Colors in SF!

driving up the coast

Yet another exciting weekend! This time it was in San Francisco with all of my siblings! Last week and all of this week I've been in Port Hueneme, CA for training for the Navy. Nothing exciting, just classroom work about government contracts. It is super exciting though that I get to wear super cute business casual outfits. I could definitely get used to wearing stilettos to work everyday! Since I was going to be in California for the weekend between my 2 weeks of training, I decided to scoot on up to San Francisco to visit the fam. It just so happens that Lauren had mentioned before that she had signed up for the Color Run that weekend, so as soon as I saw when my training was going to be, I signed up too, and so did Kimberly! Saturday morning we all drove into SF to Candlestick park for the run. There was actually a run at 8am and then the one at 1pm which we were signed up for. The night before Kimberly and I got a little nervous that it was going to be a bit chilly for the run so we went out and picked up some long sleeve white tops. Turns out those were very much so not needed! In fact it was so warm and sunny out that all of us got a little extra tan color on our skin. The idea of the run is that it is a 5k in which every kilometer you get sprayed with a different color. You're supposed to wear as much white as you can so it shows the color even more. There were A LOT of people there, so actual running was a bit of a challenge, but we managed to zig zag through the crowd to get as much running in as possible. 

Pre Color Run 

Lauren's Team from Amyris...yes their team name is 'For Science!!!!' 

Getting bombed with yellow!

Lauren and Kimberly running through the blue!

Lauren's face took a color beating!

Finished! Lauren wins for most color!

Twins/Big Sisters! 

Kimberly and Me in the Yellow!

Colored!

Kimberly is pretty excited!

Sisters!

Lance and Lauren at the big dance after party!

Lance, Lauren and Kimberly having their own dance party!

Done Coloring!

After the run we headed back to Lauren's apartment in Emeryville to attempt to clean off of the color. It worked for the most part, but I think all of us were left with a few lasting memories of the run for the next few days! I definitely still have a splash of pink on my ankle that just won't wash off! Saturday night we headed back into the city to the Mission District to the Southern Pacific Brewing Co. It's actually an awesome place for large groups (which we had). It ended up being Lauren, Lance, Kimberly, Jason (for a few minutes before he had to head to a show), Jordan, Kristen and several of Lauren's friends. So much fun to spend a night with all of my siblings! The place had great super cheap beer too! I was shocked to only be charged $4 for a pint of beer in the city! We stayed there all night before picking up Jason, dropping off Lauren and Lance and heading back to Walnut Creek.

Family!

Sunday morning we headed back downtown for a little Dim Sum brunch! Unfortunately Jordan got called into work so he couldn't make it out to that outing. Sunday also happened to be Dad's 61st birthday! After brunch we headed back to Lauren's apartment to have a little happy birthday skype date with mom and dad. I hate that we're all so far away for days like that, but love technology that lets us act like we're all in the same place. Happy Birthday Padre!

Sunday afternoon I headed back down the 101 for another fun filled week of training. I'm so glad I got to make it up to SF to visit my siblings. I always love seeing what they're up to. I am so proud of all of them and their spouses for all the great things they're doing and the awesome lives they're making for themselves and I love being a part of it! Yay J K L P!

And it keeps going...

As if 2 races in one weekend wasn't exciting enough, the excitement has continued!! A week and a half ago Thursday night we had a little double date night to go see Les Miserables again! I knew it was coming back into town for a few weeks and was thinking about going again but I was totally sold when I got a travelzoo email with the tickets at like 70% off! Some other friends of ours have been wanting to go for a long time too, so we all decided to go that night. Again, it was completely awesome!!! I will never get tired of that show!

Friday night we had another night of excitement! After meeting some friends for drinks, Ryan and I headed over to the Paramount Theater to see Aziz Ansari. He's the little Indian comedian best known for his role on Parks and Rec. He is HILARIOUS! We bought the tickets as soon as they went on sale a loooong time ago, so we had been waiting for this night for a long time! So glad we went to see him!

