Utah temples

It's on my bucket list to go to all the temples in Utah and Idaho and do an ordinance of some kind.

Logan
Brigham City
Ogden
Bountiful
Salt Lake 
Jordan River
Draper
Oquirrh Mountain
Timponogos
Provo
Provo City Center- construction
Vernal
Payson- construction
Cedar City- construction
Monticello
St. George


Rexburg
Idaho Falls
Twin Falls
Boise- been to two sealings, but I've never actually done an ordinance
Meridian - construction

I'd say I'm doing pretty good.

Whole30 Day 12

I'm on day 12. Today is not a good day. I'm very frustrated that since I started this I don't have ANY energy to run. My day to day energy levels seem to be fine, but when I go out to run there is nothing in the tank. Today it's really getting to me and making me mad. REALLY mad. I have a half marathon in a month and I have gone from 10 minute miles before I started this to 12 minute miles. Not encouraging. AND I'm suppose to be upping my mileage, but I barely have the energy to run a 5K. I think it's a combination of other things in life stressing me out, the new way of eating, and PMS that have me really hating this today, but that doesn't change the fact that I want to cry and go eat some carbs that will actually give me some GO when I run.

On a brighter note: I made my own lara bars and they turned out yummy and they were super easy. You can find the recipe here.  I haven't done the math yet to determine if it's actually cheaper to make my own, but at least I know that if it is, it's worth the time to make them on my own.
I also made my own coconut flakes. I'll attempt coconut milk and coconut flour next.
Look at me, being all domestic and adventurous.

Last day of freedom

I'm super ticked this got deleted. Here goes round 2. If this one gets deleted, I'm taking it as a sign that I shouldn't do this.

My friend Kari has convinced me to give the whole30 challenge a try. Basically I cut out all food. But seriously here is what I can't eat.

• Do not consume added sugar, real or artificial.
• Do not eat grains. This includes pseudo grains like quinoa. 
• Do not eat legumes. What the heck!? I thought those were good for you.
• Do not eat dairy. With the exception of something I've never even heard of. Ghee anyone?
• Do not eat white potatoes. Really?! I'm from IDAHO!! smh
• Do not consume alcohol in any form. Finally an easy one.  
• Do not consume carrageenan. I don't know what that is, but spell check is telling me it's misspelled the replacement word for it is carnage. I think I'll avoid that one. No MSG or sulfites.
• No Paleo-fying baked goods, dessert and junk food. 

Basically the next 30 days will be filled with vegetables, fruits, meats, a lot of label reading and creativity. I've done no sweets for a month. No meat for a month. We'll see how I do with this ^^ awesome monstrosity. At least this time I'm not doing it by myself.

Tonight Kari and I are menu planning and grocery shopping and having our last non whole30 friendly meal. Hot dogs on the grill and Rita's for dessert.

I'll blog about it here and blow up instagram with obnoxious hashtags about my weird sauce food. At least facebook will be safe.

Just don't offer me a snickers. I don't think I have that much self control. 

Toenails are for sissies.

