I C O N

I used to work at a place called ICON in Logan where they make exercise equipment. I worked in Human Testing. Yeah believe it...I got paid to work out. It was my favorite job ever even though I got paid $1.99 per hour. I became a "runner" while I worked there and I really liked it. Okay so I kind of jogged more than ran and I wasn't really that good at it. But I got in good shape and I ran/jogged every time I went to work. So I'm just gonna say that made me a runner. Since I left that job, however, I've been going slowly downhill in my running motivation and abilities. I started lifting weights a lot with Jared after we got married and didn't run so much. Then we stopped our gym membership and I basically pooped out. Yesterday I stopped by ICON to pick Jenny up an application, and I saw one of my favorite people who I worked with when I was there. She is a runner extraordinaire and she happens to have a blog. After reading her blog, I'm remotivated to run. So today I went out and ran a mile. Did it almost kill me? Yeah it did. But that's okay. I'm setting a goal to increase my runs by one mile each week for the rest of the summer. That means I should be running six miles by the time I go back to work. Thanks Heidi for the motivation! Wish me luck.

Day With the Girls

Yesterday I got to go up to Logan with my mom and little sister. Jenny is headed up to USU this fall (after some persuasive nudging on my part...go Aggies!). We got her an apartment, talked to an advisor, and ate delicious food at the OG. I'm so excited for her. I know she's going to love Logan. Going up made me miss it. Maybe we will end up there again someday. As you can tell from the picture, we really had a great time.

A Christmas Miracle

Ever since we found out that there was a chance Jared would have to work Sundays this summer, we have been praying that it would work out so that either he wouldn't have to work Sundays or else he would still be able to go to church. Once again, we have been so blessed and had our prayers answered. They rolled dice at work to see who would have to do the weekends and Jared didn't win. He was going to have to work Sundays and there didn't appear to be any way out of it unless he quit his job. It didn't seem fair for him to quit because they'd given him so much training already and his friend had helped him to get the job in the first place. We kept praying that something would work out. Somehow, he ended up having credit time built up which means he will be able to use it to go to work late on Sundays. So we found a 9:00 sacrament meeting and he will be able to go every week. I'm so happy! I am really grateful for how mindful the Lord is of us and for this blessing in our lives.

No Longer Homeless

We are moving to Salt Lake in August and we have been trying to find somewhere to live. We were on a waiting list for student housing at the U which we thought may be about a million years long so we weren't really counting on it. We've been looking around and hadn't found anywhere we really wanted to live. We have just been praying that we would find somewhere safe and cheap to live that would be right for us. Then, yesterday I got an email from student housing telling us they had an apartment for us! It is available August 14th which is the exact time we were hoping to move. It will only cost us $500 a month including EVERYTHING. You may be wondering "does it look like a dorm and is it kind of the ghetto?" Well the answer is yes. But we don't care! It's close to school for Jared, it's in a safe neighborhood, and it's cheap cheap cheap! Yay for us! Go here to see our new place. Click on "see photos of model apartment" under the South Courts. (Please note the pressed concrete walls and asphalt tile floors. Yeah...it's classy and it's all ours!)

What Happened in Vegas...

I just got back from a fantastic trip to Vegas. I have 7 girlfriends from high school who have all stayed in touch since graduation. Melissa is in Vegas this summer finishing her student teaching and we decided to head down to visit her. It was amazing that we all coordinated our schedules enough to be able to go. Everyone came, it was a blast, and I feel closer to all of them than ever! Here's a play by play of our trip.

We all met at Raquel's house on Thursday evening. Her parents were nice enough to let us borrow their suburban and Raquel was nice/brave enough to drive. And she did awesome driving I must say--even with the crazy Vegas traffic.

Gas prices and a huge gas tank had us a little bummed. But not for long!

So we hit the road with Raquel driving and me up front to help navigate. (Anyone who knows me and my navigation skills is probably laughing right now but I actually did okay with a little GPS help--thanks Erin!) One minor detail that made for some discomfort (but also a good story) is that the air conditioning in the suburban kept going out. Basically it didn't work when we were driving in the city anywhere so we were roasting in the 115* heat. We realized that people probably don't drive cars without air conditioning in Vegas. It was hot. We were sweaty.

