A great weekend!

Hello everyone! I hope this Monday finds you well and rested! I am certainly feeling the effects of little sleep, but I'm excited to share the pictures I took of a fantastic weekend on the coast of Washington! We stayed at the Cape Disappointment campsite, walked through the 2 blocks of Ilwaco, cruised up and down Highway 103 through Long Beach and Ocean City, and had some amazing sunshine that I just have to brag about, after all, it's March! While it was terribly cold at night, the day times were simply rejuvenating, and I can't wait for our next trip in May! So, click on the different links below to see all my photos (there are 3 different albums!):

Cape Disappointment

Long Beach

The Campsite/Playing with my camera

Cell Phone

Hey all, just thought I'd let you know that my phone is now deceased and I am in the process of buying a new one. In the meantime, email is the best way to get ahold of me! :)

March Madness

LOOK WHAT I WOKE UP TO!!! IT'S MARCH IN TACOMA!!!

And as difficult as it is for me to admit failure, I feel like I have to share with everyone that I now have 5 rejection letters to PT school. I received the letter from UPS yesterday. Luckily I had my friends and Christopher with me, but I'm still pretty upset. Thank you to everyone who was praying for/thinking about me, and I hope that I haven't disappointed anyone. I'm still looking forward to PTA school so I can at least jump into the field, but I know it would have been amazing to attend and graduate from a graduate school. Thanks for all your love and support.

Two 5k's down, 8k to go!

So, guess what? I shaved 3 minutes off of my 5k time this morning! I'm so excited! Today was the St. Patty's Day Run (5k) in Tacoma, sponsored by Bud Light and The Dock Street Landing (Bar & Grill - a great place for bikers, not necessarily down-to-earth runners...ha ha!). The course itself was pretty easy, only about 4 hills, all pretty long, and drawn out, with three at the beginning and one at the very end. And the weather was rainy, but almost no wind except for the occasional breeze, and the rain was pretty weak. With a temperature of about 40, the weather was pretty much perfect for this race, and Courtney who runs a little on the over-heated side! And I made it! I ran without stopping (even on the hills) and finished earlier than last week! What a huge boost to my training and self esteem! I'm pretty excited about it. There was a beer garden afterwards, but well, I'm more of an Emerald Smoothie kinda girl. :) Christopher was there the whole time, and cheered me on before I dashed off, and was there to give me a big high five when I finished. It's was awesome!

Click here for a link to what the course looked like! What's cool is that this gmap pedometer tool actually gives you an idea of the elevation changes too, so you can see how bad the hills are! :)



So now I'm desperately trying to find some races in the area that are longer, and I'm thinking my next race will probably be an 8k in Seattle. No worries, it's close enough, just slightly more hills. :)

Love you all, thank you for all of your love and support!!!

Yay for the 5k!

So I've completed the 5k in one of the hill-yest neighborhoods of Tacoma! It was challenging, and I won't lie, I walked up a couple hills, but overall I think it went really well. I was SO relieved to see that it wasn't snowing when I got there, and in fact the sun was shining and the temperatures were around 40. There was a 10 mph wind that I felt the most when running up the 3rd hill, but other than that it didn't bother me! I was so glad to have completed it, especially running by myself. And on the way out of the Stadium High School football bowl (home of the movie "10 things I hate about you") I received a brochure to run in the inaugural 2009 Bud Light St. Patricks Day 5k in downtown Tacoma next weekend. So I'm signed up for that, and I'm looking forward to seeing some familiar faces. I think the more I do these races around town, the less nervous I'll be about running alone. The adrenaline and heavy breathing of other participants is a good motivator!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!

Update

Just wanted to let everyone know, that I heard through the grapevine that I may have to wait another 1-2 weeks before hearing back from UPS about grad school. Bummer.

In other news, I run my 5k tomorrow! Yay!

Well, 4 down, one to go...

I am now waiting for my last letter to arrive, or possibly phone call, from UPS to hear whether or not I've been accepted into any PT program for 2009-10. I'm feeling worn down, but also optimistic since I at least have a back up plan of attending a semi-local community college (in a city named Auburn, funny enough), to get a Physical Therapy Assistant degree. It's a 2 year program that would provide a lot of the same flexibility as a PT degree. I don't like how there's no "step up" type of program, where if you become a PTA there's no way to just take a couple of courses and become a PT, you would have to go back to school for 3 years, just like everyone else. But, in the end, I'll be working with patients in the field of physical therapy, which is what I wanted to do in the first place. So either way, UPS or Green River, I'll be happy.

In running news, I'm excited to start my first of (hopefully) many races this Saturday! My training is going well, and I'm still attempting to run a half marathon in August, but I can't register until May, so I'm a little nervous that I might chicken out. I wish I had someone to run with! But I'm enjoying and exploring the trails that have been carefully placed all around the city of Tacoma in the last few years, and they have proved to be challenging and helpful in my training process. Next step: increase my weight training!

On another small note, Christopher is doing well, though very nervous about getting his latest computer science class project done in the next 9 days! He's been working so hard as his teams' leader, and I'm so proud of how diligent he works when I'm in the apartment cleaning and singing songs from Slumdog Millionaire at the top of my lungs! He's very excited to be done with this current quarter, and the next, so he can finally have his first summer off (of school) in too long! Work is going very well for him too, and he always loves to tell me about his daily computer problem that he fixed or the coolest, latest technology that he's discovered for school. Yeah, I know, what a nerd. :) But he's a cute nerd!

The rest of the Tacoma crew are doing well! Zoe loves to sit on laps during the relaxing evenings, and rub against our legs when we're cooking in the kitchen! Thanks to our friend Jonathan she's become quite the beggar! But she never ceases to make us smile! Brianna is busy with work, traveling to and from Olympia or Seattle whenever needed, and volunteering at a local non-profit healthcare clinic, where's she's really learning a lot! We love our Tuesday evenings of watching Biggest Loser with our friend Sarah, and desperately miss Top Chef on Wednesday nights now that it's over. The past couple outings have been a blast and include watching Slumdog Millionaire at a cute, local theater, a lazy Sunday afternoon trip to Borders, and joining a book club with a bunch of us girls! We're currently reading "Out Stealing Horses," which is not a book I would normally pick up, but still interesting.

Alright, well I think I've said enough. Thanks for staying in touch, everyone! Miss you all tons!!!