Re-re-re-recap

I got real bad at this blogging gig once I got back from D.C. so here is the reader's digest of what happened in my life the past few weeks.

Well I was reunited with my fam bam in L.A. for the infamous McKeon family Christmas card picture.  The pictures took days.  Literally, it was never ending.  However, it was really fun to see the whole family even if it was just for a 24-hour stint. 

After L.A., I made it back up to Granite Bay and anxiously awaited for Porter to fly up.  I could hardly sleep the night before...it was like Christmas.  But the time finally came and after 2 ridiculously long months we were once again back together.  And the first thing we wanted to do?  Hit up Folsom.

Port got a little loose out there at the lake...

It was so nice to be back with best friend and my family again.  D.C. was legit and all, but I was so happy to be home.

The whole time we were out in Granite Bay we were either at a lake or in the backyard swimming.  The sun picked on us that week though...we got soooo sun burnt, but that didn't really stop us from going.

We took one day and went up to Donner.  I told Porter about all the creepy little exhibits in their museum and he got real into it.

Can't help but to include EVERY grizzly picture I can...

We kept our tradition alive by taking our regular trip to San Fran to go to a Giants game (where we got engaged), but we made a pit stop in Fairfield and went to the Jelly Belly Factory.

We had to get a pic with the man that made Jelly Belly famous...President Ronald Reagan.

When we finally made it down to San Fran, we walked around Pier 39 to look at some of the sights...

We found this little treasure...Princess Diaries is seriously one of the greatest movies ever.

Gotta stop by the creepy wax museum when in The City...

After we had dinner at Wipeout, we went and watched the Giants lose again...we should stop going.

Going one whole day without going to the lake caused us to suffer from sunshine withdrawals.  I decided to see how much my dad trusted me and asked him to let us take his precious boat out on Folsom all by ourselves.  Thank goodness we have such a studly dad who will let us play with his toys...

Who couldn't love that face?  I mean honestly.  He did however give us a stern talking to before we left...we got the point.  I was scared to death the whole time we were out there...images of us crashing the boat into something flashed across my mind literally every second.  We did manage to have some fun though and we had our favorite engaged couple with us..."The Taylor's."

Chaff and his buddies came along with us.  It was weird being out there with them for the last time since they have been like brothers to me.  I miss little Zack and Mitch already...

However I'm not really gonna miss this...

Basically, California was legit but we were all pretty pumped to get back to Provo and start school again.  Mostly I was just excited to kick it with these lovely ladies again.

Life is pretty busy...I'm writing for the Daily Universe and it seems to consume my life, but luckily I have Cougar football to get my through the week (if only they could turn their season around).

Other things that are going on:

-wedding plans are going great (at least I think so, my mom is working her magic...I haven't really done much.  I'm only concerned about the dance at the reception)

- I'm writing about sports everyday...it's legit.

-I love having my little brosha up here at school with me

-I have the coolest cousins ever who through bumpin' McKeon parties

-Rylee is tearin' it up in Cross Country...varsity as a sophomore!  Kirk is a football star and my dad is the greatest coach/grizzly supporter ever.  As usual mom is holding everything together...we would be so lost without her.

Until next time...Car.

Tell Me When to GO....

So tomorrow my best friend turns TWENTY...she is growing up so fast.  Since I am a billion miles away from her on her birthday, I figured I would let anyone who reads this know how amazing Miss Madison Courtney White actually is.  I have had the most spontaneous/hilarious/life-threatening/trouble making experiences with her and I don't see those crazy times ending anytime soon.
 

I guess to fully appreciate the dynamics of our friendship, I have to back it up all the way to Freshmen summer league basketball when we met.  We started to hang out a lot after that during our sophomore year, and well, the rest is history.  We were attached at the hip the rest of high school.  I remember one time going to the gym on my own and having a kid from our school ask if Madison was ok because he had never seen one of us without the other.  Yep, that sums it up.

