Grass

The house I moved into had been vacant for a few months so the lawn was a little long. Then I moved in and didn't care so I haven't touched it. My boyfriend, Mike, apparently really cares about lawn maintenance however, so he has been nagging me for a while to buy a lawn mower and cut the grass.

Yesterday, I was chatting with Mike on the phone and he asked how my lawn looked. I jokingly (but seriously) replied, "Crappy, okay!" Then he quietly said, "But I mowed it today..." I went outside and sure enough my lawn looked perfectly mowed. I hadn't even noticed.

This taught me two things:
1) I really, truly do not care about how my lawn looks; and

2) I have a really, really, really nice boyfriend who does care how my lawn looks.

We Ran

After 3.5 months of training, we finally got to run the marathon this Saturday. It was pretty much what everyone said it would be... way hard. Since none of us could walk after the run, we mostly just layed around and watched movies and let my mom feed us. I am still wondering when my quads will allow me to descend stairs normally.

Now I am just looking forward to 0.5 marathons. I was feeling great at 13.1.

The Day Katie was Born

In honor of the day our lovely Katie was born, a bunch of her faithful followers hiked in the blistering heat to the top of Table Rock (that is just how devoted we are to her). Being sweaty and parched made us all the more grateful for the darling little lunches Nikki and Shyla had prepared for us.

They were even in cute little lunch boxes. After we ate, we each wrote a few birthday wishes for Katie and sent them up to heaven on 99 red balloons (or maybe 12... I lost count).



From there the pilgrimage migrated to my house where we met up with even more friends (the less devoted who didn't make the trek to Table Rock) and had some crepes. It was good times. Thanks for being born Katie!

Narrows

The Narrows is a spectacular sandstone canyon that terminates at the Temple of Sinawava in Zion's National Park. For the small price of hiking in a river for at least ten hours, you can be in the midst of spectacular painted sandstone cliffs, and waterfalls, and snake grass. As Brigham said, leaving feels like "getting kicked out of the Garden of Eden."

Just right!

I really like to mountain bike. Except that I don't really like going uphill or downhill. (Uphill makes me tired and downhill is scary). Otherwise, I am quite a hard-core mountain biker.

However, those two little exceptions sometimes put quite a kink in my mountain biking enjoyment. Whenever I go biking I get way behind on the climbs because I am weak and slow and I get even more behind on the downhill because I hold my brakes with a kung fu death grip.

But yesterday, a few of us went to a biking park and Steph and I found the perfect path. It wound around a lovely hill and all the climbs ended just before I got out of breath and none of the decents were steep or rocky enough to be scary. It was like the hill knew me and wanted to make me happy. And I was happy.

The bike park also included a terrain park for lunatics like Aaron and Mike.