Kaiizen!! Yea! I have always loved my involvement with Kaiizen and finally did something with them again. They helped out at the Utah half iron man down in Provo on Saturday. Wonderful is probably the right word to describe my feelings about the event. I wasn't feeling wonderful the whole time, but that's just part of being PREGNANT. I've never mentioned that on here.. but I am. That is also quite exciting. (I was tempted to wait and see if Jake would announce it if I waited long enough. He loves announcing it. I don't. But we're both super excited about it and are almost through the first trimester--Hallelujah!--so chances of a miscarriage are decreasing rapidly. Maybe after that I'll love to announce it too! We'll have to find another way to get Jake to post on here..) So anyway, back to Saturday. It was a cold, wet, windy day. They started the race 45 minutes late and almost cancelled the swim because of the wind. They ended up cutting the swim in half, and then they had the biking, then the running. (Probably close to the following distances: Swim .6 miles, Bike 56 miles, Run 13.1 miles) I arrived probably 10 minutes late for my group which ended up to be quite serendipitous. No one really knew what was going on. I waited around for a few minutes before my friend Luke from Kaiizen showed up. Oh how glad I was to see Luke!! We waited around for a few minutes and then it was constant work from then on! We were placed at the first and last aide station for the runners. They all passed our station 6 times through their two lap run! So we were of vital importance and appreciated the help some of the supporters gave us. We filled drinks, cut bananas, handed out drinks, and treats, and directed the runners along their path. Towards the very end of the race, we heard a story about one of the people in the race, Kyle Garlett. He had a heart transplant a few years ago after battling 3 separate forms of cancer. Our very own Lance Armstrong! He is training for a full iron man in October. So that was another pretty cool part. So what was so wonderful about it all? It was cold, wet, hard work. And my goodness, for the most part those runners just treat us volunteers like crap. They won't stop to actually take a cup from you and don't care if there is a trash can. They throw their trash down and just expect that someone less important than them will pick it up. Wow. That took some getting used to. But several did thank us for being there and helping them out and many were polite. It wasn't the runners. It wasn't Luke's constant jokes. It was the feeling of serving! I am blessed to have a job and a church group where I am continually in the arena of serving, but it's SO DIFFERENT when it's something separate from all that. Something I never would have had to do. I am energized and rejuvenated when I get involved with that kind of service. I was so grateful for the reminder of what Kaiizen meant to me and how lucky I was to get involved with them. I was able to go down to Mexico with them on 5 trips and those were trips I will never forget! Para los niños!!
My goodness! I have so much on my mind today. This could be an interesting post.. First of all, life has been great these past couple of weeks. I've been a little sick, which is never fun, but we've been blessed beyond measure! This is probably going to be a long post, so if you're just checking in, all is well. Otherwise, read on.
So I had a fun dream last night. It was a family reunion type-thing in some remote country town. My family was there, the Woolleys were there (my awesome Oregon cousins), and the Pages were there (our close family friends in California). Plus lots of random friends, almost like you'd imagine heaven I guess--always seeing people you love. That's probably the only part of the dream that resembled heaven. So I was with my family and we were waiting for something to happen before we could walk across town to the fair. Some kid from another family, that I think I was supposed to know but I'm not sure who they were, lent me this cool little go-gadget about the size of a mini oreo that you stick on the road under your shoe and try to balance on it and when you step down, it has a motor that propels you forward. (click here for a visual image.) I didn't glide very smoothly, but it was fun to try. So anyway, it was all of a sudden like a pioneer trek and everyone was trekkin' over to the fair. I got separated from my family, but wasn't worried at all about that. While I was separated I saw the strangest thing. There was a field of horses ready for a performance at the fair and they were all lined up in rows all professional-like. Well there were people with carts going by of something that horses like to eat, I guess. It looked like manure or raw hamburger--one of the two.. These people started giving some to the horses in the field, and people had horses on the road that saw what was going on and they would just hop right over the fence in one motion (kinda like the horse we saw jump over the fence at the Lehi rodeo last summer) to go and eat some of this yummy stuff. It caused some awesome mayhem and looked awesome. Then all of a sudden I caught up with my family and they were talking to Ryan, Ralph, and Wendy Page so I went and gave Wendy a big hug and then continued on my way. Then I was at the fair and we were all making our own soup. I was by Amber and Aunt Jer and Jer had all these awesome ingredients we could add to our soups to make it delicious! (I think Amber, Lindsey, and Kenny are in like 80% of my dreams. We're like the adventure team in my mind always going and doing cool things like saving the world, exploring, or running from the evil guys. Random, but quite consistent, like I said.) That's all I really remember, but it was a nice dream. Good to see everyone.
What we've been up to lately.. Well, I got called into the Young Women's group for my church and get to help out with the Laurels. So last week we went to the D.I. to help out for a while. Wednesday we went to a Chris Cagle concert at the County fair. It was great. He has a couple of songs I really like. It was his first concert back after several months back home. He played some new songs and some old songs. It was nice. And it was hard to act like nothing was up when we were hanging out with our friends who were getting engaged the next day--unbeknownst to the girl. Then Saturday we made it over to the Real (pronounced re-AL) Salt Lake Soccer game. We got tickets through my work and a few clients made it as well. A player on the team, Clint Mathis, bought a set of season tickets so that kids who couldn't go otherwise can come to see a professional soccer game. It was an awesome game, very fun, and we won. We were with Jeff and Kim again and this time they were engaged! It was fun to hear all the details.
What else.. We went to a family party with my mom's side on Sunday. My uncle Chad blessed his cute little baby CJ. Then Monday Jake's parents came down for a nice visit and delicious treat. They came to pick up Kazia from her trip to Germany. She was visiting my other sister-in-law, Rachel, in Germany who has been there for a year. She gets back in another 2 weeks and we're looking forward to it. It seems like she left just after Jake and I got engaged. (AGES AGO!) Susan brought a beautiful spread of her garden bounty to share with us. We've enjoyed it every night! This kinda reminds me of the little red hen. She did ALL the work, but has still been more than willing to share. We'll have to repay her on the flip side.
Married life has been wonderful. I'm at the point where I couldn't imagine it any different and would hate to come home to a house without Jake. I feel like the adjustment phase is over and just feel completely at home and am incredibly grateful to have the blessing of a life with Jacob. Oh how dear he has become to me!!
Well I hope you are all well. Time to get back to work!
