Week 25: Cheesecake and New Friends (September 19-25)

Early in the week there was a dinner party to celebrate some dear friends who are moving far, far away to California. I jumped at the chance to make a yummy dessert that would be gluten free and a big hit with all. After looking at bunches of recipes, I settled on a cheesecake with a macadamia nut crust. It was scrumptious and many went back for seconds. I never realized how easy it was to make a cheesecake and can see myself making them for many other dinners and celebrations in the future. I have a couple tweaks to make, but over all would change very little.

This week I also flew to Roi for a W&D Girl's Night with KC, LC, and MJ. We flew up Saturday after work and returned late Sunday afternoon. It is funny how I build expectations and thoughts of how things will go in my head and then it is all thrown out the window and my expectations are exceeded. Us 4 girls, we like to think that we are an entertaining and fun bunch and that was confirmed this weekend. We started playing some card games and before we knew it had 4 new freinds from Roi that joined us for the fun and ended up in mass quantities of booze flowing. I know that you are thinking, wait didn't you and KC decided to go dry for 30 days, well we modified it to only cover Kwaj. We figured that since it was our challenge we could change the terms:) Well the night ended with me hanging out with one of our new friends for 12 hours. It has been a long time since I talked that long to someone that I just met, and it felt good to let the guard down, well not all the way down, but just a little.

Week 1: Crazy Path Running and Spinnaker Flying (April 11-17)

Well week one is only 2 days in and I have already had a highlight of my year. Sunday began with my inaugural Crazy Path Run. Invented by some friends here on Kwaj, it entails running around creating challenges and motions as a group runs in a follow the leader type game. It was one of the toughest runs I have had in a while and pushed me in good ways. We ran circles around trees, under signs, over tables, and got some pretty strange looks; I loved every minute of it!! We only had three of us, but I would love to see us try with a group of 5 or more. It made the run go quickly and I racked up 4 miles before I knew it.

The afternoon began with a sailboat race, but we sadly had to dropout after the genoa started to rip. The sailboat race should have been my new experience, but I guess it will have to wait for another month. We instead did a leisure sail and relaxed as the wind slowly took us along. As we headed back to Kwaj, the captain Trace mentioned Spinnaker Flying. I had seen pictures on Facebook of people flying through the air attached to the bottom of a free floating spinnaker sail from when he did it last week and knew it was something I wanted to try. I was all over the idea and nervous with excitement. It is exhilarating to be lifted up by the sail and float over the water. I had a BLAST!!! Sunday was so much fun that the spinnaker was pulled out again on Monday and I was able to take 2 more trips.