Marathon Week!

This week has been a whirlwind and it all started off with a marathon-well actually a half-marathon. Jeff and I spent a long weekend in Vegas to celebrate my birthday, our anniversary and I ran my first half marathon.

For my birthday, Jeff took me to see Cirque Du Soleil's KA. It was absolutely amazing! Aside from the performers' unbelievable talent, the set was just as impressive. When I had heard that it took over three years to build it, I had figured that it was because they had been slow workers. Once I saw what the stage was expected to do, I completely understood why. The stage was on a loft and it moved in several directions, including a vertical 90 degrees and would rotate while doing so. I can't do it justice in my description, but it was fantastic.

Then Sunday morning was my run..I hated getting up at 4:30. It started at 6am but with 15,000 people running, we had to get there early for parking.

Before the start-I can't believe I'm smiling that early.

I finished in 2 hours and 23 minutes. (My goal was 2 1/2 hours.) I finished 3941 out of the 10,076 who were running the half. Some of the things I liked about this were the many different people participating--lots of fitness levels; the running Elvi; the run through marriage chapel; running up the strip without those dirty Mexicans harassing you with their "cards"; the massages after the finish line and who wouldn't find humor in the crowd cheering you on at 6 in the morning with beers in their hand (only in Vegas right?) So I'm crazy enough to have done it and I think I'm crazier to want to do another one :) I think I can do better since I had been fighting a monster cold the week before-thank you Zicam for getting me over it in record time.

So after the run, we spend the day relaxing. That evening we went to see the Tournament of Kings. It was basically the Medieval Times show with a little Vegas added to it. It was fun though. Then Monday was time to leave. We had to get an early start since I had a class project due that evening that I hadn't even stared. Besides, my mom was ready to get back to her real life since she had taken the last 6 days off so she could watch the girls for us (yes, I know I have the best mom ever). I barely got finished with the assignment and to class on time.

Tuesday I got to go to a birthday lunch with some of my friends-I love spending time with these ladies. Then it was a Holiday party that evening for a school group. Wednesday was a rehearsal for our Friday night church party (the kids were in the program), study for a final the next morning, and work on getting ready for Thursday evening party that started at my house.

Thursday was crazy busy starting with my first final exam. I'm happy to say I passed and got an A in the class. Then, getting ready for the evening which I was happy with how everything turned out.

Friday was more relaxing with an awards program for Cara in the morning.

Then I worked most of the day and had a Church party last night. Cara played Mary in a Nativity play

She was such a good Mary. She loves playing with babies so she just spent the entire program playing with her doll.

Natie played an angel....

And I had to post this lovely picture of our friend Adam with the awesome hairpiece. His son played Joseph so he was playing with the costume...(Adam, Kaye was the one who promised not to post a picture :)

And of course the evening wouldn't be complete without a visit from Santa...

Whew...That is my week in a nutshell. I am looking forward to tomorrow. A nice relaxing Sunday, complete with a nap :)

Absentee Blogger

I just visited my blog and realized that it has been over a month since I've posted or visited any blogs. I'm almost through with this semester and I've turned in the big projects so hopefully I can get back in the habit of posting :)

Take An Intern To Work Day

I'm a student member of a national interior design association and they have an annual job shadowing week. Students are paired with designers all over the country and they get to spend a day following them and learning how they work.

I signed up to follow this cool designer named Deborah who is working as a consultant for E!, Style Network and G4 Channels. Since she is doing so much for them, they had her move her office to their headquarters down by museum row in LA. So On Friday, I got to spend an entire day there.

I won't say that it was gourmet cupcakes and free massages all day, but it was awesome. This facility is HUGE. It's like a giant maze with 2 entire floors, and part of three other ones and is designed very cool with the exposed ceilings and bright colors. We got to go through the studios where they film some of the shows and saw lots of the editing spaces that look like these dark caves where people work. I did get to have some hands on design work as I did some space planning for the expansion where Ryan Seacrest's "team" will be moving their offices. We also met with several of the team members for the buildout during the day.

It was a very busy day and I was a little sad that I had to go home. However, once I drove the hour home in traffic, I was happy to see my girls with Jeff who had taken the day off work and played Mr. Mom-well, sort of :)

DONE!!

I made a deal with Jeff because I really hate my sliding glass patio door (you don't know how many ways I've contemplated "accidentally" breaking this beast). The bargain was that I would paint the trim on the house because it had not been done since we bought it (going on 10 years ago). In return for my services and saving us all that money, he will install my french doors to the backyard.

I was all fired up and ready to tackle this project. I'm certainly not afraid to get my hands dirty and I really like using power tools. I spent several days scraping off old paint, patching areas that needed it and sanding everything down. Last Friday Tarja was so cool to come over and help me paint...at least that was the plan.

We got an early start and I figured all we needed to do was tape everything off and we'd be good to go.

See Tarja at work :)

It was about 5 in the evening when I realized 2 things: 1) we weren't going to get to paint that day because taping off took so long and 2)it was going to RAIN!! It hasn't rained since ?? and of course it has to rain when I'm all ready to do my project. So, much of our hard work was ruined when the wind and rain pulled down the plastic. When the new week started, I was determined to get this finished. One problem: you can't use an airless sprayer in the wind (unless you want to make all your neighbors really angry at you).

