#8 What The FRACK?

A wonderful Christmas and an even more fabulous New Year's vacation

Happy New Year! I am excited for 2025 and it has been off to a lovely start. This post is a week off of my unofficial biweekly schedule, but that is because I have been able to start off the new year soaking in the sun with my family in Hawaii. After a wonderful Christmas, we jetted off to Maui for a couple weeks of relaxation.

FEELING: Relaxed. This was one of my favorite holiday seasons (Christmas and start of the new year) so far. Christmas day was very low key this year, much needed as I was still recovering from what I am now convinced was a bout of Norovirus, instead of the stomach flu - either way, wash your hands. But we spent the day opening gifts, having a wonderful cinnamon roll breakfast, and then enjoying each other’s company.

We headed off to Maui a couple of days later and spent the last two weeks going to the beach, searching for whales, swimming, reading, and playing lots of cards. It was absolutely lovely and stunningly beautiful.

READING: I love a beach read and not just the genre. I love to actually sit on the beach and read, which I have luckily had loads of time to do while on vacation. I read six books in the last couple of weeks some better than others. But all entertaining nonetheless. I finished Wreck The Halls by Tessa Bailey to wrap up the holiday season. I then read The Wedding People by Alison Espach, Funny Story by Emily Henry, Dragonfly by Leila Meacham, The Murderer’s Daughter by Jonathan Kellerman, and The Perfect Assassin by James Patterson.

ACHIEVING: This may sound silly to some, but I successfully went on an almost hour-long open water swim with my dad while in Maui. Why is this such an achievement? Because I have an extremely irrational fear of fish and absolutely hate to swim over coral. Now some of you may be asking - Lauren, don’t you open water swim when you race a triathlon? And although the answer to that question is yes, there are also hundreds if not thousands of other people in that water kicking the fish away in front of me. This was just my dad in the distance, the coral, the fish, and myself and I only freaked out like 4 times which I would consider successful.

This is as close as I would get to a single fish but I did it nonetheless!

CREATING: I have been slowly starting to design a 2024 magazine to wrap up my year. I wish this was an original idea but I saw a girl do it on tik tok and thought it was awesome. She designs and prints a magazine that recaps her entire year - cool places she went, things she celebrated, concerts she went to - whatever was prevalent to her throughout the year as a physical art form to keep in the future. It has been really fun to comb back through photos from the year and start to work on this.

KEEPING UP: While on Maui I got to have a two wonderful and unexpected reunions. First, I was able to meet up with one of my friends I met while studying abroad and I hadn’t seen her in over 5 years so it was so great to sit and chat with her and her boyfriend for a few hours and catch up! We also got to go visit my Aunt and Uncle who arrived to the island at the tail end of our trip which was so fun. I didn’t see them over the holidays this year, so it was great to catch up, get lunch and share stories.