After all that mid week, Saturday was the start of our official vacation!!! We hopped a plane bright and early in the morning for Atlanta. This whole trip started when some college friends decided to get together at the beach for the 4th of July. Since we'd have to fly through Atlanta anyway, we figured we'd go a few days early to visit with Ryan's family too! We spent Saturday through Wednesday morning hanging out with the family in Columbus.

Wednesday afternoon we met up with Laura, Liz and Andrew who were driving down to the beach from Atlanta so they gave us a ride the rest of the way there! And the party had begun! It was sooo good to see everyone together again! It didn't hurt either that we were heading to the beach for some fun in the sun. We made it down there around supper time just in time for a delicious meal cooked up ready for us! After food and a few minor explosions at the house, we headed down to the beach for the big show and some sparklers. Such a happy 4th of July!!

Thursday we had an amazing beach day! My skin was begging for some sunshine (with some sunscreen). We spent nearly the whole day at the beach. After that we all headed down the street for a night out for some drinks and seafood. The best part of the place was actually probably the 2 hour wait for the table. There was a bar on a deck in the back of the place to wait in and it was right on the beach. We sat there waiting for a table on a beautiful night on the beach!

Friday morning we woke up to an amazing thunder storm!! It never thunders in Washington. Our 'rain' is just a light drizzle, not even a downpour, so sometimes I miss the huge dump of water combined with cracks of lightening and thunder that I was used to growing up. I definitely got my fix Friday morning! It was awesome!

view out our window of the storm

After the storm, it was a beautiful day and we spent the rest of it at the beach again! I could definitely handle being a beach bum, it's so lovely! Once our skin was saturated with sun we headed back to the house and had a ridiculously large amount of food being cooked for hours. Our house was on a little lagoon off the ocean, and it was beautiful just hanging out on the dock and watching the sunsets. 

Being with a bunch of college friends, how could we not resort back to some good ole college games, so we had an awesome few hours of flip cup followed by a raving dance party at the house for the night. I love my friends! Always such a great time with them!!

Saturday was our last day at the beach, so we took full advantage of the yet again beautiful weather and soaked in some sun! We also managed a few intense games of beach bocce ball until it got to dark out to see anything anymore. We stayed up for a while hanging out with everyone one last night before we turned in to try to get a couple of hours of sleep. We had to get up bright and early at 330am to make it to the airport. Liz and Evelyn were gracious enough to drive out butts out to Pensacola to catch our flight. The reason we had to leave so early was so that I could make it back to Seattle in time to pack a new bag and head down to California for 2 weeks of training. More non-stop excitement and sunshine!

Such a great week of family and friends fun! I can't wait till we get to do it again, hopefully sooner than later!!! Thanks to Evelyn and Nathan for putting beach week together!!!

My 25+ Mile Weekend!

This weekend was completely exhausting and awesome. Starting out, last Thursday night I had a formal Navy dinner to attend. Who has events on a Thursday night??? So Ryan took the ferry over and we got all spiffed up and went to the dinner. It was actually a pretty good time if I wasn't watching the clock the whole time thinking about how late it was going to be by the time we made it all the way back to Seattle! One of the Navy traditions for these events is the 'grog', a mixture of liqours served out of a toilet bowl (unused). Everytime you commit a violation or get called out by the Captain, you have to go up and drink from it. This is another reason these things are normally not on a Thursday night...people like to take full advantage of it. It was a good time but a late night and it got me phsyched up for all the rest of the upcoming festivities!

