L.A.

I'm not quite sure if this is my 7th or 8th time to visit Jane and Toby in L.A. but it's always a pleasure. FOUR of those times have been with Alayna DewLittle pictured below. I love her. We have so much fun together outside!







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Here's my cutie pie Dunkaroo! He's not even 2 years old yet so when he says Carisse it kind of sounds like "Star Fish". So now he calls me Auntie Star Fish and I love it.








Laying out in Hermosa Beach. No June gloom this time!!!

Jane is the best cook I know. I'm not exaggerating here. She makes meals like this every night after a long day at work and a toddler. She inspires me. She makes me want to feed myself and others better. When I get back I'm going to see if I can mimic her...now all I need is my Pioneer Woman kitchen!

I went and spent one night with Kellie in Venice Beach. We grew up together. She moved to Texas when we were in 3rd grade. She was the coolest most popular girl in our grade...and that lasted all the way through high school graduation. We have always been so different. I was always super conservative and nerdy and she went out of her way to be nice to me and invite me to things. I've always loved her for being so sweet to me, and it was fun to have another slumber party at her Nana's :)

Our first time laying out at Redondo beach....pretty and all...but we walked to Hermosa Beach everytime after this. NOTHING beats Hermosa Beach in the south bay in my opinion. NOTHING.

This is chicken John. He rides his bike around and says, "Hey Chickeeeeen" to all the ladies and asks them to take him swimming. A few years ago he asked me to take him swimming and I said okay! So he stripped down and held my hand and we went in the ocean. We only went about waist deep...thank goodness because it was arctic waters and I was really nervous the current would knock him over. But it didn't and we made it and dried out on the sand together. I don't know where he sleeps at night or what he eats for lunch, but I hope to find those things out the next time I come to Hermosa, and thank him for making a great memory with me.

So my new phone has a panorama option!!!

Sometimes Duncan swordfights with rhubarb, because he's both Toby AND Jane's kid.







Ladies night out!

This is how I woke up Monday morning :)

Locals Shmocals.

How many jumping pictures can I acquire in a lifetime?

The End.

Myrtle Beach

Again, out of order. Blogger. Grrr.

Here we are at the END of our stay in Myrtle Beach at Pirates Voyage. It's like Medieval Times but way better. Good food. Pirates dancing, diving, and singing. Sea Lions. Mermaid aerial acrobats. Dogs. Pyrotechnics. FUN.

Myrtle Beach was the magical land of everything went right. The 3 star hotel we got less expensive off hotwire had an ocean view, and came with a free day at a water park and free mini golf! I haven't been to a water park since I was 15, and I forgot how much I loved them a thousand times more than roller coaster parks. So after riding everything possible in a few hours and Wild Water and Wheels, Terry told me to close my eyes and we pulled up to a roller skating rink! He had bought socks!!

My reasons for that level of excitement are two fold. #1 I love surprises. #2 I'm mildly obsessed with the idea of roller derby. I own Whip It.  I've researched bootcamps and rec leagues of roller derby in Austin. I had a birthday party complete with a green skirt and unicorn roller skates when I was a kid. I went to a teacher training this year where I sat next two an actual ex-roller derby girl and I pounded her with questions for seven hours straight.
So roller skating was a good idea :)




I mean, they were from Food Lion...

Terry at Pirates Voyage. He's such a good sport with all of my pictures.

TURTLE TURTLE! Terry isn't afraid of animals and kind of has a way with them. He said turtles like their necks scratched and showed me how to do it. It was my favorite part of that day :)

More Pirates Voyage...

Our ocean view balcony with our Myrtle Beach hitch sign that we used for 18 minutes.

Enter: "Herping". I'm not a snake kind of girl. I'm not a cat kind of girl. I'm pretty much solely a puppy kind of girl. Always have been. Terry is a snake guy. Maybe I would think that was crazy if he didn't know so much about them. But if you look at my roster, I've always been attracted to smart guys. And since this snake thing is to the level that he knows Latin names, researched them in the Amazon, and can even in my ear correct the speaker lady at the Alligator Adventure...well it's just neat that he knows so much.




At Alligator Adventure scratching turtles.

Myrtle Beach ocean view room!

2nd place in the Girls ages sixteen and up race.

My parents live one hour from where the hitch race begins. Terry was dying to meet Sadie, as shown in the picture below.

