YAY FOR ME!

I have been "training" (ha!) for a 5k that I am doing on March 15. I am so excited because last night on the treadmill I was able to push myself to do the whole distance and I only had to walk for a total of 8 minutes (two sets of 4 minutes!) I am so proud of myself because I really wasn't sure if I could do it. I kept chanting in my head "I can do it, I can do it." It was exciting because when I started, my goal was to jog 8 minutes, walk 4 minutes and repeat until I was done. Well, I followed that pattern twice but when I started my third 8-minute-jog I felt different and I just kept jogging for almost 15 minutes! It took 46 minutes, but right now I don't care how long it takes, I'm just focused on doing it! I feel like I have overcome a huge hurdle because I know that my lack of faith in myself was the only thing that was holding me back, and I have proved to myself that I CAN do this! I can't wait to get back on the treadmill and next week I'm going to start jogging outside! Woohoo!!!

OUR LOVE NEST

Here's some pictures of our apartment at christmas.

This is the view when you walk in the

front door and look to your left.

This is the dining area which is to your

right when you walk through the door.This is the kitchen, where Paul works his magic

to create gourmet meals (he is a much better

cook than I am and I like it that way!)

Here's a great story: when Paul and I first moved into our apartment, we bought a bookshelf and a dvd shelf. I love to put furniture together so I quickly volunteered to do it. Well, Paul decided to cook dinner. His sister Lorrie called and asked what we were doing. He said, "well, my wife is in the front room building stuff, and I am in the kitchen doing the manly task of making dinner!" It was pretty funny!

This is our front room.

It is a very nice, big apartment and we have a pool so we both love it!

HALLOWEEN

So, I'm trying to catch up a little with this blog. I realize that Halloween was more than 3 months ago, but I have some cute pictures of one of my nephews and two of my great-nephews.

Here is Joey. He is my sister-in-law Rhonda's youngest son. He was Gene Simmons from Kiss.

As you can see from the next picture he is as tall as I am and he's only in middle school! (Okay, it doesn't take much to be taller than me, go ahead make munchkin jokes.)

This is my great-nephew Stone. He is six and he was the headless horseman. Here's the genealogy: Paul's sister Lorrie - Lorrie's daughter Tisha (our niece) - Stone (our great-nephew.) I have inherited a very large, very CRAZY family, and I adore them all!!



This is my great-nephew Blaize. He is four. He was supposed to be a skeleton, but during the day he decided, "halloween is 'tupid, I hate it" and he would not put on his costume. They eventually got him into a hockey jersey. He is a wild child, but so much fun!




Aren't they so cute? Notice the green frankenstein pillow. . . I bought it because it's cute and it makes me think of Paul. he he he.

NEW GOAL!

I've done it. Gone crazy. Completely off my rocker. I have decided to train to run a 5k on March 15th. That's only 5 1/2 weeks away. I am determined to do it even though I am not the least bit athletic. YET! Yay for me! Wish me luck!

A NEW ADDITION TO THE FAMILY?

Paul would like to add a new little member to the family. I have been very reluctant to add said member to the family. Why, you ask? Because, said member would be a dog. Paul and I would both like to start having children, anytime in fact, but Paul would like to get a jumpstart on the whole perfect dream of one big happy family, not by having a child, but by getting a dog. Now, I am not an animal hater by any means, but I have never been a huge lover of animals. I think they are cute and even fun, sometimes, when they belong to other people. However, lately we have seen a bunch of very cute dogs, and since I have the best husband in the whole world, who would do anything for me, I have started to feel like a pill for having a no pet policy and denying him this one thing. So we have started talking about possibly getting one. Of course, I had to put a ton of restrictions on this possibility.


1. It has to be cute and cuddly. Not one or the other, but both. If we are going to have a pet running around us all the time I better be able to love on it. I realize that this criteria reveals what a shallow person I can be, but I'm okay with that. ;)
2. It must stay groomed and shed as little as possible.
3. It will only be my responsibility to take care of it when Paul is out of town or on his deathbed.

4. It must be trained to be very obedient, it is not allowed to get on any furniture, including the couch or bed, and it must not be allowed to jump on people.
5. It can not be a 'yippy' dog.

Now, Paul and I agree on lots of these things. But as the following examples of my ideal dog and his show, we don't agree on my number one rule.

Paul's ideal dog: the Italian Greyhound

Now Paul says that he thinks these dogs are cute and cuddly but I wonder if secretly he wants to try to make some extra money by running races around our apartment and taking bets.

