Experiences.

So the Saturday after Brent left I was still feeling under the weather, so I decided to just really relax at home the whole day. But alas, when home happens to be the place where your parents and younger brother live, and your parents and younger brother go to the matinee showing of Prince Caspian and ask you to please come along too, the movie theater becomes the new location of total relaxation. I'm glad I went, it's always fun seeing movies with my family. They made a stop at Costco on the way home, a stop which turned out to be great fun because it was my first time going to Costco with my dad and brother...I got to witness for the first time my dad's genuine delight in sampling every single taste-test, I got to witness my dad's endurance, perseverance and resolve in waiting in line at the fudge-sickle taste-test table (when they give out whole fudge-sickles for free, apparently Dad Hays can't resist), and I got to go to the produce section and see for myself that no fresh peaches were available for sale. If I hadn't seen it for myself I would have been discontent for the rest of the evening, as I was really craving a peach that day.

The four of us got a craving for a summertime grill-out dinner for that night, so we stopped at a store that sells food in reasonable quantities and got some dinner fixings. We had fresh-ground chuck patties on onion burger buns, corn-on-the-cob, potato skins, two different kinds of salads, and Dad's Old Fashioned Rootbeer in glass bottles that completed the picture. For dessert we had single-serving Haagen-Dazs ice cream cups. During dinner we watched the Apollo mission documentary, "In the Shadow of the Moon." Wonderful evening, I was so grateful that my body was apparently healed from its trauma as the food didn't bother me one bit!

Sunday was awesome. Our church's focus for the month of May is on missions, and Rick Holland's sermon in Crossroads was on Psalm 117: "Praise the LORD, all nations; Laud Him, all peoples! For His lovingkindness is great toward us, And the truth of the LORD is everlasting. Praise the LORD!" Rick titled his sermon "The Purpose for All People." He started out by quoting some guy who said, "Little is much if God is in it," applying that "some guy's" words to the brevity of Psalm 117. Rick pointed out that the mission of the Church is the mission of God: to make His name famous among the nations of the Earth. He said that if you understand the purpose of this Psalm, you can't help but want to evangelize! Rick drew from this passage two exclamations to recover the motive for missions. The first is that the reach of God's praise is universal, drawn from verse one. The second is that the reasons for God's praise are amazing: His kindness is colossal and His faithfulness is eternal. Rick's message was short and to the point, he ended early so that we could break up into groups of three or four and pray for missions in general and our own evangelistic efforts in our day-to-day lives. I was extremely encouraged by the sermon, eager to get back on the mission field this summer, eager to look for evangelistic opportunities right here in LA, and eager to support our church missionaries from right here, their home base.

When I got home I went to work rearranging my room. The layout of the furniture in the room had been bothering me for a while, it just looked to me like a bunch of necessary furniture was stuffed in the room college-dorm-style, simply to serve the purpose of furniture and not to create a comfortable, pleasing to the eye, homey atmosphere. It took me about a couple of hours I think, I got four major pieces of furniture switched around, got a lot of organizing and cleaning done, and when I was finished I was pleased that my room felt like a home again.

My older brother Harrison came to spend the night with us that night, just for fun and the fact that he had the day off of work the next day. Heather and Georgie came to spend the night with us too. I LOVE it when the whole family is home together, especially when everyone decides to stay the night. Girls' slumber parties are a blast, but the bestest slumber parties ever are when all of my siblings are home and we decide to pile into one room for the night, just so that we can go to sleep cracking jokes and making each other laugh, and so that we can wake up in a similar fashion. :)

