Boredom...

At the $1 at Walmart they had these packets of beads on sale for $1.  The weather was so nice, I decided to sit outside under the tree and make some bracelets and necklaces...

Another night this week I was bored, so I decided to make flowers and glue them to some headbands I had that I never wear.  I took old shirts, cut them up, twisted and glued them and put them on the head band.  Ta-da!

Rock Climbing

Will and I went out to Bulldog Canyon to try rock climbing again, and it was a SUCCESS!!!  We were able to set up our anchors and climb!  Unfortunately the rock at the bottom was really bad and would break in or hands or under our feet, and as we got up higher it was really slick.  I didn't make it up high at all, but Will made it about 2/3rds of the way.  Since taking this repelling/climbing course from BSA, we have gone  2 other times to try to set up anchors, but never had any success.  Although we didn't make it to the top of the climb, we were able to start feeling comfortable with our skills of finding and putting up anchors, and try some climbing.  We are hoping to go back there and camp so that we can spend more time driving around to find better rocks to climb.

My favorite part of the trip: Will anchored me into the truck tail gait while I was belaying him...which was a VERY good thing.  I wish we had a video of it.   His first try he made it 2/3rds of the way up, and as he leaned back on the rope for me to belay him down, I started flying in the air.  Thankfully I was anchored into the truck, so I wasn't more then a foot in the air. My feet were NOT touching the ground the whole time as I was letting him down.  It was VERY difficult to give me a smooth landing, and we both ended up practically sitting in the dirt.  It was pretty funny.  Needless to say... I need to practice my "flying" belaying technique, and we will ALWAYS have me anchored in to something.

if you look really hard you can see part of the rope hanging just about and to the right of the truck.

Recent Projects

1.  This is the skirt I made for Dasha's wedding.  It defiantly made me work for it.  I took my measurements wrong so I had to add 3 more pleats to the skirt...which ended up being too much, so then I had to take the skirt in another inch.  Finally, there were odd seams, but I figured out how to wear it without it being too noticeable.

2.  A friend from church had this cute picture frame thing to plan her meas, and for house chores she found off Pinterest.  I decided to combine the two together with a frame my sister had given me.  I designed what I wanted it to look like using GIMP, and then printed it off and put it in the frame.  I LOVE it!  Unfortunately, I know feel obligated to follow the chart and cook meals and clean...

Recently, my family came into town for a wedding.  My little sister is now married.  Out of us 8 kids, there are now 7 of us married… how life can change.

Saturday Emilie, Irving, Brisa, and Annie came in. Tuesday my mom came in. Wednesday LanaMaire, Barrett, and Dad came in.  Friday Alisa, Matt, Wesson came in.  Thursday we were able to go to the temple to see Dasha get her endowments out.  It was so fun to see all of my family there!  Friday I had the day off work so I spent it with my sisters, Dad, and nephews, and Laina.  Since we had to keep Dad busy, we picked all the grapefruit off our tree (it was small and sour because it wasn’t watered in the spring due to no one living there).  Dad then juiced it ALL for me while the rest of us raced and played spaceship in the back yard.  While the little ones, and those who drove from NE napped, we helped set up for the reception.  

Friday night we had a family dinner.  My almost 1yr old nephew, Barrett, took out an 11 yr boy and broke his wrist.  The boy was running backwards and ran into Barrett, and tripped.  Barrett has some sweet bruises (war wounds) and his face to prove he won the battle. 

Barrett!

Wesson decided to jump on my back while
 I was on the ground playing with Barrett

Saturday Wedding day.  BEFORE all the crazy wedding stuff started, my 6 sisters (my sister-in-law was unable to make it due to her best friend getting married) put on our wedding dresses and took pictures in my father-in-laws backyard.  It was a BLAST!!!

This is our "Lehi" pose.  Me, Alisa, Camilla, Kaylene, LanaMarie, Dasha

Left to Right: Alisa, Kaylene, Me, Dasha, LanaMarie, Camilla

I LOVE this picture of us all just walkin'

Oldest to Youngest: Camilla, Kaylene, LanaMarie, Me, Alisa, Dasha

Next, we went to the wedding and took lovely pictures in all of our yellow skirts/dresses.  I made mine, but got it dirty immediately getting out of the car… good thing it was puffy so it didn’t show in the pictures.  Dasha looked beautiful!  The reception was fun.  Will and I learned how great our freezer works.  Dasha stored four 3gallon containers of ice-cream… it was so hard to dip it out!  We couldn’t even put it in the microwave because there was metal on it.  Anyhow… we survived with sore arms to prove it.  The family had a fun time decorating Dasha and Josh’s car too.  We did sticky notes so all the little ones could help out.

Kaylene, Me, LanaMarie, Dasha, Alisa, Emilie, Camilla

All in all, I had a great tiring week with my family again and hopefully will see them sometime soon.

Phoenix Half Marathon

This weekend one of my old high school best friends, Laura, came into town to run a race with me.  Unfortunately her and her husband didn’t get in till 11pm, so we chatted a bit then headed to bed.  The next morning I was up at 3:45am making bran muffins for breakfast for the race.  My other friend, Kara, Laura, and I headed to our race at 4:30 to be bused to the start line.  There we were at 5:30am FREEZING before we race.  We had 2 choices.  1. Stand by the fire and get smoked out 2. FREEZE by standing out in the cold wind.  I didn’t like either, so we found a group of runners on the side of the building with a gas heater… MUCH better!  That is where we waited for the race to start.

Kara, Me, Lara in our "warm" gear before we took off to the race

 At 6:30 we had to take off our warm clothes to drop them off before the race started, then all 1000 of us ½ marathoners were escorted to the start line with 2 motorcycle cops accompanied by people playing the bag pipes.  I wish I had a picture!  I think they were colder than us! The race was much colder than expected, but it was a GREAT run!

We started off with a nice downhill, then went through some neighborhoods which were pretty flat, and then a gradual uphill of about 3 miles (I think that is what made me so sore this race).  Next we had a nice long downhill followed by 2 more short up and down hills and then the end!  After the race there was tons of free stuff!  They even had Jamba Juice!  Defiantly worth the extra money I didn’t want to pay for the race. 

I beat my race time!  I completed it in 2hrs 7min 56 sec, averaging out to a grand total of 9min 46sec miles!  I love it!  I think my favorite part of the race had to be that we were consistently passing other runners along the way.  After the first 4 miles, nobody passed us, and we were passing others.  It was so cool!

Me, Laura, Kara all nice and sweaty after the race.  We are even still alive!

After the race...

Will and I took Laura and Pablo out shooting in the desert.  They had such a good time, so did we trying out our new .22, and the weather couldn't have been better.  The best part was watching Laura and I walk around goofy the whole time.  We were so sore!