good bye, kayak

Memorial weekend Sam and I went Kayaking down the river with Todd and Lacey. Why would we go when it was cold, raining, and the water felt like ice? I don't know. Maybe because we had a brand new kayak and were very excited to try it out. It was freezing, but it was tons of fun, up until the last little stretch. We saw the water getting pretty crazy as we approached some huge pillars, and before we knew it we were crashing right into one of them. We were tossed out of the kayak and going down stream before we knew it, into icy, icy water. I, of course, thought i was going to die and panicked. Sam pulled me to the side and we ran back to see our brand new kayak, totally destroyed. The even bigger problem was that our brand new camera (thanks to me stepping on our last one), was in our kayak when we flipped. Luckily we had just bought a water proof case, and even more luckily, Sam was able to run upstream, swim to the kayak, and find our camera underwater, just barely hanging by a piece of the broken kayak.

hangin' out at the mortuary

A few months ago we bought a "Clearplay"- a DVD player that cuts out all the bad stuff. We talked our friends into buying one too, so now we are all livin' on the wild side watching all the rated R's we've always wanted to see :) Last weekend we watched "Slumdog Millionaire" with Rachel and Richard, while eating pizza and pizookies. Rachel and Richard live in a mortuary, and in trade for free rent they are "on call" for one week out of each month, which means they have to be at home 24/7 in case someone dies, in which case Richard picks up the body. So we watched it over at their place, hoping that no one would die during our movie. Fortunately the only call he got was the manager asking him to help hang someone in the fridge. Pretty morbid and not really worth the free rent if you ask me.

time to move.

This has been our home for the past two years. We live in the building on the left. It's an old office building, right in the intersections of two main roads. We have no driveway, we have no yard, and Sam and friends have to park at Wendy's. So why did we stay for two years? I don't know. But it's worked out just fine. We now have 12 days left, and then we are outta here. Where are we going?

Hawaii for a month. We can't wait. We are renting a TVA (BYUH Married Student Housing) apartment from a couple that is going home to China for a month. So no rent in Utah + cheap rent in Hawaii = we couldn't resist. The bonus is that my sister, Brooke, and her husband will be visiting Hawaii for the first week that we are there. The sad part is that Ashley is home in Arizona for the summer.

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One month, no work, just a million places and things that I have been dreaming of doing for the past 2 years!

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When we come back, we will be moving into a basement apartment that is currently being built, which means EVERYTHING WILL BE NEW! And it has a beautiful backyard and is in a real neighborhood. We are excited.

running reunion

I have been excited for this weekend for a long time. Here's why:

-I am running my first half marathon -I am going to run it with some of my best friends ever, Diana and Chelsea, who were my teammates when I ran cross country for BYU Hawaii and also my roommates. I haven't seen them in 3 years. I can't begin to describe all of the memories we created. When you are so far away from family your friends quickly become just like family. We spent every morning running and every afternoon running together. We got chased by dogs and ran into cows and pigs back in the mountain trails, we learned crazy Hawaiian words from Coach K, we traveled many red eye flights to run races together (where Coach K liked to eat at Denny's for every single meal). I love these girls. This weekend far exceeded my expectations. Here's why: -Chelsea found a baby-sitter for Brianna so she got to come on Friday and spend the night. -We then convinced Diana to spend the night too. -Sam quickly found a friend to hang out with for the night so it was an official girl's night. We stayed up late eating a big pasta dinner and catching up on the last 4 years. -We created the most real looking race bibs you have ever seen. Scandalous, I know. But registration was full, as was the waiting list, and we weren't going to let that stop us. We started making them as a joke and they turned out so real looking that we actually wore them. By the end of the race all of the marker had transferred from our bibs to our clothes. It was a blast making them while we talked and talked and talked. -Although I was in no shape to run the race, as I had big plans to train but they never happened, somehow the run felt amazing. I think it was due to the fact that I was with great friends and we talked and laughed the whole way down one of the most beautiful canyons ever. The 13.1 miles literally flew by. We beat our goal time by 10 minutes and sprinted to the finish line doing the "YMCA" while the song blasted. -The after-race food included Jamba Juice, Great Harvest bread, and the best granola ever. Speaking of which, Chelsea surprised me with a bag of it when we dropped her off. What a sweet friend. We collapsed on the grass with our smoothies and bread and realized how tired our legs really were. It felt great to feel that worn out. Good friends make life so much better. Thank you, Chelsea and Diana, for the great weekend!

2002 BYUH Cross Country Team

Notice the plain white bib with the red numbers. That was the before product, which we transformed into the Ogden Marathon bibs we are holding. I have watched "Catch Me If You Can" one too many times.

About to board the bus at 5am. We meant to get a good night's sleep but ended up getting just about none.

After our race we headed back for the "Kid's K", where Sam, Chelsea, and I ran one last race with the kid's from my after school program.

Obsessed.

I love this cereal. I literally can't get enough of it. Every time it goes on sale I limit myself to 12 boxes, just because I really need a limit. No Cinnamon LIFE, no sugar added, just the plain LIFE cereal. I knew it was bad last week when we had Pizzookie's and while eating mine I thought to myself how a bowl of LIFE cereal would have been even better.

biker gang

We love David and Melissa. The other night, at around 10pm, Sam and I got the urge to go on a long bike ride. We knew David and Melissa would agree so we called them up and took off. It was so much fun- I felt like I was 12 again. We got apple pies at McDonalds (where we tried to go through the drive-through, but they wouldn't serve us because we were on bikes). We got shakes at Denny's. We saw a man laying on the grass having a crazy seizure. We should have helped him but we just thought he was crazy. I personally thought he had an Ipod in and was dancing. Fortunately someone else was nicer than us and called an ambulance. We found an open skate park and the guy's did cool tricks and Dave had a hard fall. Dave broke his pedal off his bike (remember me mentioning his bad luck in a previous blog? I wasn't joking). We finally got home around 1am and slept very, very well.

I am tired.

Yesterday was crazy.

4th grade PE all morning.

Kindergarten Field Day all afternoon. I think it's funny that I used to think I would enjoy teaching Kindergarten. Forget about it. I have never been so exhausted as I was after an afternoon of kindergartners.

It was during the "parachuting" that I stepped on my camera and broke my LCD screen. It makes me feel sick. Our relatively new (2 year old) camera gone. Granted you can take pictures looking through the little hole but you can't really tell what you are looking at. Which is how the rest of the pictures were taken.

And lastly, our very own, very intense, World Cup Soccer Game! Every other month we have to host a "Family Night" for all of the YMCA families. This one was so fun. Most of the families came to watch and cheered on all the players from the sidelines. And no one got hurt, which is always a plus.

A few of our very-spirited cheerleaders. They never stopped, I was very impressed. Team Rio Madrid, who unfortunately lost in the shoot-out. We had to have a shoot-out because no goals were actually scored in the game. Not because our players are untalented, just because our goalies are that good :) Team Blue Sharks. Dangerous. The players in action. The round building in the background is our school, Dee Elementary. Yes, it is a circle. There are no classrooms, just a bunch of open space divided by flimsy dividers that the kids stick their heads through the whole day. I guess this school was an "experimental design". Apparently it didn't catch on.

We've got issues.

OK, we are cheap. This picture proves it. This is Sam playing Guitar Hero, only the free computer version. So what if you have to use your keyboard as your guitar! So what if you have to use F1, F2, F3, and F4 instead of the colored buttons that the real guitars have?