Dustan's Sleeping Antics

After Dustan and I got married, I began to realize what a crazy sleeper he is. He does everything from talking, yelling, and laughing, to stripping and hitting. If I'm lucid enough, I write down what Dustan did in the moment to remember it. And this post is a collaboration of those notes! Unfortunately (or probably fortunately) I have gotten used to Dustan's sleeping antics, so I rarely wake up to his talking and moving anymore. Anyway though. I sincerely hope this post entertains whoever may be reading it, but this is mostly for our own benefit to remember some of the little things that we wouldn't typically blog about :)

Mini Stories:

I wake up to Dustan on hands and knees on his side of the bed. He says, "Look... Waves." Then he begins bouncing up and down in place, not stopping until I nudge him.

Just last week, I was very unpleasantly awoken with one of Dustan's very harder limbs (I'm guessing his elbow) hitting me right between the eyes. Dustan had accidentally whacked me in his sleep before, but never this hard. But because I was so exhausted, I just went back to sleep. The next morning, I had a little bit of swelling and bruising on my forehead. Cute, right?

Each night as we're going to sleep, I ask Dustan what his favorite part of the day was. Last Thanksgiving, I again asked this and Dustan answered with, "Dinner... So good. So good. So good. So good." But what was funny was that Dustan said all the "so good"s as if he was echoing himself.

Dustan jerks up and yells, breathing really hard. After asking him what's wrong, he says, "I was hunting a spider and it turned and attacked..."

I hear Dustan getting out of bed and see it's 2 am. He circles the bedroom a couple times before taking off his shirt and getting back in bed. This continues until all of Dustan's clothes are gone and he's naked in the bed.

This isn't so much of a story, but Dustan is the worst blanket stealer ever. I have to tuck in my blankets all the way up my side of the mattress or I will wake up multiple times throughout the night with no blankets. I am even trained now that every time I feel Dustan start moving, I grip my blankets to make sure that we won't roll away with them.

We like to talk about the scriptures we read after companion study. So after reading 3 Nephi 4, Dustan was giving his two cents while apparently falling asleep, saying, "I like the comparison you made of Lucifer to Gadianton Robbers yesterday. Yeah, Giddianhi practiced on his remote... You know, his walkie talkie..."

Every time we move to a new location, I have to get used to the new sounds from our apartments, like trains, neighbors, AC, freeways, etc. So at this new apartment, the sound of the heater turning on and beginning to blow was loud. In the middle of the night, it came on and I woke up to the sound. Dustan, who usually doesn't wake up to any noise, sits bolt upright and nearly yells, "What's that noise?! It's windy out there! Blowing hot wind!"

Sleep Talking Quotes:

"Ellen, how do you deal with my ups and downs every single day?"

"Isn't it weird how we're dead? I wonder if we can taste food when we're dead..."

"The nice thing about Ellens, about you, is that all the nasty juices are already burned."

*Laughing out loud* "Do you really want to be part of the coconut planning party?"

"Oh Ellen, thank heavens! You're alive!"

"Can you pass me the bike handles?"

"Always tomorrow Ellen. Always, always tomorrow. Tomorrow is the start of always. Always tomorrow."

"All hands on deck, Skipper!"

"Why are we in bed? Did we finish Conference? They were about to announce the new prophet!"

"I'm sorry I read your thing in class. It was about your parents and it was so good. I'm sorry. Now you're mad at me."

*Falling asleep while praying* "Please bless us tomorrow as we go to test out the sizing..."

"I love you three. I mean... I love you infinity."

"Ellen, I don't speak her language! She was moving her hands at me, but I didn't understand..."

"Ellen Captain Kellen, don't you dare count the donkey donks!"

"This is amazing. We're drawing our children!"

"What is the purpose of the whole system?"

"Just doing some testing, don't worry..." (You can tell how much Dustan thinks about his engineering...)

Are you stealing it again? Body weight, are you stealing that?

