One Year In Retrospect!

I can't believe its already been a year since I moved out to the East Coast, time absolutely flies! I've been doing a lot of thinking about where I am in my life and what the past year has meant to me, lessons learned, good experiences, etc. so I'll share my thoughts with you.

Laney and I decided to celebrate our one year out with food. If you haven't eaten at the Melting Pot, a super fun fondue restaurant, you must do it.

These are the highlights/happenings of the past year, in no particular order:
Lived, (love my roommates)

Laughed

Loved
Learned, a TON
Cried
1 year of full time employment!
Heard Obama sworn in, went to an innaugural ball!

Visited new places (North Carolina, Philadelphia, Chicago, West Virginia, Portland, Palmyra, Seattle, Disney world)

NYC 3 times!

Visitors (Julie, Doug and family)

Saw Duke University and Wake Forest

Reminisced with mission friends, President Watson visit
Experienced the Mormon phenomena of Duck Beach...and all that entails

Played LOTS of sports
Attended LOTS of sports games

Saw some amazing concerts
Became exremely patriotic, experienced 4th of July in our nation's capital!

Made lots of great friends
Fell in love with cooking
Fell in love with reading (love my book clubs)
Took a photography class, fell in love with that too (this is one of my favorite pics I took)

Did 2 ragnars

New church callings
Went to British Columbia

Enjoyed my parents' mission letters

Went to tons of embassies

Had amazing missionary experiences
Attended the temple regularly

Learned to live on a budget
Perfected my Wii skills
Attended many art festivals
Outdoor movies, outdoor concerts
White House tour
Midnight movies :)

Bought my first car!

In retrospect, its been an absolutely amazing year. I've learned a ton, strengthened my testimony of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ, spent time with family and friends, set and reached goals, developed talents, and much more. Life is so dang fun! I'm excited for another year out in DC. I love you all, really, if you're the ones reading my blog, I love you!

Theme Party!!

Last weekend some friends and I went to a lake house in Central Virginia and had way too much fun. Here's the palace:

Swimming, slip n' slide, movies, card games, and badminton were among the activities, along with a 1930's gangster party. If you don't know this about me, if you get me in a costume I, for whatever reason, completely let loose (gals...Lady Marmalade...need I say more). Here's some pictures from the swingin' party, it really was so much fun.

The crew:

The dames:Some of the most common phrases used were: "The paper boy seems to be delivering a little more than the news....if you know what I mean," "Do I ever," "Hey tuts" "That debt I owe Big Fish Johnny." "Mary Jane heard some rumors about you...and they ain't good, if you know what I mean." I think the highlight may have been Laney's wig!!

Bottom line is, Mary McMullen knows how to do it right.

Newest addition to my life

I'm finally a real adult! College grad, working woman, car owner. Boo ya.

Seattle, here I come!

I'm going to visit this place for the first time:
I'm SO excited to see my parents, Doug and fam, and Julie. Bring on the good times...and good food!

Mormon Mania!!

A few friends and I went up to Plamyra last weekend for the pageant and had such a fun time. I fell in love with outdoor pageants when I served in Mesa so I was super duper excited for this one (I may have been running around before the show like a child taking pictures with all of the characters...I just think its so fun! ha...notice the extremely excited look on my face)
I hadn't been to Plamyra or Niagara Falls for about 6 years so I was excited to see all of the church history sites. As we visited each of the famous sites there, I was overwhelmed at how sacred each of those places are. Events that changed the world happened in the sacred grove, the Whitmer farm, the Grandin printing building, the Hill Cumorah, etc. I am so grateful for the sacrifice of Joseph Smith, the whole Smith family, and the early members of the church for enduring the difficult challenges so that we can enjoy the blessings of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ today.
Whats a road trip without a few things going wrong, right? On the way up, one of the cars had trouble so they ended up renting a car in Harrisburg, PA. It poured rain during the day Saturday and completely soaked all of our camping stuff (I was against camping from the beginning...), and the kicker...2/3rds of the way through the pageant it started pouring rain so they cancelled the rest of the show! I was super bummed, but considering we saw most of it and had some great experiences at the other sites, it turned out ok. The pageant was so cool, I loved the Book of Mormon stories they portrayed. Here's some documentation of the trip:
We found some absolute gems up in Palmyra though. If you haven't been to the Chill and Grill, you haven't lived. Spicy waffle fries, giant ice cream sanwhich cookies, and huge ice cream cones are among the menu favorites. A small cone, complete with 4 scoops was $3; I felt like I robbed them, but hey, it was 4 scoops! (There's a fine line between quality, quanitity and price, kind of like Little Ceasar's versus Papa Johns...you can pay more for better quality, or less for more not-as-good pizza).And now to the title of my post: Mormon Mania. I think this pictures just says it all!Guys, you can purchase this at a local bookstore up there or for the ladies you can get the "I'm an 8 cow wife" shirt. I think 'peculiar' is the perfect way to describe us Mormons!

