Festival of Colors

Bill and I took one of my old roommates Saundra with us to the Hare Krishna Festival of Colors yesterday. It was so much fun! Here's some pictures of the festivities. There's the three of us in the midst of throwing the colors, what it looked like when I finally dared pull my camera back out after it had died down some, and then what we looked like afterward. What a fun afternoon! We'll definitely be doing this next year. :)

Sick and not getting better

I've had a sore throat for over a month. Yup, over a month. I finally went to the doctor the other day and she told me to get a humidifier. Now that very well may work and I plan to as soon as April comes and I actually have money again, but I'm just wondering what the deal is?! I've lived in a dry climate my entire life. We don't run our heater high, or at all if we can help it since we live on the third floor and we're plenty warm. I drink plenty of water, but yet I feel perma-dehydrated. I'm so tired of this!

Oh, and to make matters worse, the allergic tendencies I've had since high school seem to be ratcheting up these days. I've taken more allergy medication in the last 6 months than I care to think about.

I really just hate taking medicine and in the last few months I've taken more than I've needed to in years and I still don't feel very good! Sorry for the complaining post if you're reading this, but it's been an exceptionally frustrating morning and I have nothing else interesting to talk about at the moment. I could really use a very long vacation, that's all I can say.

Vice President of Events

I just applied for the Vice President of Events for the BYU Graduate Student Society. I'm so excited about the position! I hope I get a chance to interview for it. It would be right up my alley. Fun times!

Running Woes

Bill and I usually run together in the evenings, but tonight I have a commitment in Salt Lake, so I decided to go running this morning. The weather has been gorgeous these last few days, so I was only wearing shorts and a running tank top. I was maybe half a mile into my 3-mile run when I looked down and saw a wire ring on the ground kind of like a hanger. I stepped on it with one foot and apparently hooked my other foot in the ring because before I knew it I was scraping along the cement on my hands, knees, and thighs. No fun at all! The small amount of clothing I had on did nothing to shield me from the concrete! I kind of just laid there for a minute, shocked that I had fallen so fast, and then slowly got up to discover that I had torn a chunk out of my right hand and my left knee was pretty scraped up. I wasn't bleeding too much, so I decided to keep going on my run, but needless to say, my pace slowed down quite a bit.

When I got home, I started cleaning myself up and discovered that I also scraped up my right thigh and knee pretty good and my left hand is roughed up too, though nothing like my right. When I fell, I slid along on my chest and stomach a little bit, and when I looked in the mirror I realized the whole front of my tank top was covered with dust. I can't imagine what I looked like out running! Bloody knee, dirty shirt, roughed up legs and hands...I'm all patched up now, but moving kind of slow. I wouldn't call it the best start to my Friday, that's for sure. It made me want to curl up on the couch and not do anything. Wouldn't it be nice to have that luxury!

Working on Grad School Stuff

I've been working on some of my admissions stuff for grad school these last couple days. I got my official acceptance letter yesterday with a packet of information and I've been going through it and doing things like updating my personal information, changing to my married name, doing scholarship applications, looking at schedules and what my program is actually going to be like, and details like that. It makes me so excited! I just can't wait to get going in this new program and a new direction in my professional life. I feel like I've been floating along in limbo for quite awhile at the place I currently work, without a good career path, and this new direction just makes me want to do a happy dance. Actually, I've done one several times already. :) I can't wait to get back into school!

I Got In!

It's official. Nearly 3 years after I graduated with my bachelor's degree from BYU, I've received another acceptance letter from them for their Masters of Public Administration program. I'm going to grad school! I can't even tell you how excited I am. I've wanted to go back practically from the day I graduated the first time, but it's taken a few years for everything to fall into place and me to get to this point. I'm just so excited I can't even contain it!

A Book Giveaway!!! (with a twist)

I'm giving away this book:
























But wait! There's a twist to this giveaway, so read on to find out the stipulations.

A childhood friend of mine gave me this book in a similar blog giveaway and I absolutely loved it! This book has a powerful message, and this friend of mine is trying to do something to help it, via her website Thrilled by the Thought. I've decided to help her cause as well. So, if you enter this giveaway, you're signing up to 1. read it (soon), 2. give it away (on a blog, to a neighbor, whoever), 3. go back to my friend's blog, thrilledbythethought.com and tell her who you gave it away to so she can track it. I'm linked to her blog, so I'll find out as it gets passed on, as she'll blog about it. Once you read it and pass it on, please let give it to someone that will agree to the same terms.

