A new year, and a real blog post!!

Well, one of my goals for this year is to do better at blogging. I am hoping to be able to print it off at the end of the year as a journal... so we'll see how that goes. Being the last day of the month I figured I should update as to what Marcus and I have been up to this New Year!

Well over Christmas break we were really busy. First, I ran in a race called the 12 K's of Christmas. A 12k is 7.5 miles, so my goal was to do it in one hour. I ended up doing it in 59 minutes and 2 seconds so I was REALLY excited! Also, with that time I took third place so I got a medal!

After that was Marcus's graduation! I am so excited for Marcus to be done and I am so proud of him for all of his hard work and perserverance! He ended up graduating from ASU with a bachelors degree in communications and a minor in sociology. As pleased as I am that he graduated, I am a horrible blogger and didn't even take any pictures. Sorry, but I'm sure you can imagine it just fine...

That same day my sister Danica got to town and was able to go through the temple for the first time. It was an awesome experience! It was so cool to have my mom, dad, me, Marcus, Duskin and Danica all in the temple together at the same time. I know Sage was there as well... 4 kids down and three more to go:)

Next, Marcus and I went with a group of friends to Gammage to watch "The Forgotten Carols." It was a good play and had such a great message, it was the perfect thing to get me in the Christmas mood! We had such a good time with these guys, and are so lucky to live so close to all of them!

For Christmas we headed up to Eagar for a couple of days. Christmas was so awesome and it was great to spend it with family! (Again... no pics. Hopefully one day I'll get better at taking pictures!) The day after Christmas was Duskin's mission farewell. He will be spending the next two years in Santa Cruz Bolivia! I am so proud of him and so excited to get letters and hear of his experiences down there. I have already received a couple and they make me cry everytime... anyways, here are a couple of my favorite pics of that.

Then, at the beginning of January, Marcus's parents treated us to Joe's Crab Shack as part of his graduation present. It was SO good!!! I LOVE crab now and I would recommend that place to anyone. It is a little pricey, but so great. Plus, you get to eat the whole meal completely with your hands, no utensils... That's my kind of meal!

 Then school started, this is my last semester of undergraduate classes! All I have after this semester is my internship! Yay! School this semester will be hard, however I am so excited for all that I will learn and I know it will be fun.

Lastly, this past weekend I ran in the London's Run half marathon out in Queen Creek. It was a great race for an awesome cause and I was so glad to see so many participants! I have been training for this race for the past three months so I got really nervous the morning of because I was really wanting to hit my goal! Almost exactly a year ago I ran the PF Changs half and it was my first. My time was 2 hours and 4 minutes. So when I started training this year I was really hoping to break two hours. As I continued to train I realized that I should be able to do that no problem so I set a more ambitious goal of breaking 1 hour and 50 minutes. I knew I could do it, but it would be hard! Well, the race started and I was feeling good. I was running faster than I needed and I just kept on going. By mile 10 I was really starting to feel it, but at that point I knew all I had left was 3 miles, I run that far all the time! So I pushed through the pain and ended up with the time of... drum roll please... 1 hour 44 minutes and 6 seconds! I couldn't be more happy with how it turned out! I felt great and actually ended up placing third in my age group at this event as well:) Anyways, sorry for the marathon post, but thanks for reading it all if you did. Until next time...

PS- Shay this was for you!