Big Bear Lake

We have so many items on our bucket list for this summer! We're trying our best to get to as many as possible in this summer, but I'm doubtful we'll get to all of them haha. One of the things on our list was Big Bear Lake, California!  Big Bear Lake is up in the San Bernardino Mountains, about a two hour drive from El Segundo It's a bit of a tourist trap, but it has so many fun activities to do! We have now been there twice :)

Our first weekend up at Big Bear Lake was with another intern at Dustan's work and his girlfriend. We left early and planned on going mountain biking before meeting up with them for lunch and an afternoon on the lake. We ran into a little problem on the drive up though.... Dustan heard whining then a sharp pop. The heat from our exhaust pipe had melted one of the tires on Dustan's mountain bike! As soon as we got into town, we had to make a small pit stop to buy a new tube and tire (we found a good used tire for cheap, yay!) before heading up into the mountains on the south side of the lake to go mountain biking!

The Skyline trail at Big Bear was really awesome. The weather was a toasty at a whopping 85 degrees, which made for a sweaty bike ride. This was some of the funnest mountain biking we had ever done. The uphill and downhill was very broken up. The trails were smooth with few rocks. Dustan loved the banked corners.

We met up for lunch with the friends, then headed to the Lake to do some swimming! The water was quite chilly, so only the boys actually swam in the water. We relaxed on a small beach for a while, playing frisbee, skipping rocks, trading stories, and playing in the water.

Then it was time for our kayak reservation! We spent an awesome two hours paddling around the lake. We floated and chatted for a while, raced, looked at the beautiful houses on the shore, jumped and swam off the kayaks, and watched the sun begin to set.

We ran over to a park after kayaking to try and catch the tail end of the sunset, and just barely missed it! Dustan was psyched to play with our newish lens for our camera though, our 50 mm prime.

The next day, Sunday, we went to church with a very welcoming ward full of visitors. Afterward, we took a leisurely (because we took it so slow) hike up to Castle Rock for a view of the lake before it was time to head back home. The end of the hike included some bouldering, which both of us enjoy. The views of the lake were stellar!

Two weekends later, we were back at Big Bear Lake again! Dustan and I both had Friday off, so we decided to go camping. Because it was such a last minute decision, most campsites within a few hours were already filled. But Big Bear Lake had areas for off-site camping! So we headed back.

On Friday, we stopped in the mountains near Lake Arrowhead (on the way to Big Bear) to find a swimming hole called Aztec Falls. After a rough dirt road that scraped the bottom of our car, Roxy, a few times, it was a short hike before we began hearing music, shouting, and swimming. After scrambling down a sandy path, we saw the coolest swimming hole! There were areas to go cliff jumping and swimming and sun bathe on the rocks. There were groups of teens being a bit obnoxious with their crude music and language, drinking, smoking, etc, but we had fun nonetheless :)

Check out my rad swimsuit tan line, haha

Dustan immediately jumped off the highest rocks into the pool while I did some swimming in the very chilly water. We got out of the water to warm up and people watch before jumping back in. We repeated this process for a couple hours for a very fun and relaxing afternoon!

When we got into Big Bear Lake, we stopped at a ranger station to get some info about camping and eat at a quaint little old fashioned burger shop before going up into the mountains. By the way... Dustan forced me to put the following two pictures on here, haha.

Dustan says, "My majestic Roxy! Always so reliable."

Not to brag or anything, but we find the BEST camping spots! In Utah, we found a great little clearing down in Nephi off the Nebo Loop that we camp at all the time. Here, our spot was even better. We drove up to Skyline (also where we had gone mountain biking, in the mountains southeast of the lake) for a ways, looking for pine trees close enough together to hang our hammocks. We found the greatest spot! It overlooked mountains and a valley, an incredible view straight from our hammocks.

That night, we took pictures, played cards, ate snacks, and listened to Harry Potter book 6 on CD. We were so excited to try out sleeping in our hammocks for the first time. It got a little cold that night and my dear husband who can snooze anywhere didn't sleep too well, but it was altogether very enjoyable!

We decided to try out some night sky pictures with our camera... We still need a lot of practice and a tripod.

We had an incredibly lazy morning, again listening to Harry Potter and swinging in our hammocks. We had originally planned to go mountain biking again, but there was a race going on that afternoon on the Skyline Trail. So, instead, we took a ride down the Alpine Slide (for only $6)! Though we were scared we were going to get stuck behind some ridiculously slow people, it was a blast speeding down the slides.

It was just a little bright... 

And those were our adventures at Big Bear Lake! Though we really enjoyed our time there and we would love to go back, we're not sure our summer bucket list will allow for it :)