Whitney's aunt was nice enough to let us stay at her house in St. George on Thursday night. She had a separate apartment where we all slept. It was so nice and gave us plenty of space and privacy to revert back to 8th grade slumber party giggling all night.

Friday morning we got up, we went to the temple and walked around, then we SHOPPED. Then we drove to Vegas. I navigated in Vegas (yeah believe it) and we found our hotel. It looked SO nice. But we couldn't check in for a few hours. So what did we do? We SHOPPED. I'm generally not a fan of shopping, but it was actually pretty fun with all the girls. When we finally could check in we were so relieved to be out of the heat and in the super nice room that Talisha had gotten for us. I decided to cool my air conditioning deprived feet off in the giant jetted tub and some of the girls joined me.

Friday night and Saturday we wandered around Vegas finding interesting things to entertain us. We were lucky enough to have a shuttle to and from the hotel so we didn't have to drive the hot car around anymore. We ate at the Cheesecake Factory Friday night, which was fantastic! We wandered around Casinos, saw the fountains, saw some female strippers on accident, watched a man get in trouble for public urination, got invited to dance-clubs, ate at the Rain Forest Cafe, saw Phantom of the Opera (which was AMAZING), saw what we suspect was a drug deal (a crazy woman in Arby's went and hung her purse on the light post in the parking lot and then came back inside...Erin is pointing at it in the picture), and Raquel even won some money gambling. To clarify Raquel's gambling story, her boss had given her $20 and told her to play roulette and bet $20 on red. She had the instructions written on a sticky note. So we wandered around this casino trying to figure out what a roulette table was and how to gamble. Finally, I realized what big idiots we looked like so I went and asked an intoxicated woman if she could help us. I said "we are supposed to gamble and we don't know how...can you help us?" She was really nice. She took us to the right place and helped Raquel place her bet. We must have been acting suspicious because the man at the table carded her. When he saw that her licsense said UTAH he realized why we were acting like we were so he let her go ahead. When the thing stopped spinning we all looked at the lady helping us and she told us we had won. So Raquel doubled her money and walked away to cash her chips. It was pretty funny. Here are some pictures of our adventure.

I'm sure we stood out like sore thumbs with our knee length shorts, one piece swimming suits, and shocked faces at some of the scenes we witnessed. But all of us Mormon-Utah girls survived the city of sin and had a blast! I am so grateful for the amazing friends I have. Thanks Raquel, Hali, Mallory, Whitney, Erin, Melissa, and Talisha for a fun weekend! I love you girls and can't wait to see you all again!

My New Friend

This morning I woke up because I heard some noise in the living room. I walked out and our door was wide open and there was a Mexican standing in the doorway. I said "hello..." I knew that my grandparents had hired some people to paint the trim on their house but I couldn't figure out why this man had opened my door and was standing in my living room. I figured there wasn't really anything to be done but eat breakfast. So that's what I did. Then I went up to the track to go running. I went upstairs before I left and said, "Grandma, there is a man in my house." She said he must have misunderstood when he asked if anyone was downstairs. He was painting some doors that went into the shop (which is seperate from our house) and just figured he would also paint our door. So I went to the track. When I got back an hour later, the painters' truck was gone so I figured I would have my house back. Imagine my surprise when I went around back to our door, and the Mexican was lounging in our chairs, asleep on our back porch. As I'm typing this, I can see his feet resting up on a chair out the window. Who is this man? I don't know. Why did his fellow painters leave him here asleep on my porch? I don't know. How long will he be here? I don't know. But at least it's made for an interesting morning. (I took a picture of his feet. I didn't want him to wake up while I was snapping a picture of him so I had to be sneaky.)

Please Pass the Tofu

I have decided to quit eating meat. I have always been an animal lover and had thoughts of vegeterianism in the back of my mind. But I never wanted to take the time to really consider where my food was coming from or make the effort to change the way of eating that I was accustomed to (and obviously enjoying.) I've been really thinking about this for the past week and then today I made my decision. I watched a video on http://www.meat.org that I think everyone who is consuming meat, eggs, or milk should see. I couldn't download it to my post but if you click on the link it will start playing. I literally cried through this movie. (Yeah it's PMS time right now but I think I would have cried anyway.) I think it will probably be a hard transition and may have to be gradual. But I'm taking a stand against this corrupt and abusive system. It's wrong. Maybe we should all "meet our meat" and think about where our food is coming from.