Jazz game and date weekend!

On Friday, October 24, we went to a Jazz basketball game.  For those of you that don't know, Josh is a HUGE Jazz fan!  And by huge, I mean if I gave him the okay, we'd have season tickets, even though we live 2.5 hours away from Salt Lake!  Earlier that week Josh talked about going to a Jazz game that weekend.  We knew Josh finally had a weekend off, so instead of sitting around this boring town, we decided we'd go to a Jazz game and spend a couple of days in Salt Lake.  So Josh went online and found us some pretty sweet 10th row tickets.  We both love going to Jazz games.  The atmosphere at the game, is so much fun!  I had to work on the day of the game, so we decided we'd leave as soon as I got off work around 3pm.
As soon as I got home from work, Josh was busy packing our bag and getting things ready to go.  I of course being the girl that I am, debated on if I had packed everything I needed.  I hurried and changed my clothes, and then grabbed a bottle of water, and headed out the door to head to Salt Lake.  We stopped and ate in Salt Lake, and then headed to the game.  As soon as we parked the car, I asked Josh to pop the truck so that I could put my purse inside.  I hate carrying my purse around at Jazz games.  As I went to put my purse in the truck, I noticed our bag was not in the trunk.  I then checked the back seat of the car.  No bag.  So then I asked Josh where our bag was.  His immediate response was, "I thought you grabbed it."  We had both assumed the other person had grabbed it.  I was determined that this was not going to ruin our date weekend.  After the game, we made a stop at WalMart and got all of the necessities.  $80 later we were ready to head to the hotel.
While we were waiting for the games to start, I turned around and noticed that Jerry Sloan was sitting in the row behind us.  I didn't want to be that annoying fan and ask for a picture with him, so Josh tried to take a non-obvious picture of me with him in the background.  I think he did a pretty good job!

I LOVE spending time with my husband!  I just wish that we could do it more often!  

Another fun race...

On Saturday, August 16, Shanon and I, along with a  few of my running friends, ran another 5K!  This one was difficult for me.  I've been having back and hip issues for a month now.  I debated on if I should even do this one, but then I decided I would "just walk it".  If you're a runner, you know how difficult it is when an injury happens that prevents you from running.  I've been going to the chiropractor and been trying to take it easy, but it's so hard.  According to the chiropractor, this injury has happened because of me running on the uneven roads.  I love running outside!  I feel so free and unstoppable when I run outside.  The chiropractor telling me that's what is causing my pain, made me so sad.  I've been trying to get better, but it's taking forever.  

On the day of the race, I decided I was going to give it everything I could, even if it was just a walk.  This race was a girls only race. I started out the race walking, but not to far into it, I decided I had to at least try to jog.  I finished the race in 33:07.  That's the slowest I've done a 5K, but at least I did the best I could!  Shanon did fantastic and placed 1st in our age group!!

After Shanon, my friends, and I completed our race, it was time for the Princess Run.  Tori was so excited about this!  She did awesome!!

Tim McGraw Concert

At the end of July, we went to a Tim McGraw concert.  This is the second year in a row we've gone.  The concert was at USANA amphitheater, which is a really fun atmosphere.  The concert is held on a stage that is outdoors.  There are seats, but then there is also lots of grass areas to sit on.  We do the grass section because it's cheaper.  My favorite part about going to this concert, is just being able to spend time with the hubby.  Between having totally opposite work schedules, sleeping schedules, and days off, it feels like we never get to spend good quality time together.  Any chance we can escape from Roosevelt and spend time together, is my favorite.  I just love him so much!  Below is a picture the we took while waiting for the concert to start.  Don't mind my blue lips and teeth.  I had just eaten a snow cone.

Sister Race!

My sister Shanon, finally ran a race with me!  That's two siblings that I've had the fun of running a race with.  Shanon started telling me that she wanted to run a race with me, early in the beginning of summer.  While I was so excited about this, I was also nervous.  I had to find the perfect race for her "first race".  I started doing searches trying to find the most perfect race.  When I finally found a good one that I had done in the past, I was afraid of what her answer might be.  Most people start out with a 5K for their first race.  This "perfect race" was a 10K.  To my surprise she said yes!  It was an awesome race, and I'm so glad we got to do this race together!  Shanon's friend Janie also ran the race with us.  It was nice to have Janie there with us on race day.  I only wish that I lived closer so that we could do this more often!  (This race actually happened June 14.  I'm just a little slow at posting.)

Myself, Shanon, and Janie at the beginning of the race.

Shanon got her "PR" so she got to ring the bell at the end of the race!

My running buddy Angela and I.

Myself, Shanon, and Janie at the end of the race!

California.

Josh's biological father passed away.  He lived in Sacramento, California.  So we booked our plane tickets, rental car, and hotel, and made the trip.  We tried to do a little exploring while we were there.  

We went to the Sacramento Zoo.  We were hoping this would be a bigger and more exiting zoo than the Hogle Zoo, but were wrong.  It was also field trip day for the local school, so there were tons of kids.

We only were in Sacramento for 2 days.  One day to go exploring and spend time with Josh's aunt and uncle, and the next day was the funeral. Josh and I both had mixed emotions about the whole thing, but overall it was a good experience and we're glad we went.

This is Uncle Eddie and Aunt Phyllis.  They are the ones that took time out of there busy schedule and spent most of a day with us!  They were so much fun!

