Emma

I finished reading Emma, and I loved it-- you can't go wrong with Jane Austen (or I haven't thus far). The book is, cliche to say,  better than the movie, but the movie for sure enhanced my reading experience as I kept the hunky movie Mr. Knightley (actor Jeremy Northam- hubbahubba) in my head (wish I could call him "my Mr. Knightley" swooon). Best proposal ever in the movie (the book is kinda different). I know Jane wrote the book saying "I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like," but Jane I liked Emma too! It's funny how we as girls want to set people up and sometimes focus so much on one thing that we fail to see what's really going on... at least (hopefully) we learn from it. I loved the ultimately love story in it- Mr. Knightley and Emma. They are great friends first- they laugh, they argue, they correct each other, they compliment each other...it's honestly a realistic but romantic love story. A great and classic read.

Running and building

My best 5k race time ever woowhoo!!

(yes...i'm having trouble with pictures- sorry this is boring I will update it with more photos once I figure it out). I've been running lots of 5ks. I ran the first 3 Saturdays of November- a different 5K each week. Yes, yes, I know I committed to run two 10ks this year and didn't plan on doing any 5ks but plans change hahah...I'm running more and that's the point...I also wore my shirt from the first 5K when I ran the 2nd 5K and the shirt I got from the second 5K while I ran the 3rd. I really don't like my shirt from the 3rd 5K but perhaps I'll wear it when I run my first 10K?

BYU Alumni 5k Race 
My friend, Mary, asked me to run the BYU Alumni race with her here in St. George and the true blue Cougar in me couldn't turn it down. Minus taking a brief bathroom break (haha) we made pretty good time. I love Mary- she's such a good soul. She's someone who ponders a lot- not just thinks about things but actually studies and ponders about life-and then she actually applies them and lives them. I KNOW?! Such a good example! I love our conversations about life and the Gospel. She's fabulous and honestly she and I seem to be on the same page in life, and I appreciate having a friend like that around. It's good to have someone, who can relate to how you feel in life. Best quote of the whole run with Mary was when she first saw my Vibram five fingers and I commented about them as great shoes. In total surprise she said, "You call those shoes?!"Cracks me up.


HABITAT FOR HUMANITY (not a race haha)
After our run, I had signed up to finally help be at the building site for a house for Habitat for Humanity (I am on their email list for service events, but they build during the week day 99% of the time, and I can never go, but this was a Saturday so I jumped at my chance). Mary came with me. They were re-roofing a home of a Veteran. Mary and I painted a lot of the roof siding that will "frame" the roof. Then she and I worked on clean up of the yard. There were nails everywhere in their yard and the family still has small children at home, who play outside. It was such a great experience. We're also planning to take more of our friends back to HfH to build another home on December 15. That will be awesome as well I'm sure. I definitely take from granted being a member of the LDS Church. We're taught from birth that you serve others, and you serve them for free, but for those not of our faith, I'm grateful there are programs they trust to ask for help- like Habitat for Humanity. I've enjoyed restoring a school in Kenya and a medical center in Guatemala, and sometimes I forget that people just 10 minutes from my house can also use a little "rebuilding". I'm glad I went and excited to help out again.

COLOR ME RAD RACE 

This is not the "Color Me Bad" race, like my friend, Troy, thought... Color Me Bad is an only semi talented 80s band not a super fun, "non-race" race. The CMR was similar to The Color Festival I attended earlier this year, except, people were running haha. It is a totally no pressure 5k, in fact they don't even have a time clock up, so you can make stops to get "colored up". The people running it were so funny and it made the experience even more fun.
Holly originally signed up and then converted my mom and cousin to run it, and once my mom signed up, I decided I couldn't let her show me up and I signed up too haha. My sister and I really do run well together. We're the exact same height and have the same stride length etc and we push each other to keep running. I love my runs through the week with her because we talk and catch up. She and I also hadn't done a race together since the "Save a Sister" 5k in October 2009 so we were totally due for another.
My aunt, uncle and cousin, Kiersten, came up from Vegas so Kiersten could run with us. It was fun to catch up with her. She broker her vertebrae during an ice skating competition awhile back, so we did have to walk with her at certain points, but she did great and toughed it out. My mom also ran at least 2 of the 3.2 miles and for having just turned 55 a few days prior, it was great to see her healthy and in such good stride (pun intended). This was just an all around laughing and having good time race. I'm for sure signing up again some day...after I accomplish some official 10ks haha. (PS- all the funds for this race actually go to support Habitat for Humanity here in SG so I doubly felt good about it)

Run4Hearing Race- my BEST race time ever
My former grad school classmate, and fellow audiologist friend, Troy and I signed up for the Run4Hearing 5k.....on accident... Not that we didn't want to race for funding for kiddos with hearing loss, we totally did, but I thought it was a 10k not a 5k, and through a series of events that I  sum up with the word "ridiculousness", we decided we would still run this race instead of choosing another 10k elsewhere (though Troy really wants to do an 80s run or a Cahoots Challenge, both of which I'm down for). After all, we are audiologist and what better than running to raise money to help solve a problem you strive to correct on a daily basis? A truly perfect meant to be 5k for us! I will admit Troy and I did have brief "audiologist" moments throughout the race- like commenting about the kiddos now wearing the Safari hearing aids in stead of the Milos and that the new N5 cochlear implant was gonna hold up better to sweat compared to those wearing the old Freedom- but most of the time we got out of out professional selves and talked about non-audiology related things haha. I had never heard he got stung by a jellyfish while stalking a shark (which yes, I still think is so unsafe). I also died laughing as we caught up on some classmate gossip and now that Troy is a professor at our school, I get to hear the inside scoop about our former professors...his vacation story with Trahan is a classic! We have so many of the same bucket list goals and even discovered we had a few more while running this race. We are gonna pick something else to check off together.
This race ended up being my fastest 5k ever- under 30 minutes and averaging a 9 minute mile. Troy runs faster than me but stuck with me so he increased my time and pushed me more. He ended up taking 2nd place in his age bracket and I took 6th in mine. (We were beat by an audiologist who mentored both of us in school. She just might be in her upper 50s if not 60s... we thought we'd overtake her...we were wrong =). We celebrated our victory wtih Denny's and then I spent the rest of my AZ weekend wtih my friends, Tom, Valerie and Eliza. It was a fabulous weekend. I love Troy and if we lived in the same state, I'd for sure run with him more... he's not afraid to kill scorpions on a run only horny toads....

Catching up

So...I haven't updated in forever. I'm planning on finally downloading all my Guatemala pictures soon and finish a few posts about that, but I decided I just wanted to update and thinking I have to do these in order keeps me from updating, so more will come about Guatemala, but I'm going to update other things so far about other goals I've completed. I'm having trouble uploading pictures so my next few posts may be skimpy until I figure that all out...