Reesa's ideal dog: the Bichon Frise

Now that is one cute cuddly dog!

Do you see our dilemma?

CATCH UP

Paul and I decided to create this blog together. I already had my own blog page, so this post is just a conglomeration of previous posts from my old page. I'm getting rid of my own page and just concentrating on this one! Enjoy. . .


7 weird things about ME
1. I ran over my own foot while driving a three-wheeler.
2. I say "a hundred" when I have nothing better to say (or want to be obnoxious.) 3. I get a headache when I go into Bath and Body Works for more than 37 seconds.
4. I bite the inside of my cheek when I am bored, tired, anxious, stressed, etc.
5. I used to want 12 kids (now 6 sounds about right.)
6. When I eat at Chile's, I like to sort through the chips and eat all the ones that are folded or stuck together. They are extra yummy!!!
7. I love to sleep and have slept for over 12 hours at a time, on numerous occasions, just because I could.


MY LIFE IN KENTUCKY
I live in Kentucky. I like it in Kentucky. But, I have a strange feeling that Kentucky does not like me. Since I have moved here I have been bitten by some type(s) of bug NUMEROUS times, two of which resulted in infections. The first time the bite just blistered and was sore, but healed up fairly quickly. Nothing to worry about, according to the nurse I work with. The second time, a spot roughly the size of my palm swelled up and hardened on my leg, turned a nasty red color and had a fever. Very painful. Time for the antibiotics, but then I developed a heinous yeast infection (one of the lovely side effects of killing the bad bacteria is that you kill the good bacteria that controls the naturally occuring yeast in your body.) Great. Two days after I was finished with that round of antibiotics, I developed strep throat. Two days! I mean give me a break. So now I am on antibiotics again and it is almost guaranteed that I will develop another yeast infection. So I have a prescription for that also. I have taken more medicine since I moved to Kentucky than I did in the last 7 years of living in Utah.
Now, I don't mind bugs. As long as they stay outside my home and do their own thing, we are fine. But in the following true story of my life in Kentucky, the bug definitely crossed the line!

This state is famous for horse racing and hillbillies. And boy does it have both! Something I didn't know it had was very large, very scary, MAN EATING CRICKETS!

Okay, so maybe I'm exaggerating a little. They probably don't eat men, just small children, dogs and squirrels. My first experience (and, knock on wood, only) was right before bed. Not the best time to be attacked by a giant insect, let me tell you! I walked into the bathroom to brush my teeth. I felt a hair tickle my cheek and quickly brushed it back. As I was reaching for my toothbrush, it tickled my cheek again. I looked up in the mirror and realized there was a cricket sitting in my hair! As I mentioned before, it was a very large, very scary, MAN EATING CRICKET. I believe it was attempting to nibble my cheek, perhaps for a bedtime snack. Needless to say, I FREAKED OUT. While wildly flailing my arms to try to get the little (little, ha!) bugger out of my hair, I let out a scream. My windmilling arms hit a metal cup sitting on a shelf and the cricket and the cup simultaneously went flying through the air in opposite directions. The cricket landed on the floor while the cup bounced into the sink, onto the counter and plopped into the toilet. This clattering, coupled with my hysterical laughter, woke the entire house and probably the entire neighborhood. Of course, my courageous husband came to my rescue. He was trying to figure out what to do with the cricket. Should he squish it? I don't think so! Let me remind you it is a giant insect. There would be cricket guts all over the clean bathroom, not to mention the bottom of his shoe. Should he grab it with toilet paper? Believe me, if you had seen this cricket you would not have wanted to touch it through cardboard, let alone flimsy toilet paper! He settled on using a large bath towel to try to catch it. Of course, that smart insect knew death was knocking on his door and tried his hardest to avoid being caught. Lucky for us he hopped right towards the towel, instead of away from it and seemed content to hang out there. Paul then shook the towel over the toilet and the cricket plopped in. I am happy to report that he seemed very happy there; perhaps it was like a swimming pool to him. His little antennae wiggled and he just looked at us. I screamed, "You can't flush it down the toilet, the cup fell in there," followed by more hysterical laughter. But my ingenious husband used the water to his advantage. He smartly pulled almost the entire roll of toilet paper off the roll and plopped it on top of the cricket. The paper quickly started soaking up water, ensuring the cricket was stuck in the water. He reached in the toilet, pulled out the cup and flushed. VICTORY!!! Hopefully, the giant man eating cricket doesn't clog the pipes. . . So you see, I have reason to believe that Kentucky isn't as fond of me as I am of it.