 Josh and his brother Dontrae

 Josh and his Aunt Ana

 Josh and Grandma GG

 Grandma GG and I

This is Josh and all of his siblings on his dads side, with Grandma GG.

I did it!!!

Ever since we have moved to Roosevelt, I've had a struggle running.  I have been really into running, for almost 4 years now.  Each summer, every Saturday is usually marked with a race of some sort.  Now that we live 2.5 hours away from Salt Lake, running has been a struggle for me.  It's more difficult for me to do races since we're so far away.  My running girls live in the Layton area, so Salt Lake was always our main places to run races.  In our neighborhood in Magna, there was so many good places to run.  I always looked forward to my daily runs outside.
So far this year, I have done 3 races.  One 10K (6.2 miles), one 10 mile race, and this past Saturday, I did a half marathon.  I have been training for about 3 months.  All of my training has been done on my treadmill.  Since now we live out in the country, I'm terrified to run outside.  I have two fears of running outside.  My first fear is to be hit by a car.  My second fear is to be attacked by a dog.  No one chains up there dogs or has fences.  So dogs are free to roam around.  Since I have these two fears, I still haven't been able to convince myself to run outside.  So I've been stuck on the treadmill watching Netflix while I run.  Not the most enjoyable thing, but I guess it could be worse.
I signed up for the Vigor Utah Half Marathon, months ago.  I usually sign up for months in advance, so I don't talk myself out of doing them.  And they're usually cheaper, the earlier you sign up.  Since I hadn't done any outside training, I was really worried about how my body would handle the actual race.  I drove up to Salt Lake on Friday when I got off of work.  I stayed in a hotel that night.  I barely slept.  I was already nervous about the race, and not being in my own bed didn't help.  I think I probably slept for 3 hours.  My alarm went off bring and early at 3am.  My first thought was, "why in the world am I doing this".  Then I made myself get up and get going.  My excitement and adrenaline started going!  I left the hotel about 3:45am and headed for the bus pick up.  Once I got there, I met all of my fantastic running friends.  We took a bus up to the start line of the race.  Luckily for this race, we got to wait in a heated lodge before the race started.

We stood around and chit chatted for about an hour before they told us it was time to go to the start line.  We began walking down the hill.  When we finally got to the start line, there were 4 port-a-potties for the 403 half marathon runners.  What in the world?!?!  One rule of thumb when running a race, is always use the bathroom before you start.  So my friends and I got in line.  Then it was time for the race to start, and we were still in line for the potties.  I couldn't run without using the bathroom first.  I ended up starting the race 7 minutes after everyone else.  I was the second to last person to start the race.
The race was AMAZING!!  I loved every minute of it!  My body was totally fine until about mile 10.  Then my calves started cramping up really bad.  I kept pushing myself, and just kept hoping I could push to the finish line.  Then I saw the finish line.  I really pushed hard to run as fast as I could, even though at this point my legs were really hurting.  Seeing the finish line and knowing that I was almost there, is such an amazing feeling.  I crossed the finish line 1 hour 57 minutes 34 seconds after I had started the race!  That was a fantastic time for me, and my personal record!  I was so excited!!!  The only thing that would of made it better, was if Josh would of been there waiting for me.  All of the stressing, anxiety, lack of sleep, doubting myself, was all worth it at that very minute!  That feeling is why I do the races I do.  Accomplishing something, that I always try to tell myself I can't do, feels pretty fantastic!  As much as I have tried to talk myself out of doing races, I think I'll find a few more to do this summer.  The feeling is addicting!

A little getaway…….

For those of you that don't know, Josh and I's birthdays are two days apart.  Since we have been together for four of our birthdays now, and we always try to do something special.  Instead of just birth"days", we turn it into a birthday week.  This year we decided to go to Vegas for our birthdays.  Due to my work schedule, we had to take this little vacation before the actual week of our birthdays.  We decided to make it easier on ourselves, and fly out of Vernal instead of Salt Lake.  This would save us 4 hours of driving time, and paying for parking.  We flew from Vernal to Salt Lake, and then had a layover before flying to Vegas.  Once we got to Vegas, we took a shuttle to our hotel.  
We didn't really have too much of a plan once we got to Vegas.  We figured we would just play each day by ear, and do whatever we wanted.  On our first day there, we decided to stop at one of the half price show ticket booths.  The only show we were really interested in seeing was Boyz II Men.  Yes, we're that old!  

We were actually excited to go see them!  And guess what?!  It was even better than we expected it to be!  We sang along to every song we knew.  Definitely worth going to.
The next couple of days we walked up and down the strip.  We went into the different malls and saw different things as we walked around.  It was nice to be in the nice warm sunshine, instead of the cold wind of Roosevelt.  
On our third night there, we were eating at a little restaurant in the hotel we were staying at.  A couple of ladies came up to us and asked if we had plans for that night.  We said no.  They then asked us if we wanted their tickets to the hypnotist that was in about an hour.  They were too tired to go.  We said sure and took the tickets.  It was a comedy hypnotist show, and it was pretty funny.
We had a great time in Vegas.  I didn't want to come home.  Most of all, I was happy to finally have some one on one time with my honey!  We are both always so busy, and always seem to be on opposite working schedules.  I don't know what I would do without Josh by my side.  He is my rock, and is always there for me no matter what.  I love him more than anything in this entire world, and would do anything for him to make him happy.  This was a much needed vacation and I'm so glad we were able to go!