The next morning I woke up early to go have breakfast with Marietjie at Abbey Lane. Oh wow, it was SO GOOD to spend one-on-one time with Marietjie again. The spring '08 semester was a crazy one for both of us, so I think it had been literally months since we had last spent time together just the two of us. We decided to meet at Abbey Lane at 8:30 am, and when we arrived I don't think either of us wanted to ever look at our watches...I was kind of hoping time would stand still. We had plenty of serious, encouraging conversations, and plenty of light-hearted, giggly and silly conversations. And all of our conversations were over awesome food! Man oh man, it was my first time at Abbey Lane, that place is just up my alley. I fell in love with the atmosphere the moment I stepped inside, the service was polite and personable, and the food was fantastic. I love going to places like that with Marietjie because we both appreciate the atmosphere in the same way and for the same reasons, and we both have the same food tastes. We started the morning by ordering two Italian macchiattos and splitting a Greek omelete. So delicious. After our breakfast we ordered two more cups of coffee, sat and talked and talked and talked and then realized that we could no longer stand simply sitting and talking over coffee when we were sitting so close to the display case filled with awesomely yummy looking cakes! We ordered a piece of German chocolate cake and got refills on our coffees, and contentedly munched and sipped as we chatted the morning away. Before we knew it, it was 11:45 and therefore really time to go. It was a wonderful way to spend the morning.

I spent the rest of the afternoon with my siblings and niece. Most of us were just doing our own things, working on our own projects, but all in the same room so it provided for fun laughter and chatter. One of my favorite moments of the day was putting on dance music and ballroom dancing with little Georgie. She loves dancing with Auntie Hayley.

Tuesday was an exciting day in that I began working on my summer research project on campus at CSUN. The campus has had an observatory telescope since before I ever even came to the scene, but it has been out of use during my entire time at CSUN so far. The Physics and Astronomy department faculty decided this summer was a good time to put the telescope to use again, and they chose me and one other astrophysics girl to do faculty-guided research with it this summer. For the next couple of weeks I will be getting to know a CCD camera and this awesome computer software that goes with it, and when we're ready we will hook up the camera to the telescope, take images of distant objects, galaxies, etc, and use the computer software to analyze our images. For now, I'll be going to campus for an hour or two a day and just playing around with the computer software, really getting accustomed to it. Exciting stuff.

After my time on campus I drove out to meet Holly at, guess what, Chocolatine again. (I can't get enough of that place.) Before we ordered we asked Hugo to describe to us the delicious-looking pastries we saw in the display case, and I was intrigued when I heard him saying things like "Here you see a flourless *this*, or "this is an almond-flour *that*." I got my hopes up that maybe it would be worth it to bring Heather, my poor sister who cannot have wheat-gluten, to Chocolatine to experience the atmosphere and some wheat-free goodies. I kept that thought in the back of my mind and went on with enjoying my time with my best girl friend. We ordered what is quickly becoming our favorite hot drink: nana chocolate. Like hot chocolate, but much thicker, richer, and served with chili pepper and thick homemade whip cream on the side, to add to taste. The chili pepper adds such a rich warmth to the chocolate drink, and Holly and I both agree that while the whip cream does wonderful things for the nana chocolate, it is also extremely pleasant in your mouth by the spoonful. :)

After my time with Holly I rushed off to my friend Ashley's house. Ashley, you may remember, is dating Brent's brother, and it is because of Ashley that I was introduced to Brent...see my posts from February. Ashley and I had agreed that we needed to have a slumber party while our boyfriends were in Hawaii. We first split a meal at Stonefire Grill, all the while being in two places at once because we were both texting our boyfriends like crazy, sending and receiving pictures from them, and laughing a ton over our high-tech conversations. On our way home we stopped at Blockbuster and rented an Audrey Hepburn chick-flick, one that I managed to stay awake through when we got back home, but my mind wasn't really on it because of texting and talking on the phone with Brent. Ashley had a similar experience with her boyfriend and Brent's brother, Todd. :) That slumber party was a blast, it was just so good to be with Ashley who this week is in exactly the same boat as me and who totally understands when I need to take time out of a conversation with her to talk with my boyfriend, because she was doing the exact same with her boyfriend who this week is also enjoying a Hawaiian vacation with his family.

The next morning we enjoyed a homemade smoothie in her backyard for breakfast before I was off to school again for more research. In the afternoon I took it easy, working on some projects that I'd been wanting to get around to for a long time, but never was able to during the school semester. That evening I spent with Heather and Georgie, laughing, dancing, cooking, eating, and watching the first season of the Mole. :) Heather, by the way, is really good at finding quick, easy, gluten-free meals that taste FABULOUS. When you're at her house you hardly notice that it's a gluten-free place because everything she serves is so tasty and complete, it doesn't leave you feeling like you're lacking in anything. For dinner that night we had chili-parmesan chicken and quinoa mixed with sauteed spinach and pepper. Yum.

