June 20th

June 20th marked a day in history for me. I ran my first 5k. It was exhausting and yet wonderful at the same time. I had 2 friends run with me. Back in March I asked my friend Becky to start walking/running with me and the Couch to 5K program. I went to Hawaii and she kept trudging along so she did a lot better than me. Cris and the kids were great cheerleaders. I had no idea he was going to do this, (I had planned on him taking beginning pictures and finish pictures) but he drove with me the entire way so here are a few photos of my journey.
This is the beginning, have no idea where I am in this picture, somewhere in the back.
I ran past Cris here, notice my hands in I Love You sign? I was signing to my kids the entire race!
This was about the 1st mile mark where I saw Cris and the kids for the first time. Rysa was in her car seat clapping and Cayten was cheering me on from the window.
Here is the 2mile mark. I wanted to give up here but seeing my cute husband and kids really pushed me along. I had just gotten done going up a huge hill.
This is the finish. My friend Becky (mentioned above) had already finished the race with her husband but came back to where I was and finished with me. Such great friends! ! !
The end was the most AWESOME experience ever. I had chills going up and down my entire body as I realized I had accomplished one of the biggest goals of my life.
And here I am finishing. I am hoping to run another on July 24th and my goal now is to shed 5 minutes off. I should be able to, I have about 5 weeks. After I shed the 5 minutes off, I am going to work at getting to 30 minutes and hopefully continue to get better. I am so glad that after running this I am not saying ok I did it, that's the end, but dreaming about the next race!

Swagbucks

There is a little icon at the top of my blog for SWAGBUCKS. I don't know if any of you have heard of it but it is WONDERFUL! If you are like me and have a million questions a day that you search on google, you should try swagbucks. All it is, is a search engine that gives you points. Those points eventually accumulate to rewards such as gift cards to places like amazon.com . It is said that on average a person can earn 3-5 points a day and you get a $5 gift card to amazon at just 45 points. Not bad for just seaching like you normally would. If you click through my link, I get points to, so start clicking!

What I've Been Up To . . .

I am currently training for a 5k. My first one will be on June 20 at 7:45 AM. I am pretty excited. I am hoping to get Cris to run it with me but we don't really have anything to do with the kids, anyone willing to come help, there is a big parade afterwards! In July I will be doing one in Bear River for the 24th of July. I am hoping to find another one for August and then in September I will be running the Top of Utah 5k here in Logan. I am so excited I have come this far and I hope to continue on this journey!

Splish Splash

Today the kids and I went outside and filled up the pool while Cris was mowing the lawn. It was GREAT fun. In the beginning, Clarysa and Cayten didn't like how cold the water was but Clarysa was the first to start having fun by sitting down and splashing everyone. We love the warm weather!

More Pictures

This is a place called Iao Valley on Maui. It was beautiful. I had a chance to play with my shutter speed and learned how to make the water look like that!

The next few are of Haleakela on Maui . . . this was SO worth waking up at 3:00AM to see. It was so peaceful, beautiful, wonderful place to meditate, and cold . . . but oh, so worth it!

Quick Post

We are home, and oh it feels so good to be home, other than the real world has hit! We came home and we have a whole lotta junk to do . . . including figure out our sprinklers, finish our back yard (really, this is last on the list, mainly trying to keep it under control!), put in our gate for our fence, and deal with kids . . . Oh the joys of the real world, but I wouldn't give it up for anything!

I am hoping to work on some photos in the next few days to show you all our wonderful, beautiful, trip. I took over a thousand photos (the joys of digital) so I am going to post a few here and there as the weeks go on!

There is so much to catch up on in this internet world that I fear it isn't going to happen. Instead of going through all 200 or so blog posts I haven't yet read, I am going to say . . . I will read them, I have read some, but I wont comment, not enough time in the days! But I will start fresh and start leaving comments soon!

Sunrise at Haleakela

More . . .

Yesterday we had the opportunity to go to Pearl Harbor. That place has been the main reason I wanted to come to Hawaii for a long time. It was beautiful, somber, and wonderful. I will post more pictures of that when we get home.


Today we went to Kualoa Ranch (where Cris's brother works). They film Lost there, and have filmed many others such as Pearl Harbor, 50 First Dates, Mighty Joe Young, etc. It was pretty cool. While we were on the beach in the early morning (PRIVATE BEACH=AMAZING) there were big and little crabs everywhere. If you are ever on a beach and see little wholes in the sand, if you dig, you will eventually find a crab most likely. Cris found this one . . . it pinched him too LOL




We went snorkeling and on a catamaran. While on the Catamaran, we circled China Man's hat. We also did Kayaks. While snorkeling we saw a huge ole turtle. It was AWESOME! I am SCORCHED today even though I used sunscreen.  I guess I will have to layer it on even more UGH!