A Weekend in Memphis

We had a fun weekend here at the Hibbs home. Tay spent Thurs-Sat morning in Memphis, Tennessee to interview for grad school. Shout out to my old roomie (long live Chatham #26!) Lauren for hanging out with my while Tay was gone. It was fun to go to dinner and catch up!

Of course I made sure Tay documented his trip when he could so that I could get a feel for the city:

On the trolly in the city: 

Southern College of Optometry 

After I picked Tay up from the airport we got some Waffle Love. You know when you go somewhere and you just get really good service and/or your food is just perfect? Well the owner of Waffle Love was there so he was making sure all of the employees were making the waffles/putting on toppings correctly so ours were SO perfect. Yummy! Shout out to Waffle Love for winning our hearts and bellies.

I started my new job today! (so long, Netflix, sewing, and my excess free time!). I'm excited to get back in the swing of things. However, I was so nervous in my sleep (anxiety much?) about not waking up on time this morning that I woke up THREE times to ask Tay what time it was. If you know me you know that I am a DEEP sleeper. I'm starting to feel bad for people who say "I just couldn't sleep last night".  I may or may not have woken up at 10am when I was supposed to be at work at 7:30am at the MTC once. WORST DAY EVER. And that's why I have anxiety about waking up.

Today Taylor got invited to interview at Ohio State! I'm super excited for him 1. because Ohio State has one of the best optometry schools in the nation and 2. because Taylor has now been invited to interview (aka met all of the academic requirements) at of all of the schools he applied to! I'm so proud of him/relieved it's not me going to grad school because watching him prepare to graduate/go to more school stresses me out a little. It'll be an adventurous next couple of months!


Oh also, when we were driving back from the airport, part of the front of our car (I don't know the name??) just up and flew off. We're trying to avoid buying a new (or second) car for as long as possible, so this just made us laugh. We're already missing hubcaps (one on each side) so this just added to the "poor college student" look. Love it.

Well, that's all folks! I've been told I need to update my blog more so I'll get on that. Right up there with working on my {horrible} cooking skills. :)

Oh, the places you'll go

Life has been a little nuts around here lately. I start work next week so I've had quite a break (which I've kind of loved) while Tay works his bum off at school, work, and now getting ready for our next adventure...optometry school! I've mentioned it in several posts, but now things are gettin' REAL up here. So far Taylor has been invited to interviews (remember how you can't get accepted without going to an interview first?) at 3 out of the 5 schools he applied to. I'm pretty dang proud of him! What that means is that he meets their academic requirements and now they just want to get to know him and see if he's a good fit for their school. Unfortunately we have to take the bill on all of his interviews, so let's just say we've been cutting down on our extracurricular activities and going out. But it will all be worth it! I'm excited but nervous to find out where we'll be moving! We've been looking up the housing that they suggest at each school and looking into the areas we might be living in. We thought we had a top choice of school but after looking into the ones he's been invited to, we just don't know! If any of you know anything about or have lived in these places, fill me in! So the only places he hasn't heard back from yet are Pacific University in Oregon and Ohio State (in Ohio :)), but I put them on the map just for fun to look at where we might go!

In other news I've just been working on my shops and sewing my little heart out! Here's some fun things I've been up to:

I made this skirt for my little sister and I kind of love it because it has a bow AND pockets. So I may or may not have made myself one....ok fine two.

I have been having so much fun designing for my INKH Designs shop. Here are some fun new things I've created that I'm planning to print for myself as well!

Quizno's at Midnight (and the small angry man).

Our night in Vegas...

We got back from Hawaii three days ago after a very long trip. If you read this post I mentioned we had some flight trouble getting back to Utah. We ideally wanted to fly standby from Honolulu to LAX, but that flight was totally full. We had already looked into possibly flying into Vegas (that flight looked pretty open) and then renting a car from there and driving home. The rental car rates according to online looked good so we took the risk and boarded the Vegas flight. We got into Vegas at midnight. Our bodies thought it was only 8pm which gave us a little extra energy, but it also just kind of made our bodies confused when we were traveling that late at night. I told Taylor I didn't feel good about driving through the night so we decided to look for a hotel....on a weekend....during the Labor day holiday. Needless to say every good, safe, affordable place was booked. All I knew is that I was tired, really hungry and I wanted to get home. So we solved the first problem we could: we found food. We got some sandwiches from a Quizno's kiosk at the airport, which was luckily open until 1AM(thank goodness for the late Vegas lifestyle). I held those sandwiches forever while we tried to get to the rental car place. They smelled so good and I was so hungry. Anyway, Tay went to get quotes on car rentals...they were all $300-400+ based on the cars they had left and including an extra fee because we're not 25 yet (seriously you can be old enough to be married and have children but not old enough to rent a car??) and we'd only be driving one way. I started to panic inside feeling stranded which was pretty silly because I knew everything would be OK but still. We didn't know what to do and didn't really have a solution, so we FINALLY we sat down and ate our Quizno's.