The next day Heather and I decided would be the perfect day to travel out to the Simi mall for one store in particular: Anthropologie. For her birthday last January my family chipped in on getting her a gift certificate to that place, but she wanted to wait to use it until she was settled into her new home here. Before we left I called Chocolatine and spoke to Hugo about Heather's celiac-disease, and he said that if we came to the cafe that afternoon, he would be there to guide us with our orders, making sure that everything we enjoyed was gluten-free. So Heather and I decided to take the long way to Anthropologie, stopping at Chocolatine on the way. We started out by ordering drinks, Heather ordered an iced chocolate and I asked for a cappucino. After savoring our drinks a bit and exclaiming over the cute dishes and general French ambiance of the place, Hugo came to take our dessert orders. When he remembered that Heather was the one who could not have gluten, he whisked her away to the dessert display and gave her a run-down of all of her options. Heather chose the flourless lava cake for us to split. Hugo presented it to us with a raspberry and cream sauce in a matter of minutes. It made me so content and almost made me want to tear up to watch Heather enjoy the cake. I've never really said that my older sister was cute, but in this instance she was absolutely adorable. Upon putting the first bite in her mouth, her eyes took on that look that a cat gets when it purrs and finds something soft to knead, and she faintly and delicately uttered a "Mmmmm, wow, yeah, this is good." After every bite she nodded and looked at me with those contented cat eyes. This process was repeated every time she put a bite into her mouth, but her utterances varied each time, only slightly, though. "Mmmmm, so good." "Mmmmm, this is really good." "Mmmmmmmmmm." I remarked that she seemed to be really enjoying it (is there a simpler, more "duh" inducing comment I could have made at that moment?), and she responded by saying, "Don't you think it's good? Imagine, I can't eat things like cake anymore. Imagine how you would feel if you were able to eat this wonderful cake after having to stay away from cake for so long." The trip to Chocolatine with Heather was the most rewarding trip to the cafe so far. We ended our time there by ordering two truffles to go, but only after Hugo thought long and hard, and even double-checked with one of his French interns to be sure that all of the truffles were wheat-free. When he finally determined that all the truffles were safe for Heather, he let us take our pick. We chose a chili pepper truffle and a white chocolate filled with creamy milk chocolate truffle. Heather enjoyed both of them immensely.

We got back into the car and made our way to our ultimate destination: Anthropologie. We were so thankful to find that the store was having an awesome sale, so Heather was able to get quite a few adorable and Heatherish things for her home with the gift card. The decision of what exactly to get was not an easy or quick one...imagine walking into a store with 2,497 adorable, perfect items and only 3 items that are simply not cute enough to spend money on. I think we probably spent an hour in the store, slowly browsing through all the houseware, longingly glancing at the clothing and shielding our eyes from the childrens' section because Heather had promised to me that she would not spend her gift certificate on Georgie. Heather eventually came to rest on two darling dessert bowls, a set of four darling dessert plates, and a darling tea towel with an owl on it. I hope she'll have pictures of the items on her blog soon. I didn't get anything, but I saw an outfit that I wish I hadn't have seen because I started to genuinely wonder how I could go on with life without owning that outfit that seemed to scream "This is how Hayley likes to dress, so why doesn't Hayley dress this way?" I also found a journal type book covered in red leather, with rusty gold letters on the cover that spelled "DESTINATIONS." Inside the book were sections to record travel experiences and restaurants worthy of note, there was a map of Europe, there was almanac type information, and plenty of other categorized journaling sections that made me want to buy this little book and keep it in my purse constantly, especially during overseas trips, to record my experiences as I experience them. Yeah, Anthropologie is one of those stores that you feel bittersweet about entering. You have a ball of a time exploring the store, but you feel incomplete leaving empty-handed. :)

Anyways, that's how I've been enjoying myself so far this week. Still, the event I'm most looking forward to is when a certain plane touches down at LAX this Saturday and a certain man steps off. :)