So Friday morning I was finally blessed with a morning of no wind :) I went outside and I heard that western showdown music in my head. I was armed with my spray gun and I was going to win this little battle. Using the sprayer was actually pretty fun and it went very fast. So after a long day of painting, I am just happy I'm finished!!!

Now it's on to my next project--Halloween costumes :)

Creepy Phone Calls

I have a separate land line here at the house for business calls and the last 2 weeks I've had a couple of strange calls come in. They occur between the hours of midnight and 3am. The first 2 times it happened, I just hung up on the calls without answering because who should be calling my business line at midnight? I couldn't just let it ring because I didn't want to wake up everyone in the house.

When it happened again last night, I decided to actually answer it. I figured it may be a sales call from another country who is completely unaware of our time zone... And I was going to answer to educate them :)

So I answer the phone and it's some guy. He calls me Kim (not Kimberly, which is what I usually get called by salespeople) and asks how I'm doing. He told me his name (but right now, I can't remember it because it was 12am and you know how when you get woken up in the middle of sleep it's hard to remember details?) So this guy wanted to shoot the breeze with me and wanted to know what I was up to. Um...it was the middle of the night and this was totally ticking me off. Not so much that I got a strange call, but that he was talking all throaty and acting like he knew me. This conversation actually lasted a mere 30 seconds (if that). When I told him that now wasn't a good time to talk (I guess I'm extra polite to creeps when I'm woken up) he asked why it wasn't a good time!! Why?!! I just hung up on him then.

Something you may not know about me is that when pushed into fight/flight mode, I'll usually fight. I don't know why, but I can't stand the thought of someone getting away with that kind of crap. So first thing, I decide to *69 this guy and see why he's making calls to me in the middle of the night and disturbing my much needed sleep. Of course he's got his number blocked. So I decide to call the phone company to see how I can get a hold of him and/or block his number. No help there. They were happy to try to sell me additional services. Some guy there named Kenny Wagner (yup, I was takin' names) was especially rude and unhelpful. They referred me to their "call annoyance line," whatever that is. You don't get to talk to a real person but they'll send you some stuff in the mail...yadda, yadda....

I know I could file a report, but honestly that seems a bit overkill. I won't change the number because I'd have to change all my business cards and materials. Besides, the number is posted on our website, so it's not like it's private or anything. This is just creepy and annoying....Anyone else have experience with this type of thing?

Perfect Hike Weather

I was supposed to spend Saturday finishing my latest project, but that was delayed because of the weather (stay tuned for my post/rant about this). I decided to take the girls for a hike. Tarja brought her kids too and and we dressed them for a hike in the mud since it had been raining and was threatening to rain even more.

The morning turned out to be perfect. The rain had brought nice cool weather, but it hadn't soaked everything so much that there was much mud. In fact, the moisture had just wet the dirt enough to keep dust from blowing everywhere when the kids ran through it.

There were a bunch of cyclists riding the trail that day, so to keep the kids moving at a reasonable pace, we challenged them to see if they could catch them. We were surprised to turn a corner and see that indeed the kids had caught up with them while they prepared to bike this hill.

Racing the bikers up was motivating-Reagan and Cara even beat them to the top :)

The hike was so much fun with the perfect weather and thanks to the bikers for giving the kids something to work for.

The Circle of Life

We just returned home from a weekend up in Apple Valley. Jeff's brother was having his new baby girl blessed. It was such a nice meeting. It was actually Fast Sunday for their congregation and I was impressed with the great testimonies given. Often this meeting can turn into "open mike" day and you get some rambling/irrelevant speakers who like to go about stories having not much to do with really anything..but I digress with my pet peeve. It was a great service.

So after the meeting, we got to spend time with his family which was great to visit. Before heading home, we had planned on visiting Jeff's grandma who is in the hospital with cancer. We had seen her a few weeks ago and she was doing quite well. So we figured we would be able to spend about an hour or so with her again on Monday before heading home in the early afternoon.

So we got to the hospital and we discover that she had taken a turn. I have never seen someone in any advanced stage of illness--or really anyone who we knew was dying. We arrived and she had one of Jeff's cousins there as well as two close friends. They let us know that she was at a point where she did not like being left alone and one of the friends told us that if we could stay longer-now would be the time. Since Jeff and I were there, eventually the others left and we were alone with Grandma. We would hold her hand and Jeff was wonderful with her. He even helped her when she had to throw up (sorry if that's T.M.I. but I have to give props for that. I can't even handle when my own kids do that). I have never felt so helpless watching this sweet grandma who I've always known to be happy and a bit feisty (in a good way-not that grouchy old person way) in such pain that the morphine couldn't even help. Eventually I had to leave to pick up the girls who were at my mom's while Jeff stayed with her a little longer until her friends came back in the evening.

As of yet, she is still with us, but when the doctor is asking if we have a minister to come see her... we know it won't be long. And upon reflection, I think that will be a good thing. She has a husband and son waiting for her and I know she will no longer be in pain.

It feels a little like our happy weekend meeting our new niece was a bit overshadowed by sadness of what is inevitable, but like Disney says, it's the circle of life.