6 Unimportant Things That Make Me Happy!

My fabulous sister-in-law, Jen, had this on her blog and I thought it was a great way to appreciate the small things in life. Try it out. I am only going to tag one person, Cassie. I think she is a way cool girl and would like to know the six simple things that she loves!


I can't go a morning without this. I measure out the milk and it makes for a great breakfast of 350 calories. Not too bad. There's just something I love about drinking your breakfast. And don't get me started on how much the cute mug from Starbucks that I drink it out of makes me happy!


I have VERY high arches. If I was a ballerina, it would look great, but I have no interest in dancing, just sports, running especially. Running and high arches are a great way to get plantar fasciitis..which I now have. These arch supports make me SO HAPPY. It was getting to a point where the pain was making me cry, but these little puppies have soothed my soul.


My theory is, if your house smells good, it looks good too. So I try to keep these on hand and burning at all times!



I can think of two television shows I wouldn't want to give up, but the rest I don't really care about. It's movies that I love and I'm always excited to see that Netflix envelope in my mailbox. Plus, let's admit it ladies, we all have our Holleywood crushes (mine is Edward Norton, hands off please :)) so you can look up everything they've done and just Netflix them all. Plus there are tons of kid's shows you can watch online so you don't have to hear the same show over and over and over and over.


Every stay-at-home mom needs her saving grace. Mine is weekly volleyball. The women who go have all played in high school or higher so it's a pretty strict bump, set, spike regime, which I like. It's a great group of ladies and if the competition is right, it's a great workout and stress reliever.

O.P.I. nail polish. I love going online and seeing all the new names of colors these guys come up with. They are so funny. I'd love to meet the people who have this job. Very creative. You can't help but want your toes to be painted in "Kinky in Helsinki" "Shootout at the O.K. Coral" "Up the Amazon Without a Paddle" or "Paint My Moji-toes"

London's Second Birthday

Corpus Christi

Every year my family goes to Corpus Christi. The island we stay on is actually called Mustang Island. We rent condos right on the beach. It's really the only time we ever see each other, so I look forward to it every year. Now because my family is a bit high strung, there are usually a few fights during this trip. But I am proud to say there were no doors slammed, keys thrown, tires screeching across the pavement (you get the point). Everyone was very calm and nice. In fact I think the only curse words thrown around were those used in a joking format. So good job family. Nothing a little lithium can't cure :) (I'm kidding).


Okay, I'm a horrible wife, but a great mom. I sprayed sunscreen lotion on Tim's back, but was so worried about my little pale daughter in the sun, that I didn't rub in the sunscreen and this is the result. It does show how well the sunscreen works in the places it was applied. My family gave me a lot of crap for this one so you don't have to comment on it!



Our kite flew GREAT there.

London's sand castle.

My sand castle.


My fabulous sister-in-law and niece, Kim and Kourtney.

Our New Home

My brother, Todd, has been yelling at me to get some pictures posted of our new house. So this one's for you big bro. Love ya!




Here's the Living Room with my adorable American Bulldog doing what she does best, lying down. She's so lazy and chubby, but I love her to pieces! There's a spare room, eating area, and bathroom off of this room as well.



This is the Master Bedroom and Bath. I know, it looks purple. The previous owner's painted the whole upstairs this shade of brown and I'll eventually get it all changed. I just hate painting.


Hallway from Master Bedroom looking down to London's room. There's two rooms off to the left and a bathroom off to the right.

Back Porch. No grass, that's the desert for ya. New homes cannot have grass. But we have lots of fruit trees which should be fun.

Reno-Tahoe Odyssey

The Reno-Tahoe Odyssey is a 178 mile relay, divided between 12 runners, and about 24 hours. The race begins in Reno, goes all the way down to South Lake Tahoe, then back up through Carson and Virginia City, and finally ends again in Reno. Each runner is assigned three different legs throughout the race, with each leg varying in degrees of difficulty. Although I ran about 16 miles total, I had the second to easiest leg, so you can tell I ran with some pretty amazing runners. We called ourselves The Legs of Las Vegas and our vans had stuffed legs with shoes on hanging off of them. We wrote things like “Luscious Leg Syndrome” and “Leaving Las Legas” on our vans. We were an all women’s team and we took first place in the Women’s Open Division! For the overall results, there were 105 teams and we took 19th! So like I said, these women were amazing. I learned a lot from them and they had me running faster than I knew I could, at three in the morning, on two hours of sleep in a bar parking lot.  Sounds like good times right? It really was. My first leg went right around Lake Tahoe at dusk and it was so pretty! I would have enjoyed it more if I wasn’t running my hardest and adjusting to an elevation change all at the same time. I’ve done a lot of athletic events in my life, but never a team running race and the friendships you build with perfect strangers is amazing. How it worked is we had two vans of six women. While one van ran, the other van drove to the next exchange point to eat and sleep. We finally finished in 24 hours and 26 mins. I was the 12th leg so I got to run in to the finish line and by that time I was EXHAUSTED so I am just really happy I didn’t mess up our first place win. I think we only beat the next team by about two minutes. There was another women’s team, The Tahoe Trail Babes, who were in the Women’s Masters Division, and they did beat us by about two hours. I give them props though because to be in the Master’s category, you all have to be 40 or older. So way to go ladies! Here’s a couple of pictures of the event, and if any of my teammates are reading this, thank you for inviting me to be on your team. I hope I can increase my speed so I can keep up with you all for next year!

You Can Call Him Doctor!

Tim graduated with his Doctorate in Audiology a few weeks ago and I'm so PROUD of him. I have a new respect for any kind of doctor because I've seen what they are put through and it's amazing they make it out. The audiology program was just switched over from a masters to a doctorate about five years ago, so even the professors were getting used to the new program. Needless to say, mistakes were made and it was refreshing to hear the head of the program admit to Tim that they did a lot of things wrong. Thank you for finally admitting your mistakes and not blaming the students for EVERYTHING. Just some stuff :) Anyway, congrats to Timmy and all his fellow classmates who graduated with him or will do so in the next year! You guys deserve it! Here's a few pictures of the graduation and the dinner we held for Tim after.

The Showdown at Sundown

I recently participated in The Showdown at Sundown triathlon at Lake Las Vegas. The race is called this because it doesn't start until 3:30 p.m. Which actually REALLY made the day drag on because I was so nervous. I had a great time. When people would ask me if I was nervous, I would tell them that as soon as the swim was over I would be fine..okay...was I ever wrong. The swim went great, who knew I could swim because I sure didn't, I think my adrenaline was just pumping extra hard. But the bike completely and utterly kicked my butt! I did not know that half of the bike course was consecutively uphill. Wow! I sure hadn't trained for that and did it ever hurt my bike time, and my thighs, and my hiney, and my lungs! I was told that it's a hard transition to go from biking to running, but I was so tired after the bike, I didn't even think about it. I just wanted to finish. Overall it was such a beautiful race at Lake Las Vegas and I had a ton of fun. I think I would recommend triathlons over marathons. I only did a half marathon, but it was way harder on my body and I was much more exhausted when it was over. At the end of the race there was your typical bagels and fruit, but everyone got a free beer card. I thought that was hilarious. I gave my beer card to a guy who summed up this race very well. In his words, "The swim was great, the bike was a bitch, and the run was fun." Cheers!