Serving For Mom

Serving For Mom

 As many people know I lost my mother about a year and a half ago. For those that did not know my Mom she was a remarkable woman. She passed away from a rare kind of cancer, after a short fight. My mom's life was dedicated to serving others. From the scholarship board at Morgan High, to the Volleyball team, to helping every senior high school student who wanted to apply for college she would sit down and help them each individually, to serving in her church callings. Every where my Mom went she would strike up a conversation with anyone she came in contact with. She truly dedicated her life to serving. About 2 weeks ago the Morgan High School Volleyball team had a PINK night. This was started with help from my Mom 4 years ago to help raise money for Breast Cancer Research. After this night I was a little sad. I missed my Mom. We had a lot of memories together doing volleyball things.  I decided that I needed to be happy and get closer to my mom by serving. I have since made a personal goal to try and serve more. Whether it is striking up a conversation in the grocery store line or a big service. I just want to serve more. Tonight we were able to make pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and take them to some neighbors, even though this is a small act of service I hope that I made someone feel special.  Together as a family we were also able to raise over $600 to help someone close to use purchase a much needed headstone. And I have tried to always say hi or talk with people I come in contact with. From small acts to big acts I hope to keep myself accountable for my goal and post some of the acts of service on my blog. I really hope that I can continue to serve more. I miss my Mom so much, but I hope to get closer to her by serving. I also posted a few pictures of my cute girl. Girlfriend is getting so big and I do not like it.

Brooklyn LOVES that doll

Star Valley Half Marathon Recap

July 13 was the last half marathon that I was able to run. Seeing that I was a slacker and did not blog about it, I am now doing a recap. The Star Valley Half Marathon was just about 4 months after having my Brookers. So training did not go as well as I wanted it to, in fact the longest run I was able to do was only 6 miles before the race. It was really hard trying to train in about 2 months. I had to wait for the doctor to give the okay to run. It also was not the best idea to go on a 3 and a 1/2 hour horse ride the day before. I am not a horse rider, it was super fun, but unfortunately I did not get the stir ups right, and the last hour I ended up walking my horse because of the pain in my right knee.  So I new that the race was not going to be the best I have ever done.

I was lucky to be able to run the race with my cute sister-in-laws. Ethan was registered to run the race, but his knee was also having problems so he did not run. He was a great cheer leader for me, along with Brooklyn.  My overall time was 2:11 minutes, which is the SLOWEST I have ever done. I was kinda disappointed at first, but then after much contemplation I remember I just had a baby 4 months ago, with only 2 months of training, and my knee was not in good shape. In fact I basically walked the last 4 miles. So to walk four miles, and to end with a little over 10 minute miles is alright with me. I have been training a lot more for my SOJO half marathon that is coming up this SATURDAY!!! I am so worried that I will not get my goal of getting it under my goal of 1:59, but all I can do is try my best. I do not know how the race will go on Saturday, but I have trained and hopefully that training is enough.  I sure do love running half marathons! It is the perfect distance! 

The runners

One of the BEST CHEERLEADERS!

Brookers is 7 months

I can not even tell you how crazy it is to hear how old my little princess is. She is already 7 months old! It is so crazy to hear that. The time has flown by. Just a little update on what she is up to.

-Brooklyn has 2 little front teeth. I kind of feel bad that I did not know that her first tooth came through. We were sitting in church when I saw it, I did not even know she was teething. Girlfriend is always so happy it is hard to tell when things are not making her feel well. 

-Brooklyn rolls all over the place. She has not started crawling yet, but she is starting to army crawl and I have a feeling that crawling is going to be in the near future. 

-Brooklyn has always been a great sleeper, she currently sleeps about 11 hours every night and usually gets 2 naps in the day. 

-Brooklyn is always hungry, but yet she is still under weight. When she was about 4 months our pediatrician had us start supplementing with extra formula because I was not producing enough for her. At that point she was in the 12th percentile for weight, since then we have her up to the 25th percentile and the pediatrician says she is doing just fine. She is also in the 95th percentile for height. Girlfriend is tall and skinny. She currently weighs 15 pounds and is about 28 inches long. 

-Brooklyn loves being outside. Whether it is going running with me or just playing out side on the grass, she just loves the outside. Brooklyn is a very curious girl looking at anything and everything.

I am so lucky that I have such a good girl and that I get to spend so much time with her. I am in such a wonderful position where I get to spend the majority of my time with my little girl. Being a mother is the best thing in the world.

This last August my sister was so awesome and took our family pictures. I love my little family. We are so happy together and love our little Brooklyn Sherie. Everything about that little girl makes me so happy! Life is so amazing for us currently.

Our Family of Three

Love her

Love girlfriends smile

Our New Home

I am trying to play catch up on the blog. So here is the update on our home. This last May we found out that my brother Tom was getting married and they needed to move back into his condo in August. We had no intentions on buying a home, but we needed to move and the opportunity for us to buy a new home came along!

We started our journey of looking at homes in May. We looked at probably 50 homes and nothing stood out! Literally, 50 homes! We new we wanted to stay close to Ethan's school which is in Layton, but we also wanted a community that had young families that we could get to know. After a long day of looking at homes we had one left on the list. I was just ready to bag it and go home, but we stuck it out and everything about this home just made both Ethan and I feel so good! 

The home is right on the edge of West Roy/West Haven. It is in a community of young families. The house is about 1700 square feet. It has 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a living room, a family room with room for the office, and a play room (soon to be treadmill room) and a laundry room. The home is located on 0.25 acre lot with fencing so our little Lila can run and play. It was quite the process in getting the home, but we are so grateful we stuck it out and decided to buy this home. Our ward is AMAZING. Ethan is just 10 minutes from his job, I am 15 minutes from Mt. Ogden, and My other job which is a home health and hospice allows me to drive to my patients home. So the home is perfect. We are so blessed. I will post pictures when I am done decorating all the rooms.

SoJo Half Marathon Training

Yesterday I was able to do my last long run before my big half this next Saturday October 19. I was able to put in 10.5 miles, even though I wanted to do 12, I was happy with how the run went for the most part.  Ethan, Brooklyn, and I were down in Payson visiting the Fausetts so I really did not have to many running options. I just decided to go run, but I did not know how many HARD hills there were! My goodness, my body has NEVER been this sore. According to my Garmin I gain a total elevation of almost 850 feet in my run. I did just 9 miles out investigating Payson, then I needed to go to the bathroom so I went back to my sisters and  then finished with a 1.5 miles. My average pace was 9:06 per mile, a little slower than I wanted, but with the cold and the hills I am happy with my result. My goal for the half marathon is to get under my PR of 1:59 flat, I am hoping that I have trained enough to reach this goal. Only time will tell. I am excited to see how I can do, especially since I just started within this last month to increase my time.