Labor Day Weekend with Mom and Aunt Lynne!

Sorry this took me all week to get posted but it's been a busy week with homework and practicing! Anyway, this last weekend my Mom and her younger sister, my Aunt Lynne, came to LA to visit me! They flew in late Friday night; Mom from Portland and Lynne from Seattle. We couldn't believe how crazy the airport was at that time of night! It was 10:30PM and traffic was insane! That just goes to show how unpredictable traffic can be in this city...ugh.

We had an awesome time this weekend. We literally shopped until we dropped...like three days in a row! On Saturday we went out to Santa Monica to the 3rd Street Promenade, one of my favorite places to shop because it's outside and close to the ocean and that nice ocean breeze! We picked up so many "great deals," as Mom would say, at the Z Gallerie for my apartment. There's so much wall space in here, we needed to fill up some to make it look more like a home instead of a warehouse room! So THANK YOU to Mom and Lynne for buying me some really nice things and helping me decorate some more!! I don't have any updated pictures of the stuff but I'll post some soon when I remember to take them during the day.

Where was I?? Oh yeah, SHOPPING. On Sunday we went to USC's campus and I showed them where I go to class and such. Then we did some really fun shopping on Robertson Boulevard, where all the celebs shop. We didn't spot anyone although who knows if we would have recognized them anyway in sunglasses and hats or whatever they wear when shopping. We then proceeded to drive over to Rodeo Drive to have a look around. I was surprised to see that there were actually a few shops there that were not too terribly expensive to shop in! After watching Pretty Woman you'd think that not just anyone can shop there but it's actually quite fun and you might just come across something you like that's affordable! (I made up quite a wish list there so I know exactly what I'm going to buy this Christmas heehee.)

Anyway, on Monday morning we went back out to Santa Monica because we really didn't spend much time at the water. We shopped on the Pier, did some "tourist-y" things and ate a really good lunch at The Lobster, which is a really great restaurant overlooking the ocean. Then it was time to take them back to the airport...WAAAHHHH!! I wish they could have stayed for like another week but I had to go back to school and we had pretty much worn ourselves out shopping.

I took a few pictures one evening when we were up on the roof of my building. The view of downtown LA is gorgeous up there, especially close to sunset! And at night it's spectacular! I'm having a little trouble figuring out my camera lately for some reason but here are the best pictures of what I shot, I'm sure Lynne's camera captured some really great ones too!
This is on the stairs on the way up to the roof, I thought it might be a good place to set the camera for the timer... there is a lot of the side of the building in there but hey, we look cute! lol
Here is Mom and Lynne on the roof overlooking downtown. You ladies are lookin' good! I wish my camera had done a better job, I'll have to work on it.

It was so great having you two here, I miss you! Come back soon and visit! That pretty much goes for anyone who wants to come visit, I get lonely being pent up in the practice room all the time...

Muah! Lauren~

Finally...pictures of my loft!

I finally got all my stuff unpacked and put away! Thanks to Adam's handywork, all of the Ikea furniture was put together and put to use.

Here is the kitchen. The table is the Ikea Laver table and chairs:
This is the entry way, you could kind of see it in the previous picture next to the kitchen. The bathroom is also down that hallway on the left, behind the kitchen. The coat and shoe racks are Ikea also, Portis.

These next two are taken from the kitchen, looking toward the window and my "bedroom." The bookcase that acts like a sort of room divider is the Expedit bookcase from Ikea.
Because this loft is one big open space, there are no closets! So you can see that I bought some clothes racks from Ikea as well. If you haven't already, check out the next post down, it was new from yesterday. Bye for now, Lauren~

Scuba Certification, Trip to Ikea, Adam's visit

Okay folks, this may be a very long post but I hope you enjoy it! I'll start out with a few pictures from the day of my scuba certification. As I mentioned before, we did our open water dives out at Catalina island. This day was at a site called Eel Cove, really beautiful clear water.