If a year ago someone had told me I would run a marathon, I would have laughed in their face and told them they were crazy. Turns out, I'm the crazy one.
Back in the beginning of July my visiting teacher Lori somehow talked me into running a marathon with her. I don't know how she did it. She must have said something very convincing or maybe I just don't have the ability to tell people no.
At any rate I started my training with only 10 weeks to go. Training is not fun. It's very time consuming and what normal person really enjoys getting up early on a Saturday to run 19 miles? Definitely not this girl. But I did it.
Sadly the marathon was the same day my dad had a 50 mile bike race so mom and dad wouldn't be able to come. THEN dad had to work Friday night at the MoTab concert so they couldn't even just skip his race. I was a bit sad. I mean a marathon is kind of a BIG DEAL. Oh well. My cousin was going to come and cheer for me as were a couple girls from my ward.
So Friday I headed up to Salt Lake to get my packet. Then I went to stay with an old roommate from college. We went out to dinner and caught up on what's been happening in life. Then we were back at her house. It was only 9 so we decided to put in a movie. Walk, don't Run. I recommend it to anyone. It was super funny and cute Lindsey left a note on my bag in the morning that said Run, don't Walk and a good luck message. It was a great way to start my day at 4 a.m.
I got to the bus with plenty of time and we headed up the canyon. It was a very long bus ride. I headed straight from the bus to the porta potty line and as luck would have it I found Lori! In the dark! at 6:15! But the line was slow moving and when it was finally my turn, the race started. Oops.
So I finished my business and then got out there. It was just after 6:30 and kind of cold. I had forgotten my long sleeve shirt, but they had given us some gloves so I just hoped I'd warm up after a mile or two and sure enough at 2.5 I was tossing the gloves to the side.
The canyon was pretty steep and by mile 8 my knees were hurting pretty bad. I was glad I had decided to wear my knee brace. I took some advil or aleve or whatever they gave me at the first aide station and kept going. The canyon was BEAUTIFUL!!! Perfect for the first day of Fall. The temps were great and the leaves were amazing.
Coming out of the canyon at mile 14.5 I could hear someone cheering for me. I was expecting my cousin to be there so I was looking for him. Instead I see this man on a bicycle and had to do a double take. IT WAS MY DAD!!!! I almost started crying right there. He biked around with me and ahead of me for about 3.5 miles. It was good to have him there. The uphill started at about 15.5 and I was getting kind of tired. Mile 19 was super painful with it's downhill again. My muscles did not appreciate that at all. From there on out it was a mile at a time. Usually it was more of a song at a time. Lori and I were together from about 15 to 20. Then I could always see her just ahead of me.
At mile 22 or 23  (it kind of starts to run together by this point) I was super mad at the world. I hated everyone and everything and I was ready to be done. Dad found me again around this point and helped me through and then dad was with me again through mile 24 and my cousin was at mile 25. I was SO thirsty by this point and that last mile might as well have been another complete marathon.

My cousin walked with me through the aide station while I drank all my water (3 cups) and was still thirsty but still had that last mile to go. It was awful. My right big toe had started to hurt at mile 23 because of a blister and it was hard to figure out how to run without that hurting super bad. At mile 26 that blister popped and there was no way I was going to run with my shoe rubbing against that. So I took off my shoe. I was going to run with just one shoe on but that was awkward so I took off the other one and ran the last .28 miles in my socks. I had just enough left in me to run across the finish line, shoes in hand, and then I was completely spent. I cried.

I can't believe I actually did it. It was hard and not very fun, but what an accomplishment!
My mom and dad drove me home and stayed for a while, but they had to head back to Idaho because my dad had to work today.
It was good and I suppose I'm glad I did it. I'm feeling pretty sore today and I imagine tomorrow will only be worse. I lost one toenail in training and I'm going to lose both my big toenails. They hurt almost as much as my muscles. We saw a sign as we were running that said "toenails are for sissies". Guess I'm not a sissy.
I'd do it again if I didn't have to train for it, but it just takes too much time. For all you who can keep on doing it, kudos to you. As for me, I think once was enough.

Mile 22? Maybe. Dad said smile, I said no. He said fake it. So I tried.

I'll keep my toenails from here on out.

March Madness

Good thing I hadn't gotten far since everything I had just got erased. Oh computers. I did two things for March Madness other than the normal basketball thing. My April Fools joke was a whole new kind of madness for me, but that's another story. You can read about it here.

The second one has to do with my New Year's challenge. If you missed the results for February you can read about it here. I didn't post it until recently since it had to do with dating and I was working on the aforementioned April Fools joke.

So March Madness. Deb, one of the greatest people ever, invited me and a whole bunch of other girls from our Relief Society to do her version of March Madness. Read The Book of Mormon in a month.

I was very hesitant to take on this challenge. I love to read, but what a daunting task. 531 pages of scripture. That's 18 pages a day! This isn't Harry Potter, where you just can't put it down and can read for hours and hours. This is scripture. For those who have read The Book of Mormon you know what I'm talking about. In the end I decided that I could do it. That is, afterall, what a challenge is about. Pushing yourself.

The beginning was amazing! I found it very easy to keep up with the reading schedule and I was really getting a lot out of it. As time went on, it got more difficult and I'm ashamed to say, it may not have been the quality reading it should have been. After a week of always being 2 days behind I finally caught up.

I would have made it if I hadn't decided to go to the movies on Saturday night. We Bought a Zoo. See it. So good. Anyway, when I got home from the movie at 12:15. I sat down and finished the last 6 pages. April 1, 2012 12:30 a.m. I finished The Book of Mormon.

