From the land of rain and mud

SOMETHING INVIGORATING:

In the beginning of March, I decided to tackle our small patch of earth in the backyard of our house. Well, it turned out to be more than I thought, but it's been so long since I've done any sort of gardening that I found the manual labor to be very invigorating. I forgot how much I love digging in the dirt! With Alex gone to Australia for over a week, I found myself enjoying my free time weeding, cleaning and organizing. You know, all those things you rarely get around to doing most of the time, but still need to be done. It was a good feeling. Unfortunately, the last two weeks of March were so rainy I wasn't able to plant anything after all the weeding. However, I'm determined to plant all sorts of good stuff this April so Alex and I can use it for cooking. There's nothing like fresh herbs and veggies from your very own garden - yum!

SOMETHING MUDDY:

With all the rain comes lots of mud! So what better time to run in a mud run? Every year in Monterey, CA, they hold a mud run that basically entails running a 5 mile course strewn with obstacles, mud pits and drill sergeants yelling at you to go faster and do push ups and stuff. Pretty sweet and totally my cup of tea. I was asked to join a team of 4 girls last minute and decided to go for it. Besides a few setbacks of cars getting broken into and race bibs getting stolen, we found ourselves ready to go on a cold and rainy Saturday morning. And what was our team name? - the "Maneaters" of course! Since this is not really a race to be worried about your time and placing, we decided we would tackle and get into mud fights with all the drill sergeants along the way. We did pretty well and even gave a team hug to one of them who was yelling at us to run faster. I asked him if he needed a hug since he sounded so mad, he yelled back that he didn't, so of course we all gave him one anyways. Kill 'em with love, baby. It was great and I'd totally do it again in a second.

SOMETHING REWARDING:

If you haven't already heard, the video that Alex and I and some friends made in January made it to the finalist round of voting for the Mormon Messages Video contest. Voting lasted for two weeks and we will find out next Monday if we made it into the top 3 or were chosen as the voter's choice award. It's been such a rewarding experience to be a part of and even if we aren't official finalists, it was worth all the work and time. We've already heard some great stories from people who've shared it with others and really felt the power of its message. If you still haven't seen it, check it out here.