I'm Committed

Well, after my last post and all the positive feedback I got from everyone I guess I'm committed. Thank you everyone for your supportive comments and confidence in me. I'm accountable to you now. I'm going to do this!

I'm super stoked cuz I just found out that my cousin Megan is going to be running in the same marathon that I picked to run, the Top of Utah. How awesome is that! My aunt Jen also told me if I picked a marathon then she'd fly up from Texas to come run it with me. So now this is turning into a whole family event. I'm loving the support already. Anyone else on board?!

In other news, I recently discovered the show Cake Boss and love it. If you haven't seen it, do. That guy makes the most creative cakes I could never even dream of. Legendary.

a little goal

One of the goals (that's a nicer word than resolution) I made for myself this year is...oh, can I even say it... I hesitate to say it because I don't know if it's something I even can accomplish but...I want to run a marathon this year.

I don't know what has possessed me to want to do this. I've never been a runner and I don't think I will ever love the sport. I don't like any form of exercise that's not completely disguised by something fun, like racquetball or snowboarding. So why would I ever like running? There's no way to hide running. It's pure, nothing-but-the-real-deal exercising.

But I think it would be really cool to put a marathon on my list of accomplishments. To say I have successfully run 26.2 miles is huge! I've always admired avid runners and I think it'd be admirable to count myself among them. I can't even imagine my body running for that long, but I know plenty of people who have done it so I guess that means if I want to put my mind to it I can do it too.

I have no idea how long it takes to train for such an endeavor or if I'm crazy to think I can just do it within a year. I started small, very small with just running a few minutes at a time and I'm working up to longer jaunts. I'm following this training program and I'm 5 weeks into it. Every time the distance increases I think "there's no way I'll be able to do that", but I somehow push through it each time and do it. It's a good feeling to finish a run!

So, if anyone has encouragement or advice, I'll take it. And when it comes time to run this little marathon how about everyone comes to cheer me on! Deal?

New York

I know it's been several months since we got home from our Europe trip, but I'm just now going through pictures to print them and I thought I'd throw some up here to share our experiences:

We flew standby, which means two things 1) you can fly in style for really, really cheap 2) you never know what flights you'll end up on so when one looks semi-decent you take it! And that's what we did on our way to London. We were planning to take a flight early on a Friday but it was looking pretty packed so instead opted to take a flight the night before at 11 p.m. We got to New York early Friday morning and had about an 9-hour layover. And man oh man, did we ever take advantage of it!

Note that all we took with us to Europe was a single backpack each.
We couldn't find lockers in the New York airport (which makes sense
for security reasons) so we hauled our backpacks around with
us all day. Let's just say it was a really really good workout.

We got off the subway right in the middle of Time Square.

One word: magical!
I could sit there and watch people and cars go by
all day long and be perfectly happy. I loved it!!



We caught a glimpse of Good Morning America being recorded...

...saw lots of cool things and took lots of random pictures...

...saw the Trump Tower - which I recently read a book about
and have much more appreciation for now. Notice the
trees on the atrium of the building (on the right),
you don't see that very often in New York...

And of course we had to stop in Central Park.
We only scratched the surface considering how large the park is,
but boy did we soak it in. We took a nice nap on that grass straight
ahead. The park's another place I wouldn't mind spending a whole
afternoon taking in sights and sounds.

We saw some tree huggers shooting a commercial...

...ate some sub-par New York hot dogs...

And we loved every minute of it. It was an electric way to start off a fabulous trip.
We hope to make it back someday soon and soak it in a little more!

Christmas is coming

We're gearing up for Christmas around here.

I am thrilled about it this year and more prepared than I've ever been

since I'm not trying to finish up finals and projects.

We decorated our cute tree right after Thanksgiving and I love it!

Maybe I'll keep it up all year round and just put Easter and 4th of July ornaments on it and such.

Wouldn't that be a great idea!

In other news, we finally finished our laundry closet,

so we can now wash clothes at our very own house!

Exciting stuff.

Tyler put a lot of hard work into it and it turned out great.

I haven't taken pictures of the final project,

but this actually shows the progress much better

2 New Additions

Within a matter of a month we've sold both our cars and replaced them. We had plans to sell our Jeep, but we weren't planning on our Hyundai dying so soon. Just 4 days after we sold our Jeep (and before finding a replacement for the Jeep), the transmission went out on our Hyundai. Funny story involved there...

I came home for lunch one day and as I was backing out of the drive way and the car just wouldn't go in reverse anymore. I revved the engine but to no avail, I could not back out. Luckily it shifted into first gear so I pulled forward into the drive way and gave up on it. So there I am stuck with no way to get back to work. I couldn't call Tyler to pick me up, because he didn't have a car (we sold the Jeep) so what could he have done, given me a ride on his bike? I tried to take my bike, but as Murphy's law would have it the tires were flat. So what was I left with? My ever-trusty scooter, that's right, my Razor scooter. It was only a few blocks but I just felt like a 6 year old gliding through the parking lot on a scooter! We all had a good laugh about it though.

Needless to say, after that little experience we felt that it was time to get a new car pronto! So we borrowed my sister's car (thanks again) to go look at a few cars in Bountiful and Salt Lake and came home with this Mazda 6! I really love it and especially love that it's reliable and should be a good car for us for a long time.


Well, Tyler did a little trouble shooting and determined that the transmission was shot. Since we bought the Hyundai for $1,000 we couldn't justify spending twice that to get it running again, so we decided it was time to move on. Tyler was okay with riding his bike to school for a little while, until it starting getting cold and rainy. We've been wanting a truck for as long as we've been married. Okay, we had my 1985 Ford F-150, but really, we've been wanting a real truck, like one that runs. So we did some research and decided on a Chevy. Tyler absolutely love it and it should be another good car for us too. I'll get better pictures later, but here it is: It's blue, Aggie blue, which I love. Our "A" plate will look pretty good on here.


It definitely wasn't in our plans to buy two cars in a month, but I guess that's how life plays out... not the way you plan. But we hope we're set with some reliable cars for now and we love them both.

New Do

So here I am Friday morning. Yes, I look sleepy, but ignore that. Focus on my how long my hair is. I had Tyler snap these pictures of me before leaving for work because....
I came home looking like this!

I've been wanting to chop my hair off for several months and I finally just did it thanks to some prodding from my co-workers. They also convinced me to go darker, but I'm absolutely loving it!

Looking Back

I know that summer has long come and gone, but we had such a good one that I do want to mention a few things that happened. We got to see a lot of family, which was more than great. We got together with my mom's entire side together over July 24th weekend. My awesome grandma rented out the Bountiful Bubble for us one night and then we spent the next day at Snowbird doing all sorts of activities and then the next day hanging out at my grandparent.
Later on in September we had a wonderful visit from my cousins in Sweden. Filippa and Bodile (pictured below on either side of my mom) stayed for two weeks and we sure filled their time with "cultural" events. We took them repelling and to a demolition derby among other things. I was curious to see how they would like it but the verdict came in very positive for both events.
We sure enjoyed repelling. Tyler was an animal out there and even tried going Australia style (face-first). I did it a few weeks before he did and I tell you what, it's no easy feat. We sure got a kick out of watching him give it a whirl:

Here's the repelling gang:
In other news, we celebrated our 2 year anniversary in August by having a blast at Lagoon then staying at the Little America. I highly recommend their breakfast-in-bed, it was quite the feast!
Life continues to keep us busy. Hopefully more updates to come soon.