Ragnar # 2, will I ever stop!?

So I decided life is more fun when you take last minute, spur of the moment, verging on crazy trips...and thats just what I did last weekend! My brother Dave and his wife were scheduled to do the Wasatch Back Ragnar Relay with Becky's cousins, the Armstrongs, and one of their teammates had to drop out, so they gave me a proposal 4 days before the race...they would fly me out for the race and a quick trip up to my parents cabin in Idaho if I could maneuver to get work off. I had SUCH a good time and am so glad I did it. Here's some pictures from the race:

I was kind of worried about the elevation and dry air, which turned out okay, but the biggest thing I was worried about was my first leg of the race. This beastly 800 ft., very hard difficulty climb had me worried, but thanks to an ipod and good music, I made it up (nevermind that right in the middle of it I vowed never to do one of these again). I'm glad I got it over first. I don't think this picture does it justice, but maybe the map does.


Yes, I know I'm a runner and I've played sports all my life, but I don't run straight up hills regularly, so it was dang hard. Ironically, I was runner 12 so the outlier (unrelated person) got to finish the race for the family! Notice I do not have the family t-shirt. The person I was covering for was a guy so it just didn't work.
Highlights of the trip:
1. Cafe Rio - this was my first order of business when Julie picked me up from the airport. I had it Thursday and Saturday...yummy!
2. Hanging out with Dave. My brother is SO funny, I laughed the entire race!

3. The sight of a good Honey Bucket. All you runners know exactly what I'm talking about.
4. Finishing the race right before the 3 hour downpour in Utah. I do not envy any of the teams behind us.
5. Seeing some cousins. I decided that I have the best family ever and I am so grateful for them.
6. Going up to the cabin in Idaho. We did some fishing, canoeing, and we saw a Grizzly bear and moose right by our cabin! I missed my mom and dad so much up there. It just isn't the same without the crack of dawn fishing wake up call from my dad.


So this makes the 2nd ragnar race in two months for me, the 3rd one of the year. I'm thinking about the DC one in September and the Vegas one in October. I am crazy!

Run, Drive, Sleep...Repeat. RAGNAR RELAY!

Last weekend some friends and I drove up to New York to do the ragnar relay Friday and Saturday. It was so much fun and totally exhausting. My sister in law Heather has a great quote that totally applies in this situation: "The more miserable, the more memorable!" Totally memorable in my book: running in the middle of the night, no sleep, horrible BO smell in the car, etc. Love it!

We left early Friday morning to drive up for our 1:00 start time in Woodstock, NY. Then we proceeded to run 181 miles for 25:08 and ended the race in the Bronx (upper NYC). We had an awesome team and everyone was great runners. My van (#1) ran from 1-5ish, 11:00 pm-2:30am, and then 6:30-10:30am Saturday. Here's some action shots:

I am so sore and totally exhausted, but so glad I did it.

Here are some highlights: 1. KA getting "punked"...they changed the race course last minute and instead of running 2.9 miles, moderate difficultly for her first leg, (the categories were easy, moderate, hard, very hard) it got switched to 7.4 very hard! 2. A few of us getting lost because some genious thought the sign to turn left was the wrong way, so he switched it around. 3. Absolutely no shame about the potty business...literally. Our legs were not the only thing running, if you know what I mean. 4. KA and Ryan talking the front desk lady into letting us have a hotel room for 2 hours to take showers...and the best part of all was that it was FREE!

5. Courtney Gartz's beautiful display of the race Bible (the rules, exchange info, etc.) and Ben Harwood's excel spreadsheet predicting each runners start and finish time. This guy is amazing! He created this formula to calculate in the degree of difficulty and stuff, it was really cool. 6. Beating our predicted time by over an hour! 7. IRONMAN. So some "ultra" teams only had 6 runners instead of 12. Each person would do 2 legs. This one guy was absolutely incredible...I think he was the best athlete I've ever seen in real life. He was running at a 5:50 mile pace for like 15 miles each time!

I'm so glad I did it and I think the Fife Family is shooting for the Ragnar in Las Vegas in October! We've definitely got a whole team, thanks to in-laws. http://www.ragnarrelay.com/lasvegas/index.php . The race goes from the Valley of Fire to Lake Mead. That means no more pregnancies and stuff, ok gals? Priorities are priorities. Totally kidding, of course. Bronx or Bust!