Now why is it that we spent so much time together?  Well there are too many reasons to list, but here is a recap of just a few of the things that make us great...

We brake the snow-tubing lift by having fat snow ball fights,

We drive through the school quad and do donuts...and even though everyone is peeing their pants in the back of my car the two of us are cracking up,

We attempt to buy 9 football fields worth of zebra print fabric to make little togas and then we proceed to have a dance party while wearing them in the middle of the street,

We spent our Friday nights being rock climbing junkies, having epic battles on the ropes, and going to Mel's Diner instead of partying,

We were by far the coolest kids at Sports-a-Rama, despite what the Hamby's thought,

We dressed in rebellious fashions and were denied permission to enter the Mormon dances,

We have minor panic attacks at senior ball when we think the $600 lime green dress (which was borrowed) has been ruined,

We dress like in the worst Flintstones outfits and take awkward pictures at Sadies and then everyone makes fun of how weird my toes look in the picture,

We ditch school (just about every single day our senior year actually) and go to the lake all day and then make perfect last minute costumes for Quad dance.  Which we owned.  Just like all of the other dances,

We don't have cool plans for spring break, so we get attacked by bats in empty barns, go "camping" on the tramp in my back yard, and then get ambushed in the middle of the night by Anthony and his friends,

We looked nice at the start of dances, but then not so hot afterwards due to the amount of sweat we accumulated while dancing harder than everyone out on the flo,

We party like rock stars at Senior Picnic even though the weather was awful,

We dominate Powder puff.  Literally.  If I remember correctly we had a touchdown, two interceptions, and a million pulled flags between the two of us (ok and Alexis was real good too),

We are the only ones to get pumped up about Mormon Church sports and dress up for the occasion.  Then crush like always,

We do lip sync to "Get Low" and create the sickest dance known to man (if only others could have executed it the way we did),

We dress up as ninjas for no apparent reason and then terrorize the town,

We go to all of the football games and then I get blamed for awkward gestures Madison does to unsuspecting guests as they walk past us,

And we got through high school in one piece without even getting arrested...except for that one time...when we uhhh...well that's not important anymore.

What is important is that we had a ridiculous amount of fun and learned a lot in the process, like:

1. Don't play sardines with the Hamby's because scary men will hunt you down and chase you with baseball bats.

2. Don't blame your poor attendance at school on Sitterud because you get in even more trouble.

3. You probably shouldn't go "vandalize neighborhoods" at ten o'clock at night because you will for sure get caught.

4. Don't get caught trying to pull pranks in the boys bathroom...it gets awk real quick when a boy walks in.

5. Don't race each other to team dinners because people call the po-lice and you have to hide out because I drive a bright yellow car.

6. Camping out in vacant barns isn't always the best idea.  Especially when there are all sorts of little critters inside of it.

7. Rockstars before dances are a must.

8. Check which theater your movie is playing at so you don't have to walk 10 miles to make it to the right one.

9. Noah's bagels is the perfect way to start off your day when you are skipping school...even if it is for the 5th time that week.

10. Nothing gets you more pumped up then a little "Tell Me When To Go" whether it is at a dance or just in one of the many car dance parties we had.

Happy 20th birthday, Madizzle.  Please don't stop the music.

People Are Crazy

Everyone knows about the current NBA lockout and the recent end to the NFL lockout.  It seems as if these are the only topics discussed on ESPN these days.  I started to get tired of seeing the same thing on ESPN.  I mean what happened to stories about athletes who are actually competing and not locked out of their sport?  Then I saw a story on Outside the Lines that trumped the depressing lock out news.  Que Charlie Wittmack the 5 foot 7, 145 lb. lawyer.  The dude is straight crazy.

He pushes himself to the limit.  As a teenager he biked across the country and a few years later climbed Everest.  Both trying tasks were too easy for him.  He decided he wanted to do the "ultimate triathlon."  What did he come up with?  Well he starts off with a 250 mile swim across the English Channel, then a 9,000 mile bike excursion, and wraps up the whole adventure with a 750 mile run/climb (including climbing Mt. Everest again as part of it).  He calls it the World Triathlon.  I call it crazy.

