled gajah). This was the thing I really wanted from Bali. It is so cool! I spent the whole time in Bali looking for the perfect one (plus the perfectly priced one).

And I really liked these two little people. I like how they look unified and are looking up to heaven. Hopefully Chris and I can try to be more like them, even though we are not black, or aborigines...

And that's what's going down in our living room. Well except for a lot of booty-licious dancing. I love the new dance game for the Kinnect! Chris played it with me tonight.

Surfing!

One of my favorite activities we did was surfing. I made Chris promise me the next opportunity we had to take surfing lessons we would do it. Abby, Cameo, and BJ all came too. All of us got up. Chris of course was the first one up, but he was so far ahead no one saw him. (Abby and I had thought we were the first ones).

 Each instructor was on a boogie board with flippers so they could help us around. Our boards were huge "learner" boards. So they were super easy to stand up on, but man, trying to paddle some distance sure was tough. I'm on the left, Cameo is in the middle, and Abby is about to get her face plastered with salt water. When we were first swimming out there, I thought I wouldn't survive the whole time. The salt water was burning my eyes so bad I could hardly open them up. But I don't remember anything about my eyes after we got out into the water and started surfing. It was so much fun, I could have had a broken bone and not have cared. (okay, maybe a broken bone I would have cared... but you get the idea).

Here's a picture that have both Chris and I. That wave in the back sure does make us look wimpy! Chris' guy took him out to harder waves for the most part, so it was fun when they came back and I got to see him. Mostly I wanted him to see that I got up on pretty much every wave.

Chris is already riding a wave here behind me. This was so much fun!

Chris decided  to show off when the wave he had been riding kinda disappeared.  He came to a stop, looked up at all of us (we were all off a little ways, but watching him). Then he prepped and did a backflip/sideflip thing.

Chris pretty much looked like this the whole time... like a pro. What a stud.

I look a little less sure of myself, but I did get up and stay up until I decided to fall most of the time. I also did a front flip once, when my wave ran out... but no one was around to see.

So here we all are. We had such a blast. The boys didn't join us out on the water... but they wanted to be in the picture.

Oh yeah, my instructor's name was Kidi. I wanted to get a picture of me kissing his cheek. You know, cause he was my surfing instructor, that's how it is right? Anyways Chris didn't think it was funny, and I didn't kiss Kidi's cheek. 

But Kidi did teach me my favorite Balinese word: Ooo-john. That means "it's raining".  (hujan is how it is spelled). It rained quite a bit while we were in Bali and I very much enjoyed showing off my Balinese. One guy even started talking a whole bunch to me after I casually mentioned the rain in my Balinese. My blank look made him laugh.

Dance Central 2!

Tonight we had our neighbors and friends (the Millers and Ards) over for the FHE activity.  We rearranged our living room and put new lights and a new fan in so the room is a little nicer.  We had ice cream, cookies and Dance Central 2.  We got to dance side by side in dance battles and we had a blast.  Unfortunately I didn't get any pics of the festivities.  But here's a couple pics of the new layout that I'm sure Sommer will want to go deeper into later.

So Sommer made the comment as we started playing Dance Central 2 tonight with our friends that "Chris always beats me in this game".  She set me up.  I lost to her every time we played together.  I think she just wanted to make herself look like she was sooooo awesome (which, mind you, she is).  Ice cream and dancing in front of a screen = super fun.  

You should take note of the new can lights and fan.  They were our most latest upgrade to the home.  It makes the room feel a lot larger.  We also installed a dimmer switch to the lights to set the mood...also the Kinect likes dimmed lights so that helps too.

As always I'm having an awesome time with my girl here in Rexburg.  

Maybe I'll even post more often

Stuck in Jakarta

We kinda decided that out of all the airports we went to, Jakarta was the most "hole-ish". There were a few reasons we came to that conclusion. They charged an extra fee because we hadn't printed our boarding passes at home. The terminals are across the airfield from each other and you have to take a shuttle to get to each one, shuttles aren't so bad, but when you have to go completely out of the airport and pretty much into town to get to the next one, it is pretty lame. They have you walk on the tarmac to get to your plane, almost completely unguided. Then the chicken they served us on the plane (even though it turned out to be tasty) was battered in some sort of hairy, slightly greenish, stuff.