I didn't even try to get a good photo I just wanted to document the crazy adventure. 

 It was almost 1AM and it was the best sandwich I've had in a long time! Tay finally found a reasonable deal on a car, which was a Jeep Patriot, which I now would like to purchase if we had the money. It was such a smooth ride, especially compared to our poor Lancer that has had a whole lot of problems lately. We decided to just try to sleep a little while in the rental car garage. I figured it'd be an OK rest considering it was around 2:30AM by the time we went to sleep and the area we were parked in was pretty empty.

There was another small SUV rental option parked near us but it wasn't really an option because it had written on it "no key" which meant what it said, there was no key so it couldn't be rented. At about 3:30AM I woke up to some foreigners sounding angry and confused and muttering things I didn't understand because I was half-asleep and they had accents. I looked over and realized they had wanted to rent the car with no key but were upset when they got to it and saw they couldn't. I also saw them looking over at us and saying things implying that they were wondering why we were just in the car and why we got to get that car. They seemed angry and I was tired so I just reclined my seat more and basically hid while I tried to sleep. Scary people.

Then came 4AM. I woke up to some small man (small meaning he was really quite short but kind of big...sorry if that sounds rude, just reporting what I saw!) yelling at a lady who worked for the rental company. I was so confused because it seemed to come out of nowhere (or maybe I had slept through the first part of the fight) but he just kept saying "YOU DON'T HAVE THE RIGHT TO TALK TO ME LIKE THAT" then the lady would talk calmly then he'd say "OK WHAT'S YOUR NAME...OK, YEAH I'M GOING TO TALK TO SECURITY. I'M GOING TO TALK TO YOUR SUPERVISOR!" Then she'd continue to talk calmly and he just kept yelling. Then he started walking to the car he was renting and started saying "YOU MAKE ME NERVOUS YOU KNOW. YEAH, YOU MAKE ME REALLY NERVOUS!" He kept saying that even as he drove off. I was so so confused. Nervous about what? Maybe he was high?

We slept a little longer and couldn't really sleep so we just got up and drove. We made good time and it was a good drive (especially in that Jeep!). It was a fun little adventure. I'm very glad to be home though because it was a long trip home. My body still doesn't get tired at normal times so I've been forcing myself to go to sleep (not usually an issue for me). I love having these little adventures with my cute husband. It's stuff we'll laugh about down the road for sure.

Drove through the sunrise

Tay was cute and thought we should get a picture in front of the Utah sign to document our little adventure. We both looked so worked! 

And that was our adventure of Quizno's at midnight and the small angry man. And that's all.

Hibbs Go to Hawaii: Days 7-13

DAY 7: Was a Sunday, so we went to church! I love being able to attend church when I travel because I love seeing how the church is the same wherever you go! Same schedules, structure, leadership positions, etc. It's a part of my testimony of the church because God isn't partial to certain people or places, and He wants to bless all of his children. It is also interesting to see the different culture when going to church in other places. You've all probably heard when someone from the islands might get up to speak and says "Aloha" and the congregation replies with "Aloha". Well on this Sunday this cute military couple spoke. The wife was probably the most Caucasian person there, super blue eyes and very blonde hair. You could tell she was nervous to speak. She started out her talk by saying "good morning brothers and sisters" and then she tried to keep speaking (not leaving any room for a reply from the congregation), but still, the congregation all said "good morning" and it totally caught her off guard. I think by not saying "aloha" she thought she was off the hook from that cultural tradition, but she was wrong! She was a sweet girl and gave a great talk but it definitely made me laugh.

DAY 8: One of my favorite days of our trip...And it may or may not have included an awesome shopping trip! Tay and I sort of started a tradition (unintentionally) of going shopping to Ala Moana shopping center in Honolulu with my mother-in-law. My mother-in-law is quite the shopper, just like I am so it's a lot of fun! Tay is always a good sport (and he actually likes shopping) so it's always a good time. We ate at one of my favorite places, Bubba Gump Shrimp, based off of the movie Forrest Gump. The day was filled with good shopping and good food. Can't beat that!



