Family Tradition

After Christmas last year Andrew decided that we should start a tradition of burning our Christmas tree after the new year. At first I said no because I thought I would cry at the sight of my beloved Christmas tree being put to death by fire, be he prevailed and we took it out in January. The tree was still pretty wet so it smoked a lot but we roasted hot dogs and had a good time. This year we waited for the weather to warm up and brought along some friends, and we of course roasted hot dogs. If you wait three and a half months the tree is way dry and it goes up in flames fast. It was so fun and the whole time we were out everyone kept talking about how excited we all are to go camping this summer. Come quickly summer vacation!!

Hot Passionate Kisses

A friend told Andrew about this, I have no idea why they call them "hot passionate kisses" but they do. First you take a grasshopper cookie and you bite a little bit off of opposite sides like so.
Then you hold the cookie partly in your mouth and stick the other half in the hot chocolate.

Suck until the hot chocolate comes all the way through the cookie and into your mouth, then eat the cookie.

When Andrew told me about it I thought he was crazy, then we just happened to be having cocoa and toast for breakfast so he tried it, he said it was amazing so I gave in and tried it too. He was right it was AMAZING!! Go ahead try it!!!

Half Marathon!!

Andrew kept asking me why I didn't blog about the half marathon. I kept telling him that I didn't have pictures since he took my camera (and lets face it, pictures make a post more worth reading), and that Lindsay posted about it so I would just be repeating what she said, plus I don't think that many people read my blog so it didn't really matter if I posted. But I stole some pictures from Lindsay's camera and since this is a form of family journaling he finally convinced me to write about it.

On March 20th I ran a half marathon for the first time in my life! 13.1 Miles!! My two goals were 1. to not walk at all and 2. to finish in under 2 hours. The last five miles were way hard and I gave up on goal #2. Who cares about time at that point? I just wanted to finish! But when I went into my sprint for the finish I was pleasantly suprised to see that the timing clock said 1:57.17 as i crossed the finish line! Yay!! I did better than I thought I would. My chip time was 1:56.08. Right after I finished my mom asked me if I would do it again, I said I would have to forget how hard it was first. But it was a ton of fun and I think everyone should experience the starting line of a race with almost 4,000 runners, craziness.

Andrew's Spring Break!!

So I just went on a service trip to the Dominican republic a couple weeks ago with a group of students from SUU along with a local doctor, two nurses, a dentist, and a dental hygenist. We left Cedar City Friday morning at 11 am and arrived in Jaibon sometime in the afternoon of the following day, there meeting up with well over a hundred volunteers from around the US. It was an amazing trip, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat! I got to know some great people from around here, and we got to help the people there and learn a TON! There is too much to list everything so I am including a list of top 10 things that impacted me the most from the experience:

10. Traffic Laws (I mean really... do they have any?)

9. No AC. The only times we had air conditioning on the trip were on the bus rides and in the airplanes (I think the airport in the DR had AC too).

8. Sticky heat (at first I wondered why people were just sitting around but then I realized they were lounging during the day b/c it's too hot to do ANYTHING)

7. Food was amazing! I was ready to get back to American food when the week was over though...

6. Living conditions (we saw countless shacks constructed of plywood and just whatever people had) (Below: an abandoned food shack)

5. Medical professionals that came with us and other groups were very selfless, humble people ready to help wherever they could (Below: Dr. Rick Barnes the Dentist and Tressa the dental hygienist)

4. People -I loved being in a position where I was able to give to these people. We taught in the schools, helped provide medical and dental care, and I even helped build the footing for a small rock wall in front of the orphanage (Below: Greg playing frisbee at school/masses at medical clinic)

3. Getting to know the Doc from here in Cedar City and hearing a little about his experience becoming a physician and about his being a physician (Below: Andrew and "Dr. Dan" en route to the DR)

2. I missed Megan more than I expected. I thought about her more and more as the week progressed. Because she was gracious enough to let me take a pic of her the night before I left I had this pic of her on the camera I got to look at from time to time so I wouldn't miss her too much

1. Monday afternoon I translated for a Doc at the medical clinic. It was as though I were the physician because I asked all the questions and explained the diagnoses. It was awesome and got me so excited for the future!

PS Did I mention we went to the beach Wednesday? And then to another on Saturday?? (Below: Beach at Puerto Plata ...I think)

agression

Do you ever wonder what your family members think of your spouse? Sometimes I do, but you don't really have to wonder what your sister thinks of your husband when she lets out her pent up aggression. Lindsay just happens to hit Andrew with the ball every time we play racquetball together, I no longer believe it is just coincidence. Tonight she let it all out, the pictures don't show it very well, but his lips are pretty swollen. One side of his face had a nice red circle on it and of course being the supportive wife that I am I laughed every time I saw it. When it happened I was laughing so hard I had to leave to spend some time in the bathroom.