Here's a picture of Catalina as we're arriving to it on the dive boat, Island Time:
And here is a picture of Eel Cove. There were other boats just anchored out there for whatever reason, I didn't see anyone else diving besides our classes.

And finally, this is my dive buddy, Charity, and I, between dives. She's a little surfer chic who got certified to dive for her honeymoon in Barbados and Jamaica!!
Okay...moving on to the next thing...(a lot has been going on in the last week!!)...Adam came to visit from Oklahoma! Since we're both recently into diving, we're obsessed with the water. One of the first things we did when he came was go down to Crystal Cove in Orange County. It's a beautiful State Park just north of Laguna Beach. He heard it was great for snorkeling so that's exactly what we did! I saw more in Crystal Cove than I ever saw out at Catalina including some more fish, a STINGRAY, and a LEOPARD SHARK!! So awesome and fun to chase around. When we're in the water with them, just watching, they treat us like we're one of them and just hang out! Here's a quick pic of part of the beach at Crystal Cove: the rocks are especially fun to snorkel around because all the sea creatures hide by them!

So I've been trying to figure out what furniture I needed for my loft and after talking extensively to Mom and Carolyn, we finally got it all sorted out. Adam and I took pretty much a whole day trip up to the Ikea in Burbank. We picked up a lot of really neat stuff and somehow managed to fit it into the rental car I have while my Subaru is being fixed. You won't believe how many things we stuffed into the PT Cruiser so here's a couple pictures to give you an idea of what a good job we did at fitting it all in!That's Adam giving the thumbs up that we're ready to get on the road! And here's me, scrunched in the front seat.
Anyway, that's that for the trip to Ikea. My apartment looks better already with some furniture in it, now I just need to unpack some more boxes...yay!

So, back to snorkeling (hehe), Adam and I took the Catalina Express ferry out to Avalon, a little city on the island, so we could have a day of snorkeling around the island. We took the ferry at 6:15 AM to make sure we got out there in time to have a nice full day. The ride takes about an hour from Long Beach to Catalina so we got to catch up on some Olympic news. I don't have a tv so we haven't been watching the Olympics at all! Once we got to the Avalon we walked all around to see where the best place to rent a kayak from would be. We walked over to Desconso Beach and rented a two-person kayak for the day. We were kayaking from 9AM to 5PM! Okay so we weren't in the kayak the whole time, we stopped at probably five different places to snorkel. We had the best luck at great visibility in the morning but stilled enjoyed the afternoon. It was a long day, we took the 7:30PM ferry back to Long Beach and didn't get back to Los Angeles til after 9PM. We were pooped!

This is Adam and I in the morning in Avalon. Somehow they managed to get a casino out there on the island and that is the round building in the background. Desconso Beach is right around the corner from the casino.

This next one shows how much stuff we were lugging around the island on our quest to find a kayak. We looked like backpackers with all our snorkeling gear, food, dry clothes, etc.
This is the boardwalk leading around the casino to Desconso Beach:
While we were kayaking we came across an abandoned piece of diving equipment, a BCD. (stands for Boyancy Control Device, a vest you wear while scuba diving). It was half inflated and floating on top of the water. When we took it to shore, we found there were some creatures already living in it, one of which was a starfish! Here's Adam holding the starfish before we threw it back in the water, it was starting to cling to his hand. ewww
And lastly from Catalina, this is a picture I took of the island from the front of the kayak....beautiful!!
Okay the last thing I want to mention is mainly for Carolyn but maybe you will think it's cool too! As Adam and I were walking around Hollywood waiting for Tropic Thunder to start (hilarious movie by the way) we were looking at all the stars on the sidewalk. I came across this one for Vladmir Horowitz, a famous pianist! Who knew he would have his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame?!Oh yeah, we also saw the movie Pineapple Express last week. When we went to see Tropic Thunder, Rosie Perez (she was the lady cop in Pineapple Express) was standing in front of us in line at the concessions and watched Tropic Thunder in our theater. It was funny because we had just seen her in Pineapple Express. Okay, that's it, no more rambling from me, I promise. Hope you enjoyed the pictures!

