Hard Work Pays Off

Marcus got accepted to BYU!!  Rise and shout, this cougar is out!  We were so excited that it's official.  He had an agreement with the lacrosse coach so if he didn't get accepted, the coach could pull some strings, but it's awesome that Marcus got in without needing any strings pulled.  So now he's officially accepted! I wish there was a video of me opening the email and screaming my brains out.  Marcus was at work assisting for Randy so he had me check for him.  He was underwhelmed but relieved. We celebrated by dressing up in our BYU finest and eating hot dogs for dinner, Marcus's favorite.

There wasn't much time to celebrate because Marcus and Randy were catching a red-eye to Costa Rica where they spent a week doing dental work on refugees from Nicaragua.  They flew down with a few other families from our community and worked their tails off.  Randy was living his dream, Marcus was thankful for the experience but came home exhausted and ready for a vacation, and I stayed home with the rest of the boys and enjoyed NOT working my tail off.

Randy has a million pictures from the trip but here are a few of the many he texted to me.  Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of the very happy people who received amazing treatment, even if it was a bit rustic.

Fire Dancers on the Beach

Church on Sunday

A friend on their balcony

Corner of Love (a general dentist, oral surgeon, endodontist, ER doc, and lots of kids and wives to support)

I'm pretty sure Randy has never been this happy in his life

Marcus didn't like working all day without a lunch break.  But he did it without complaining.  He got to use his Spanish so if he gets a mission call to Minnesota, at least he had a cool foreign experience. 

I Run

Early Saturday morning, I crawled out of my nice warm bed so I could drive up to Boston with my friend {she's from Farmington, UT!} to run in the BYU Alumni 5K.  The wind was bitter cold and I sprinted at the start just to try to warm up my body.  I even paid a $25 registration fee for this torturous run in the cold which probably sounds like a dumb thing to do, but it was fun.
I love to run. 
I'm not awesome at it by any means but I accepted my mediocrity a long time ago.  Speaking of a long time ago, I ran a marathon.  It took me a little over 4 hours to run and it made me so sick of running I vowed I'd never do another one.  Still haven't. 
Anyway,  I've had a couple awesome running experiences {read here}, but most of the time I'm just out running so I can cope--Cope with life, cope with death {read here}, cope with my kids, cope with my love of cheesecake {read here}, just to name a few.
Now, for the first time in ever, I have a couple running buddies.  We run together every Saturday morning, rain or shine.  We talk the whole time while we huff and puff and I love it.  It's the next best thing to running with my sisters.  Here's a few pics of me with my sisters back in the day when I could run fast simply because I was young and healthy. . . .those were such good days.  Sigh.

Wasatch Back Ragnar 2007 - The last photo of all 5 sisters together. 

Running the Farmington Festival 5K - a family tradition

Winning the 5K - Four of us placed in our age group.  We were young so we were fast!