Despite the fact that the man is a total lunatic for taking on a challenge like this, I have to tip my hat to him.  Life wouldn't be nearly as interesting if we didn't have psycho people who pushed the limits like this guy.  When I watched/read everything I could about Mr. Wittmack, I got the same feeling when my mom told us she was going to run a marathon.  She made the goal to run one when she was a little kid.  She was at the Days of 47 parade and watched a man crawl across the finish line.  I remember her training for months before the marathon in Salt Lake City and just a couple weeks before the race, she got sick with bronchitis.  With her running shoes and nasty cough, her and my dad left for Utah.  We knew she was ill and I wondered if she would be able to run.  Who was I kidding?  This is my mom we're talking about.  She came home with a huge, shinny medal with the word "Finisher" engraved on the back of it.

She walked down the stairs backwards for a week, but she accomplished her goal.  I remember thinking it was so cool she did it and I recall telling all my friends about it.  Looking at the 26.2 mile map, I thought it was impossible to do something like that.  Although I respected what she did, I knew there was no way I could ever do something like that.  I HATED running.  I always worked extra hard in practice because if we performed poorly in drills we had to run and I didn't want to have any part in that.  Shortly after my high school basketball season ended, I realized something was missing.  I wasn't competing in anything and it was killing me.  So I thought I would try this whole running business.  It was dreadful at the beginning.  I had to force myself to do it every day.  Then my mom signed Rylee and I up for a little run for breast cancer.  Upon finishing that race I was hooked.  Finishing a race was a high I had never experienced.  I took it slow at first.  I ran the SLC Half marathon in 2010 with my mom and a few of my cousins, aunt, and uncle.

The run was fun, but that summer I decided to try something I thought would present a different kind of challenge.

I did a triathlon back in California.  I started to really enjoy pushing myself (maybe a little too much) and doing the best I could.

Then in October I ran another half and I didn't feel the same sense of accomplishment that I had before.  So my New Years resolution was to run the SLC Marathon.  I did another half in St. George with my Aunt Karen and roommate Sadee in January, and then the training for the full began.

I was a wreck the whole week before my race.  It was finals week and I had to run 26.2 miles.  I was also a little bummed no one from my family was going to be able to be there, but I had Porter so I knew I would be fine.  I went to go pick up my bib at the convention center and when I turned the corner, standing there was my hero who started it all for me--my mom.  She had flown in and surprised me for the race.  On the morning of the race, I started to doubt myself.  "I can't do this, what was I thinking."  But my mom, Porter, and Trey continued to tell me I was fine.  I got to the starting line, a nervous wreck and heard the gun sound.  Butterflies had consumed my whole stomach but I continued to take baby steps and maneuver around other runners.  I caught up to my Uncle Darryl and Aunt Kim who were running the half.  I told them how nervous I was and they told me to stop worrying and wasting time trotting with them and go kick butt.  The nerves were gone after that.  I wanted to finish in under 4 hours and I did it in 3:48.57.  I was pumped.

Three weeks later I ran the Provo half with my roommate Alex and had Porter and his parents at the finish line cheering me on.  Just one month after that, I ran the Utah Valley Marathon with Porter.  We finished together and our families were at the end.  My body was shot after running 3 races in 7 weeks, so a break was mandatory.

Lots of people told my mom she was crazy when she ran her first marathon.  Lots of people told me I was crazy after all of my spring races.  I'm sure lots of people have told Charlie Wittmack he was crazy, but for some reason none of us listened.  Maybe it is because we have some sort of sick addiction to pain.  Or maybe it is because we like doing something most people are too afraid to attempt.  I'm going to say it's the feeling I get when I cross the finish line and I realize I just accomplished a goal that I had worked for.  Everyone should try it sometime, there is nothing quite like it.