st. george, here i come

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So, I found out that I made it into the St. George Marathon. It’s a lottery and I kind of entered it on a whim. When I wasn’t able to run the Canyon Lands Half-Marathon, I was kind of bummed, so I thought I’d sign up for the full in St. George…probably hoping, somewhere deep inside of me (or perhaps on the surface), that I wouldn’t get in.

After I registered for the lottery, I mentioned to a friend that I had done it and he asked, “Is this your first time?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“Then you’ll get in for sure. They always let first-timers in.”

Well, that would have been helpful to know about a minute before I registered. I might have thought about it a little bit more.

Not only did I get in, but it was one of the counselors at work who told me that I had. He came up to me and said, “I saw your name on a list. Looks like you’ve got some work ahead of you.”

My response: “What? I have no idea what you are talking about. What list?” I was truely at a loss, and this particular counselor likes to ‘banter’, so it took a few minutes to finally get him to tell me what the heck he was talking about.

This is my first year of running in races, and so far, I have been emailed whenever I have gotten in to a lottery, but there was no email this time, so I was grateful someone else was watching out for me. I am excited and nervous all at once. Running a marathon is on the list, and now I will get to do it before I turn 30 (yep…the big day is this year). I’m also glad that most training programs run about four months, so I have a month to get back into running daily.

And in true Andersen form, as soon as I found out, I decided it was time to purchase a running skirt. (This is a great blog post with lots of comments about the pros and cons). My voice instructor told me about them…so I did a little online searching and found these ones that have two pockets (how convenient! I can stick my iPod, gels, etc. right there in my skirt) and have received lots of positive reviews. I can’t wait for it to arrive!

Any words of wisdom or advice? Yes, I’m actually soliciting advice, so take advantage, as this rarely happens.

pretty pink matchboxes

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This last weekend I went down to Arizona for my sister’s baby shower. I was down there for four days to finish painting Baby’s room and do the last minute, need to be there things for the shower. The hardest thing was figuring out the favors. Finally, we settled on Paradise Bakery cookies (something I truly miss about AZ) in cellophane bags with a ribbon. Well, that was all fine and good, until I went into Michael’s and saw Martha Stewart’s super cute pink match/favor boxes. In the words of Martha, it was a good thing.

I had purchased personalized M&M’s online in two shades of pink and I was going to use them for a “guess the number” type of game, but when I saw these matchboxes, the wheels started turning. I ended up purchasing them (shocking, I know, since I never make impulse buys like that). I got 32 for $8, which I felt was a pretty good deal. I also purchased these adorable pink, plastic safety pins…I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them, but they were too cute to leave in the store.

I got back to my sister’s and put one of the boxes together, decided it needed a little something, found some 1″ white grosgrain ribbon, pulled out the safety pins and asked for a glue gun. I have to say that I think they turned out pretty cute. An hour, a few glue sticks and an additional pound of white M&M’s later, I had 32 beautiful pink matchboxes filled with personalized reminders of my sister and her baby.

guitar playin’ fool

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I was over at Jen’s house a couple of weeks ago and noticed her guitar sitting there, looking a little neglected (I can’t imagine why, given her newlywed status) and so I pulled it out and started messing around with it. Learning to play the guitar is on “the list”, but that’s a little difficult when you don’t own one. She told me I could borrow it (did I ever mention that I have the greatest friends), so the guitar came home with me that night, along with a tuner and a couple of books.

I am proud to say that I can now play (albeit poorly) Amazing Grace and I’m quite please with myself…however, I am not the “guitar playin‘ fool” (in the good sense). My dad gets that title. We were both taking a little break from yard work the Saturday morning after I brought it home and I mentioned to him that I had just about taught myself how to play one song. His eyes lit up and he got all excited and asked me to bring it inside. The next 20 minutes consisted of my dad playing and singing the songs he could remember how to play and sing. It was quite entertaining. Just one more reason I love my dad.

I love that you can see how much fun he’s having in these pictures!

the power of music

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I began jotting down different ideas last night for a book. There has been something pushing me lately to write my story. Now, what “my story” means exactly is yet to be determined. In any case, the push finally became a shove and I sat for a few hours writing down thoughts. Unfortunately, my mind is such that it doesn’t shut down very easily, so it kept going all last night and most of today, until I could finally sit down at my computer tonight and explore a few different ideas.

As I sat down at my computer, I put on some music. The first song that played was Reverence, by David Tolk, who is one musician in a long list of my favorite LDS pseudo-celebs…although he’s less celeb than others. If you get the chance, take a listen, quiet your mind and think about the things in your life for which you are grateful. Hopefully, you will experience a little taste of what I felt tonight as I wrote.