GRATITUDE
I am so grateful for my faith and belief in God. It is such a comfort to know that He is there anytime I need Him and that if I turn to Him for guidance, my life will be the best that it can be.
I am so grateful for all the wonderful people I have in my life who love and support me.
I am grateful for those who have faith and act on it to better their lives and mine.
I am most grateful for my family. They are wonderful examples, friends, confidantes, and advice-givers! I love you guys!!!!
I am grateful that I am me. I am grateful that the Lord is constantly reaching out to me and just waiting until I humble myself enough to let Him mold me into the daughter of God He wants me to be. I am grateful that He has an infinite amount of patience and is always willing to forgive me. How blessed I am to know of the power of Our Savior and His Atonement.
Lastly, I am most grateful for my husband. He is such a wonderful man. He works so hard to provide for us and he is constantly letting me hear and feel his love for me. He is truly my best friend. We have so much fun together and he has proven time and time again that I can trust him with all my hopes, fear and dreams. I love you, you crazy monkey!

TORNADO
I had my first experience with tornadoes on Thursday, October 18, 2007. It was crazy and scary. Owensboro has a warning siren that goes off whenever conditions are right to create a tornado. It went off at least 3 times on Thursday. We did end up having a tornado touch down about 3 blocks from where my sister-in-law, Lorrie, lives. We had no idea until the next day. Crazy. There wasn't any damage or problems near our apartment, so we are very grateful for that. I am glad it's over!

RAINSTORM
I'm trying to get my blog caught up with my life so here is an experience from July. We had quite the thunderstorm. Paul's whole family was at the beach in Alabama and Paul was working a long shift so I was home all alone after work. I was reading Harry Potter in the den and realized it was getting dark. I thought it must be around 8 or 9, but I looked at my watch and it was only 5:30! The clouds were so dark! Then the wind started blowing. Then the thunder started booming. Pretty soon the lightning was cracking so close to the house that the thunder was booming before the lightning was done. I was freaking out. Then it started raining so hard that I could barely see the house behind us. It's maybe 20 steps from the back of the house, so that is alot of rain. I was freaking out anyways, then the power went out. Except for the lightning, it was PITCH BLACK. So, I went to the drawer where Lorrie keeps the flashlights. No flashlights. They had taken them ALL to the beach. I found one little box of matches that only had 3 left. I used the light that my cell phone puts off to gather up as many candles as possible. By this time I had texted Paul about a hundred times telling him to come home as soon as he could and I had almost started crying about a dozen times. I kept praying, "please don't let this be a tornado because I can't remember what Paul told me I'm supposed to do if there's a tornado." Very scary! Well, the power came back on about 2 hours later, thank goodness. Paul came home at the normal time and was so sorry because he didn't get any of my texts until it was time for him to leave! The rain stopped eventually but we ended up getting 6 inches in ONE hour! It was ridiculous! But, now I can say that I have weathered a terrible storm on my own! I told Paul that one of the first things we are buying for our apartment is one of those battery powered lanterns!

p.s. I am happy to add that we did buy a lantern and we had it out, ready to use during the tornado warning!


PRIMARY PROGRAM
For those of you who don't know, I am the secretary of the Primary for our branch. It has been a very fun, very, ahem, cough, cough, educational experience. Kids are CRAZY. So fun, so delightful, but CRAZY. Today was our annual sacrament Primary program. We have been practicing for several weeks, with mixed results. Most of the kids refused to sing during our practices, and several of the older girls acted like annoyed little teenagers. I received several eyerolls, which were very unwarranted! It was pretty funny. Even after our dubious rehearsals, the kids really pulled it together today. Maybe it's because their parents were there, but they did amazingly well! I was so proud of them! Go Primary! For our regular Primary time, we had a party to celebrate our outstanding program. We played a game where we had pictures of people from the Bible and the kids would try to guess the person by the picture and clues. One little boy shouted "Jesus Christ" no matter what the picture was. It was so cute! He will also randomly raise his hand during sharing time and when we call on him he proceeds to tell us how old he is (five) and that he is hungry. He is so funny! You know what has been the most amazing to me? To see how much these kids know and understand. We'll ask them questions about stories from the Book of Mormon and they can tell us everything. They understand not only the stories, but they also understand so much of the spiritual principles that they represent. We'll explain one story and what it means and they will say, "oh, that's like this other story." They see how these stories relate to one another and how we can learn so much from them. It is awesome! Happy day! Paul and I started attending Temple Preparation class. I am so excited! I Happy, happy, joyous day!