Macy's at Ala Moana is my favorite! They had an AMAZING shoe sale. Let's just say I went home with all but the closed-toes shoes here (just tried these on for work..didn't love 'em!). But sad day, last night I was unpacking...and the saleslady accidentally gave me two right feet for the coral shoes! I didn't notice because the sale just featured the right foot of each shoe and when you decided to purchase they'd go grab the other shoe and box it for you. So sad. I'm going up to Fashion Place mall tonight to try to get it all figured out.

Day 9: Tay and I met up with his dad and his wife for lunch at an ALL FISH restaurant. OK, I lie, there were two things on the menu that weren't fish. If you know me you know that I really don't care for fish, or seafood at all, which has been a slight struggle seeing that my husband is from an island where seafood such as raw fish (yes, raw fish) is a common thing they eat. Anyway, I was very proud of myself because I ordered a calamari salad. Not super fishy, but it wasn't a cheeseburger, which sounded really tempting instead. I think the fact that it is breaded helps because I can't see exactly what I'm eating.

Oh, I forgot. We stopped by a local bakery to get some cocoa puffs (on the right). They're basically chocolate-filled pastries with chantilly frosting on top. So, so yummy. 

We spent the rest of the day in Kailua at the beach, and I still couldn't get over how blue the ocean was and how white the sand was. So beautiful! Of course we ended the night as usual over at Tay's grandma's house spending time with family.

In love. 

Sorry for the mini photo shoot. but I love photos. 

Day 10: I loved this day! Tay and I slept in a little then took a swim at the pool in his mom's neighborhood. We had the pool to ourselves and got some good sun. After we showered real quick and went to see the movie The Butler (so good, by the way!). The movie theater is also literally down the street from my mother-in-law's so it was fun doing fun things very locally. We decided to splurge and got a big bag of popcorn and I got and Icee, one of my newest obsessions when we go to movies (not a good habit, but all growing up and until now I never got Icees during movies so it's a fun new thing). In Utah the blue Icee is flavored blueberry or blue raspberry or something I'm pretty sure but at that theater it was blue Vanilla. So yummy! That night we had dinner at Tay's sister's house. They just built it and it's beautiful!

Tay told me to make an excited face...so here it is Tay! 

Day 11: We went to the beach in Kailua. Again. Because I loved how beautiful it was so Tay let us go to the exact same spot we were at just two days before. Funny because the same girl who was laying out near us was there, in the exact same spot, again. She must love that place, too!

My boy just getting real brown. 

typical beach feet shot. 

Visited Island Snow for some amazing shave ice! Last time we visited Island Snow, President Obama came in like exactly two hours after we did. 

After shave ice Tay wanted some of his favorite food: Poke (raw fish) and Poi. I have not been brave enough to try either of these...

Day 12: After spending the whole time trying to figure out our flights back home (no thanks to Delta and their unwillingness to let us pay to switch our flights), we went for another swim in the pool. We were kind of stressed all day because of our travel plans. Basically our brother-in-law works for Hawaiian airlines so we get to fly on buddy passes, which is way cheaper, but it isn't confirmed, and Hawaiian doesn't fly out of Utah so we have to get flights to somewhere on the west coast then fly standby from there. We had purchased flights out of LAX to SLC for Sunday, but the flights from Hawaii to LAX were looking really full so there wasn't a way for us to get to our confirmed flight. So basically all weekend we were just trying to be chill and worry about going home when the time came...more on that later. sorry for the rant. but Delta and I aren't friends right now. I stayed up super late packing...and watching Good Luck Charlie. I will totally admit that I love the Disney channel. It's easy entertainment to watch while I do laundry, clean, sew, etc. because I don't REALLY care about the story line, but I can follow along enough to be entertained.

Day 13: This is the day we had to go home :(. It was so hard to say goodbye to everyone not knowing when we'd see them again. It's always easier having something to look forward to and count down until (yes, I do think it's OK to end sentences with prepositions so don't worry, I'm aware I just did it twice).

Ate our last home cooked breakfast made by Tay's mom.

All packed up (obviously more was in the back haha). Loving my new Vera Bradley bag I got on our little shopping trip. 

Every time we left the house we ALWAYS got stuck at this light. When we left the house for the last time we almost made the light, but then caught it. Taylor was cute and said it wouldn't be right if we didn't have to wait at the light one last time.  

Shakas with the nieces and nephew (missing two of our nephews though! :( )  

Our trip to Hawaii was probably my favorite of all of them so far. It's such a beautiful place with beautiful culture and I especially love listening to the dialect as I study language, so I catch myself noticing things I've learned in my phonetics, dialects, and other classes.