You should live here.

Look, this kitchen is so cute. And it frequently has baked goods. 

Living room. Also cute. Frequently has girls staying up way too late and laughing about who knows what doing homework.

So you should buy this contract. Preferably if you're single, female, and living in Provo. 

Unfortunately, I think I just eliminated the vast majority of my readership. But at least now you can share in my stress :)

13.1

Race Day. Have you been to Moab lately? The whole town is organic and made out of granola and mountain bikers. It made the whole experience feel just a little more hard core, even though we have a long way to go before we would qualify as a Moab-ite.

I haven't been there since we hiked arches when I was 13. I kind of just remember we went to buy ice cream after, but then my dad made us boycott it because all proceeds went to draining Lake Powell. 

Anyways.

 This is our before picture, somewhere during the time everyone waits for the shuttle and uses the bathroom a million times. 

Kimberly's sisters came down with us and cheered us on. I love being around sisters even though it makes me miss mine. My parents met us in Moab, too. They got in that morning so I didn't see them before the race. 


It was SO fun turning the last corner and seeing the finish line and my parents at the same time. I did a little dance for them. Then I kept running. 

My Aunt Tanya ran it as well! She's a professional at this, I don't even know how many races she has done. It was so fun to see her there! 

The race was great overall. Kimberly finished in two hours and I am SO proud of her! 
Then she was there to cheer me on when I came in 30 minutes later :)

Kimberly and I are happy happy happy to be done with the training process. Now we get to choose how long we want to run instead of following a calendar. And I get to eat Reese's Eggs whenever I want. 
Right?

Race experience made possible by: 
Kindal's running mix, ibuprofen, Ali's coaching, the man who offered everyone beer at mile 6 (took the laugh, not the beer), Clif Shot energy gel at mile 8, the old women who played bongos at mile 9, Alma 30:44, my parents' cheering, and lots of grateful prayers for a body that can run if I teach it to.

Feels weird to have the race finished! 
Now we're just ready to finish being sore :)

By Popular Demand

And by popular, I mean Michael's.

 

This is the most vicious, terrifying harbor seal we could find on Google Images. 

I guess it does add a little legitimacy to his story.

Seattle | Long Post, Long Time Coming

I think Michael and I possibly drove farther than any other BYU students over Presidents' Day weekend. Maybe that's why I'm not blogging about it until now? A lot of homework time was sacrificed in the making of this trip.

Look, Idaho! And that, my friends, is the only picture of a "Welcome to (insert new, exciting state here)" sign that we got. BUT I added two to my list; this was my first time to Oregon and Washington. Northwest corner, check.

We drove up to visit Allison and her fiance, Adam. Even though we heard a lot about Adam last summer, we still wanted to check him out before she marries him in June.

We approve.

Adam is going to medical school in Seattle, and Allison moved there after Jerusalem. They were so nice to give us the grand tour of their city! We loved visiting them.

Seattle in one word: colorful. Interpret that as you will. Look, the city has trolls under bridges. Three Billy Goats Gruff style. We climbed it.

And picked its nose.

The market! Saturdays and markets are just meant to go together. 

London taught me that. 

Sometimes that lesson causes some sentimental Saturdays when I have no market access. 

Pike Place Market. It's famous. 

We watched a movie in 8th grade once to learn about being positive employees no matter where we worked. 

The whole movie focused on Pike Place Market. 

Must have been memorable because I don't know why I'm bringing that up.

They really do throw fish a lot.

This...is the gum wall. 

I just really like it because every piece on that wall is not on the ground, and not on my shoe. They're also not under a desk in the library. I am very grateful for this wall.

Mmm, more markets. I wish I did my shopping here every week.

And I wish someone brought me these every week. 

Flowers from a market, what's better than that?

Don't worry, that was hypothetical -- I know you won't be able to come up with anything.

They're getting married in DC on June 18th, people. 

And I will be there! That's where I'm doing my internship to finish up school. Then after that I will ... oh wait. I have absolutely no plans after.

Let's not dwell on that.

I just liked this.

Don't tell Allison, but the REAL reason we went up to Seattle that weekend was for the Pacific Northwest Yo-Yo championship. Michael is obsessed.

Ok, that's not true. But we did spend two hours a few minutes being jealous of a lot of insanely talented yo-yoers. I felt like we discovered an entire hidden community. But then we saw other BYU sweatshirts and I realized that we didn't really discover anything - Mormons are all over free entertainment.

We rode a ferry out to Bainbridge Island one night. People can bring cars onto ferries. I tried not to think about that too much... but I feel like any boat with cars on it has a good chance of sinking. 

Water robs me of my faith.

It was incredibly windy and enjoyable. The front of the ferry was almost too windy to handle. There were some small children that couldn't get enough of it, actually. I was convinced they were going to be blown off the boat.

Water, no faith, remember?

Michael has a rough past with the Puget Sound. I shouldn't tell you this because Allison has the copyright to the story, but he once faced a vicious harbor seal in those waters. He was just paddling along, then suddenly a growling seal emerged from the water and tried to climb onto his kayak. Somehow he managed to fight it off with his paddle, but once he pushed it back, his kayak flipped over.

I think he was a little nervous during the ferry ride, but it was good for him to get back to the scene of the incident. Closure.

See? Vicious.

We accomplished a lot over the weekend, including this ridiculously hard puzzle. Don't be fooled by the picture, in real life all of the pieces look pretty much identical. 

Really, though.

See? It was hard. But we did it. For some reason we just couldn't leave Seattle without seeing the finished product.

And then ... we had to get in Saturn Saturn and drive home. Fourteen hours, again. 

I thought I would finally experience the feeling of wanting a road trip to be over and actually get sick of driving.

Didn't happen.

If fourteen hours isn't my limit, I wonder what is? I need to find out...

Look, Washington is beautiful.

The entire weekend was sunny, the whole rain reputation must be a myth.

We spent all of Thursday in the car, played Friday, Saturday and Sunday, then drove...

and drove...

and drove...

...home on Monday. 

I. Love. Road Trips.

p.s. This is Oregon. We stopped at a lookout point because I had to touch it. Now it is officially counted on my list :)

Next weekend: Road trip to Moab! It's race time, people.