Hitch race 9

More pictures to come soon but these phone pictures will do for now. It saddens me that often times my tiny little IPHONE camera contains better pictures than my $600 dslr...but whatever.

Remember a couple of years ago when I threw around phrases like, "Mom, I promise I will never go on the hitchhiking race again"? Well, I thought there was just an assumed clause in there that said something like, "Unless I meet a super hot guy that wants to go on the hitch race". So there you have it Mama. I promise to never do anything remotely scary again unless a super hot guy wants to go, in which case, I'm only human. 

So this was my team this year! I could NOT have asked for a better team. Jasmine is a beautiful woman with a sweet spirit who happens to speak Espanol and brought her own sign-making materials. She left precious notes for our drivers and worked the road for a solid 16 hours with me. I love her, and if I hadn't been so distracted with hot guy, I would know her entire life story by now and she would be my best friend. Our team name was "HTB and the Double V's". HTB is a evolved nickname for Terry. Before I knew him, I referred to him as "Hot Terry" to all my friends. Then Randy started calling him Terr Bear in order to publicly embarrass me with behind the back bear claw gestures at poetry slams. At some point it combined into Hot Terr Bear...and then eventually shortened to HTB. Randy has since decided to protect his lady card by dropping the "H" and simply referring to him as "TB". So there you have it. HTB and the Vagabonding Vixens. Or, HTB & VV's. Perhaps a one syllable word will suffice the next time I need a team name.

I would also like to take this time to point out the ATLANTA sign on the right...which I am over proud of.







 

And here we are in the back of Larry Angel's trucker cab...

This is the whole crazy hitching group at the bottom of Raging Rainbow Falls! This is where we camp for the rest of the week after a long day of hitching. Gorgeous! At Gorges State Park in North Carolina. Immediately after posting this picture, my Mommy dearest sent me several emails with links to modest one-piece swim suits...because she hasn't actually been swimming with me since I was 11 years old...

Sorry Mum. Agree to disagree. To which she replied "Whatever".

So with Terry's black lung cough all week, and my body a Thanksgiving meal for bugs in the forest...we made the decision to leave a day early. Got there Monday night and left Thursday afternoon. We had made record time with nice drivers hitching on Monday that I was SURE we had used all of our lucky juice for hitching to Myrtle Beach. But nope, nope. Chester and Edith pulled up to a stop sign on my corner, let us in, stopped by their house and got us a phone book to chase rental car companies. Terry scored us a car at the Asheville Airport and voila! No more hitching.

So, these pictures are out of order because that's what blogger does and I'm too lazy to fix it. Here's Jazzy!
(I hope she likes her nickname because I love to nickname everyone. I called one of my smaller male students "Baby Unicorn" for the better half of this school year. I can't always explain myself)

This picture has nothing to do with the hitch race at all. I try to make everything a surprise for Terry. EVERY. THING. And then I can hardly wait and I just want to tell him all about my surprises before they get here. Actual quote: "Carisse, if you tell me ahead of time then they aren't surprises. They're just plans."

Sooo...I googled snakes in Austin and found a Snake Farm in New Braunfels. He loved it! And then he put this lizard on my shoulder. Who is Terry you ask? Oh, just a hot guy with a golden heart that kissed me on the dance floor back in February and kept coming back ever since...

It was around this time Monday morning that my Mother began her prayer and fasting for my safety...

Here's all the crew with our pretty signs at the beginning of the race! Aaron's Mom's house inVan, TX. Let me say a few words about Aaron Bell. Aaron is my crazy friend, who is dating my crazy bestie Darby, and together they pressure me to do crazy things that I never regret. Like staying out past 9pm. Aaron encouraged me to put in my resume that led to my move to Austin, Aaron introduced me to Terry, Aaron made a phone call that got me a new job, and because of Aaron I've had the pleasure of experiencing hitchhiking, paddle boards, kayaks, canoes, jumping off stuff, mopeds, side cars, scuba diving...and a thousand other things I can't remember right now that make me feel like a kid again. And Darby does all of these PLUS decorates my house, prays with me, and talks me off the ledge 4 out of 7 days a week. Love them so much.

Terry and I on one of Aaron's scooters. This is Terry's impression of my scuba face.










Back to The Great Hitchhiking Race 9. This was our second ride, William, a roofer by day and MMA fighter by night that made us listen to podcasts about peace and harmony and UFO's...