5K numero uno

I did my first 5K last week with Natalie. I talked her into running the Shamrock Shuffle with me up in Smithfield. It was fun to have her there with me and a fun thing to share. I thought the run would be a piece of cake since I've been training for it for weeks, but it was tough! Really, it was my sister that kicked butt and I was glad to have her there pushing me along the whole time. I guess that's what sisters are for right, to push you along when you want to give up.

Here's the group. 10 points if you can spot me and Natalie
We're right in the middle here, hopefully easier to find
The course started out uphill. Not the easiest start, I tell you what!
Here's our cute cheerleaders. Thanks Mom and Dad for coming!
Natalie did awesome and finished in under 31 minutes. She probably would have been even faster had it not been for me slowing her down. Really.
I was hoping to get under 30 minutes, so I was a little disappointed to come in at 31 minutes and 07 seconds. But at least I did it and I got one race under my belt.

All in all it was a tough run and I realized that I'm not pushing myself hard enough. My dad helped me see that I need to utilize my long legs better by lengthening my stride. I have a long way to go to my marathon, but this was a great start and I really learned a lot.

I Need Your Opinion

So I'm working on our wedding album and I have to submit it tomorrow.
I need a final opinion because I can't decide.
I had the idea to add some swirly line things to kind of spruce up the pages a bit.
I threw in a rough idea of what I'm thinking. It's pretty rough so ignore the rough edges and stuff. This just gives a general idea of what it would look like.
What do you think?
Should I keep the pages simple with no swirlies, or go for a little more bling with the swirlies?

Update: I decided to go with the simple, clean, no-swirly pages. I was leaning that way but I appreciate everyone's input! Our album is on it's way!



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Our Borrowed Pet

Our neighbor's kitty likes to come over and meow at our back door.
I couldn't help but give it some milk to drink.
Now it comes over everyday right when I get home from work.
It's like he's waiting for me. I think it's cute.

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