What an amazing book that truly testifies of Christ, gives us answers to our questions and guidance for our lives. I know it is a book of God. What a great blessing to have it in my life.

I give myself an A on this challenge. I'd give myself an A+ but I missed it by 30 minutes.

February follow-up

In case you missed it, this month was my birthday. My friend Katie decided she wanted to put me on her own version of the dating game.
I didn't really like that idea too much. HOW EMBARRASSING!
So she compromised and just gave me 3 dates. She planned and paid for them and my friend Aubrey found the guys to go on these dates. Since I was getting 3 dates with no effort on my part, I decided to switch February and March as far as challenges go. We'll be cooking in March and I did the dating in February.
Week 1. The play date with Ryan.
There was a plastic baggy with slips of paper containing different activities, you drew one out, did it, then picked another. We modified this, pulled out all the slips and decided what we wanted to do. We ended up going to the Bean Museum on BYU campus (for all you non-BYU people, it is not a museum of beans like I thought, it's a wildlife museum named after some dude named Bean). We then got ice cream at the creamery and finished up the afternoon with a modified version of a game out of the bag. It was fun.

Week 2. Pick a letter with Ben.
We picked letters out of a bag and then had to think of a restaurant, dessert, or activity that had that letter. We ended up going to dinner at Los Hermanos and then we were going to get cake, but never actually did. While we waited to get in for dinner we walked around Provo and played the modified game from week 1. After dinner we played some more games and had a lovely time.

Week 3. Progressive dinner with David ???
Pull a different restaurant out of a bag for an appetizer, dinner, and dessert. Sadly this one didn't happen. 3 days before the date, he cancelled. Why did he cancel, because he got a girlfriend. How do I know this? Because I figured out who it was going to be and we're facebook friends. Facebook tells all. (at least in this case). I saw him recently and he asked me how my last date went. I told him it didn't happen. You could just catch a smirk on his face (but only if you had been watching for it. Maybe it was my imagination) He doesn't know that I know it was suppose to be him. It's been having an internal battle for me to not say something like, "yeah, he bailed on me because he got a girlfriend". Just so he knows, that I know. I suppose since I haven't actually done that I get some points. Too bad I'm not on a little higher plain to not even think it. Oh well.
So instead of going on said date, I went shopping with Pam. I don't especially like shopping, but we had a good time. For my week 3 I'm going to count my trip to Zion with Wes and Aaron. We were in the car together for A LONG TIME!! Longer than any normal date should be. We played the game from the previous 2 dates and I had a great time. Call me a cheater if you want, but I'm totally counting it.
Date 4. Miniature golf with Ryan.
That's right, Katie's plot seems to have worked since Ryan (week 1) asked me out for a second date. We went a played black light miniature golf. It was really fun and I won! He might argue that point, but I was the only one who got a hole in one on one of the hardest holes of the course. He said that himself. I took my camera but I forgot to take a picture. Oops.

January results

Can I just say I'm really glad January is over? This whole no spending thing is the pits. I need some real food. Tortillas just aren't going to cut it anymore. My cute visiting teacher felt so bad for me she sent me home with oranges and fruit leather just so I wouldn't have to live on tortillas alone. (I'm not really living on only tortillas, but from the looks of my fridge you wouldn't know that).
So the results for January's challenge. I'm going to give myself a B+. I had 5 cheats I guess you could call them. The first one was when chicken was on sale. Those marque board things outside the grocery store work. I wouldn't have even known chicken was on sale. Dang you advertising!
Second, I'm a mentor for 4-h and I went rollerskating one week with my girl Clara. It was only $3, but still . . . whatever, I didn't fall and we had fun.
Third, I went out to eat with a friend. She has been in Florida for the last 8 months and is leaving for Guatemala like yesterday or today or something. I wasn't going to tell her that I'd just have to pass when I hadn't seen her in FOREVER. Relationships are way more important.
Fourth, I had to put gas in my car. I'm not a fan of walking everywhere. Especially when my ward activities are 4 miles away (one way) and at night.
Fifth, probably the lamest one, I bought the new Star Trek on amazon for a total of 5.78 (includes shipping). 2 disc set! I know, so lame. Whatever, I'm gonna watch me some Chris Pine and love every minute.
Not a complete success but not a complete fail either. Grocery store, I'll be seeing you tomorrow. February, I'm ready for you. Let's try some new food!!!!!