Lauren~

SCUBA!

Since I took the summer off and I'm not working, I decided to take up a new activity. I chose to get certified as Open Water Scuba Diver! My Dad and Clay are both certified as Advanced Divers and my Aunt and Uncle who live down here in Southern California are certified as well. My boyfriend Adam also got certified down in Oklahoma! I thought it might be fun to meet up with them to dive or when I go up to Oregon maybe do a few dives with the fam.

The class took two weekends of diving. Last weekend I did one day in the pool and then one day in the ocean. I was lucky enough to be able to do the ocean dives out at Catalina island! The water is so clear and beautiful during the day and we were able to swim through a kelp forest and see some really beautiful fish. Since it was the first open water dive last weekend I was more occupied with getting used to all my diving equipment than enjoying the underwater scenery. On my next ocean dive, which is the certification dive tomorrow back at Catalina, I'll be able to enjoy the scenery more and have fun. After tomorrow I'll be an official Open Water Diver! This means that I am certified to dive up to 60 feet deep during the day; nothing special but great for a day of fun! Adam will come out to visit this next week and we'll probably go out to Catalina to snorkel around, not scuba but still fun! The scuba trips are pretty expensive because we would have to rent gear and pay for the scuba boat so maybe we'll save up some money and do that some other time...

Anyway, here's an idea of what my bathroom looks like after a day of diving after I've rinsed out all my diving gear and hung it out to dry; it's a lot of gear!!


This next picture is of me on the dive boat right before my first open water dive at Catalina. I know I probably couldn't have taken a nerd-ier picture but I was pretty nervous and excited! This is me in my wet suit, hood, and weight belt. That's only half of the stuff you have to wear as a diver and it's already too heavy...

I always mistake the thumbs up for the OK signal. On the surface was fine but if I did the thumbs up under water it would mean I needed to ascend to the surface, not that everything was okey dokey.

Anyway, when I get more diving pics I'll post them as well as snorkeling pics from Adam's visit. Until next time...

Lauren~

Update

For anyone who is wondering why I haven't posted in a few weeks, I had to move again out of the neighborhood that I was once so excited to live in! It was a little scary at night and the LAPD suggested that Sara and I move away from it. So I live downtown now, really close to USC, and Sara has moved up to Westlake Village for the time being. I'll tell you all more about where I live and post some pictures of my loft downtown as soon as my internet gets hooked up on Monday the 4th.

~Lauren

4th of July, Laguna

I had an amazing 4th of July in Laguna! Sara's friend Josh, who grew up in Southern California and practically knows everyone, took us to his friend Marty's beach house in Laguna. The house was absolutely gorgeous and the people we met were so great. We spent the day at Laguna Beach and then went back to the house to barbecue, listen to some great music, and hang out. We not only had a beautiful ocean view and sunset but we saw the fireworks from Newport so that was fun. :)







I definitely could get used to this every evening... (view from the upstairs deck, ahhhh)

So anyways, enough dreaming.... I hope everyone had a great fourth of July! Happy birthday America! :)

Lauren~

And the winner is....

Last Friday I had the opportunity to go out to Fontana, CA and see one of my very best friends from Oklahoma, Ross Lee Morgan (his middle name isn't really Lee, Amber and I gave him that name when we first met him lol). He just graduated from OU with a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering. For his capstone project, he and a team of engineers built a car to compete in various competitions against other university teams around the country. In this particular event in California they came in third overall!! It was fun to watch a day of competition!

I had no idea that the day I went out to Fontana that Ross would actually be one of the drivers on one of the courses! It came as no surprise that he drove very well and was the first driver of the day to complete the course in under 50 seconds! Go Ross! Here's a few pics:

Ross getting all suited up for the big race in his sexy sexy suit! :)


Ross being rolled in after his good run:


And finally, here's Ross at the design evaluation:


So anyway, this post is for you Ross... you're one of the smartest and best friends I know and I'll miss you!!

Lauren~