Now, let me tell you why this book must be passed around. It is a fascinating story of how one person can change many lives. Greg Mortenson was hiking the famous K2 mountain of Pakistan in 1993 when he

got lost, nearly died, and stumbled upon a tiny village. As he was being nursed back to health by the villagers, he asked to see the village’s school. What he was shown was shocking. Boys (and a few girls) were outside in the elements (without a teacher), scratching their lessons into the frozen ground. It turns out that a teacher cost $1 a day. The village was too poor to afford that salary, so they teamed up with another village to hire a teacher. Even between the two villages, they could not afford to pay a teacher to teach every day. So on the off days, the students gathered to practice their lessons.

How many American children do you know that would dedicate that much effort to school?

Mortenson returned to America and tried to raise enough money to build a school and hire a teacher for this village. It took him a long time, but he finally found a donor who was willing to give it a shot. Mortenson returned and built the school, under extremely difficult adversities. Later, with the help of the same donor, Mortenson was able to set up a fund, called the Central Asia Institute (CAI). He has since established 78 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, with a special emphasis in helping girls receive their education. (You can read more about this book and see pictures of the schools at www.threecupsoftea.com).

Mortenson believes that the only way to end the terrible conflicts in these areas is through education.

So back to my friend's blog and what she wants to do to help Mortensen's cause. In her words:

"I believe he [Mortensen] is right. That is why I am giving away this book. Each time this book is given away, I will donate $1.00 to the Central Asia Institute, and I will invite any willing readers to do the same. It only costs $1.00 a month for one child’s education in Afghanistan or Pakistan.

So that is why it is important that if you enter to win this book, you must accept the terms to

1. read it soon and give it away
2. come back to www.thrilledbythethought.com to tell me about it
3. make sure the person you give it to agrees to give it away and follow the same terms you have agreed to"

So as to how this giveaway works. Leave a comment on my blog by March 13th to be entered into the giveaway. Send a friend over to my blog and you'll get two additional entries. If you blog about giveaway on your blog, you'll get five additional entries. You can do one or all three! Giveaway ends Friday, March 13th. I plan to donate each timet his book is passed along as well, so please help me and my friend keep this going!

Turning over a new leaf, or resurrecting an old one

Bill and I are a pretty active couple. Well, we usually are. While we were engaged we got kind of lazy. There were so many things to plan and so many commitments, that we just stopped planning extra things to do for fun and just kind of let life lead us along for a few months. We've been married for a month-and-a-half now, though, and we've spent the last couple weeks getting back into the groove of our active and more disciplined lifestyle.

Here's a few of the things we've done of late.

1. Started training for the St. George Marathon. It's my fourth, Bill's first, and I don't think I can really call myself a Utah Marathoner unless I've run this race, Boston Marathoner or not. Cross your fingers that we get picked to run it in May when they have the drawing.

2. Mostly finished decorating our apartment. We still have some pictures to put up from our wedding, but we picked out our duvet cover for our bed, hung some pictures, and outfitted our kitchen as much as we're going to at the moment.



























3. Went mountaineering with our friends the Johnsons a weekend ago. We hiked/snowshoe'd up a good majority of Lone Peak. We shoe-skied half the way down since it was so steep. It was tons of fun.












4. Hiked to Stewart Falls from the Aspen Grove Trailhead last Friday night. We had a busy day/evening, so we didn't get up there until 9:30pm and got back to the car at midnight. As we were leaving, a car of college guys drove up and started the hike. They were about as ill-equipped to hike it as you can be as it's still super snowy and icy up there. They had weak sauce shoes on and hardly any coats and just big flashlights to see. Bill and I seriously wondered if they'd make it back safe, but I didn't hear anything so I think they must have been fine.

5. Saturday we went shooting with Vince and Megan, Bill's brother and his fiance and after our stake conference that evening went out to Tucano's for dinner. What a fun trip! Vince has lots of guns, so we had a great time shooting out on the other side of Utah Lake.





















It feels good to be active again. I hate feeling lazy and unproductive. I'm not working full-time anymore, as of the first of the year, so it's been nice to have the chance to sleep in a lot and have a more relaxing lifestyle. I'm happy to be speeding up the pace again though. Now if I can only get the letter from BYU saying (cross your fingers) that I've been accepted into my grad program, things will be just about perfect.

Weird Formatting

So posting a bunch of wedding photos really made the formatting of my blog weird. I'll have to fix that soon. Not tonight though!

Some of my favorite wedding photos

I got 2 DVDs with 808 photos from the wedding. Yeah, that's right, 808 photos. And you know what? Most of them were awesome! Here's a bunch of my favorites, but this is seriously a drop in the bucket of all the photos we have.