But the ironic thing about the Jakarta airport is, they found my drill bit in my makeup bag. After  the Salt Lake, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Hong Kong airports had not. Go figure. So I lost my drill bit in Jakarta. (Chris thinks it is because the people in Jakarta didn't know what it was).

On our way back to Hong Kong from Bali we flew through Jakarta again. But we missed our plane. Our plane took off at 3:00pm without us, and the next flight wasn't until midnight. The best part was that the midnight flight was completely booked. So were all the flights for the next 3 days. We were put on stand-by and made camp at the airport. They wouldn't check any of our stuff so we had about a bigillion bags/bins. 

Chris found us a wheel chair that we ended up including in our camps. The wheelchair came especially in handy when we were moving base camps to a much more comfortable/less smelly spot. Chris's mom was being pushed in the wheel chair, and all the bags/bins were being pushed on trollies. We reached a "no trollies past this point" sign, but since mom looked so disabled we were able to sucker the guard into letting us past.

Here's a small glance at what our camp looked like, what is missing in the picture is the giant pile of bags and bins that are behind me (taking the picture). We eventually got kicked out of this basecamp at 9:00pm when the cafe closed.

The good news is we all got on the midnight flight. We did take about an hour to deliberate on what the hierarchy would be should only so many people get on the midnight flight. It was very important at the time, and honestly probably a good time killer.

1. Mom

2. Holm parent + kid

3. Holm parent + 2 kids

4. Holm parent +2 kids + Abby or Mom

5. The Holms

6. The Holms + Jenise

7. The Holms + The Jr. Kings

8. The Holms + The Jr. Kings + Jenise

9. The Holms + The Jr. Kings + Jenise + Abby

10. Everyone but Dad

11. Everyone

Monkey Temple and Fire Dance

One of our last days in Bali we went to the Monkey Temple where they also had a fire dance show. Before we went into the temple we had to put on little purple skirts, since it is a religious place, and take off all our jewelry and sunglasses since the monkeys steal it. We saw a few people also loose their flipflops to the monkeys.

The temple is right on a cliff. The monkeys don't seem too nervous about it though.

There were lots of baby monkeys around. It was crazy how well they could hold on to their moms.

We didn't know what the fire dance was going to be like. We got there just in time to get seats around a concrete circle. Then these guys came out through this cool gate thing. They were kind of chanting. They did it pretty much the whole time, with some variation in there.

This is Chris's high anticipation face. It really was a cool thing to see, even if Abby and Chris ended up playing "where's waldo" using their cameras and showing each other  zoomed in views of specific people in the crowd, and then making the other find that person.

The fire dance was a story about a beautiful woman who gets kidnapped. They gave us a play-by-play description on a half piece of paper, or else we would of had no idea what was going on.

The Balinese style of dancing is really fun. They use their hands, heads, and eyes a lot.

Chris and I have the chanting down. I do that "uh... uh.... uh... uh..." and he does the "chachachachacha" We should have applied.

Some More Hong Kong

So we spent about 2 days before leaving to Bali in Hong Kong to get acclimated to the time difference. Then after Bali we got to spend a little more time in Hong Kong. The weather was cool, but not cold enough for coats or even jackets most of the time.

Here is a shot of Pacific View where Chris's parents live. They live on the 19th floor.

We spent a lot of time at Markets. The boys (including Chris and BJ) handled it pretty well. Sometimes we let them off easy and let them go home early or stay home all together. But most of the time we made them come, we enjoy their company even if they are slightly tortured. 

The "kids" or G2 (generation two) went on an adventure to find the "water" one night after seeing a movie. We walked pretty far, then Jenise twisted her ankle on a sidewalk gutter thing, then we walked further. Then we got cabs and discovered walking to the Star Ferry would have probably taken us 2 days. But we eventually made it. This is from the Kowloon side of Hong Kong, looking over the ocean to the main island of Hong Kong. Cool huh?

Chris and I took a morning to look around his high school. It was a pretty cool school, not gonna lie. All the corridors are exterior, and its 11 stories tall (the middle school is in there somewhere, and its on a ginormous slope, so from this side it only looks like it is 4 stories tall).

On Sunday we went to church. Where Sacrament was on the 1st (or really 2nd since they have the "ground" floor), primary is on the 2nd floor, and Priesthood is on the 6th floor. The very tall church building even has a steeple on top, sweet right?