Friday evening Kimberly and I picked up Jason from the airport and Ryan from work and headed back to the house for the night. We walked around Queen Anne a little bit and got some supper and got ready for our big weekend. Saturday morning I had to get up bright and early. Ryan dropped me off in Seattle Center around 6:30am for the start of my half marathon. The race started at 7am. The night before it had been pouring rain so I was crossing my fingers that it would hold off for our run. It turned out great and it looks like my ankle is pretty well recovered. Once I got running it wasn't cold at all and no rain. All the rain for the day before made it super humid though, I could feel the thickness of the air as I ran through it. I started off with a pretty quick pace, but around mile 8 I started slowing down big time. It's never that I don't have the endurance for the run, but my muscles start giving out after a while. I'm really hoping that starting up with Crossfit next month will build some strong muscles and increase my speed overall. I can't wait to see how it helps my times! This race had some serious hills in it too. Right after I crossed the 10k point, I turned the corner to be faced with a huge hill which almost took my breath away looking at it. I just had to put my head down and power up it with the help of a little BSB playing on my iPhone. Even though my pace slowed down a lot in the last few miles, I ended up with by far my fastest time yet! I ended up crossing the finish line with a time of 1 hour 48 minutes and 7 second. That's an average pace of 8:15 per mile. Out of 9470 females, I finished 265th, so I beat 9205 of them! I felt pretty good about my time and again I think I owe a lot of it to my iron supplements! I can't wait to see if I can beat that time with a little crossfit work! (Other random fact...the guy who won the half marathon was from Rochester Hills, MI and the second place female was too...crazy!)

Kimberly and Ryan met me at the finish line and we walked around for a bit getting some goodies and my checked bag and taking pics before walking back home. I've discovered that I really need to walk at least a couple miles after my run to really cool off while drinking water and eating some food so I don't get sick from exhaustion. The walk home was a perfect amount of a cool down, and I got to show Kimberly a little more of our neighborhood! When we got home, Ryan headed out to Crossfit and the rest of us started cleaning up, packing up, and getting ready for our next adventure! We headed out a little afternoon for Whistler. It was an extra long drive with a lot of backed up traffic, but we made it up there just in time to check into our room and head into the village for supper. The place was packed with people who had done the Tough Mudder on Saturday. They have 2 days worth of heats for the event and we had to do one on Sunday since I was running the half marathon on Saturday.

Sunday morning we got up bright and early to head over to the Olympic Park for the event. It's not timed at all, so I can't really call it a race, it's an event to finish. On the way over to the park we nearly ran over a bear that was crossing the street. Only in Canada. On the way back from the Event, we saw two more bears hanging out on the side of the road. That brings my wild bear sightings up to 4 for the year! Anyway, back to the Event. It turned out to be a really good thing we ran it on Sunday. There were a lot less people there, so there wasn't a wait for any of the obstacles which meant we could finish it all a lot faster. It had also been pouring rain on Saturday and although it was pretty chilly on Sunday, at least it was mostly sunny. It was almost 8:30 by the time our group of about 200 people got started. They did a little motivational intro at the beginning and since the event benefits the Wounded Warrior charity, they had all the millitary members stand up, so I got to be recognized ;) Then we (Jason, Ryan, and I) were off. Unfortunately due to a broken finger, Kimberly wasn't able to join us in the run :( so she was on cheering and picture taking duty! It started up with running up the mountain on a rocky path. Since the course was 12 miles long, there was a lot of just running on the mountain paths. Then we came across the obstacles. One of the first ones was that you had to jump into a dumpster full of ice water (as in water with buckets of ice in it). Then as if that wasn't bad enough you had to swim under a board which made you fully immerse yourself under the ice water, then climb out. Since we were so far north, when you got out, it was still freezing cold. I think the temps were in the high 40s, maybe low 50s, so now we were soaked with ice water and running in the cold. There were several other obstacle including crawling through mud, running through mud, carrying wood stumps up a path, jumping over and crawling under logs, climbing over (with assistance from team mates) 15ft walls, sliding down a chute of snow into an alpine lake, and several other things. Through all the running portions, we were running up and down the mountain over rocks, mud, and snow, so it wasn't an easy run at all. About 3 hours later we came upon the finish line where we had to run through a bunch of hanging cords with electrical charges running through them to the finish line! At the finish line we were handed our t-shirts and complimentary beer. We met up with Kimberly, who was a champ chasing us around from obstacle to obstacle getting as many pictures as she could, and headed back to the hotel for some hot showers to get all the cold and mud off of us! We hung out in the village for lunch then hit the road again back to Seattle. Again there was a ton a traffic so we didn't get home nearly as soon as we had hoped. Unfortunately Jason had to head right to the airport to catch a red eye back to Houston so he could be at a meeting in the morning and Kimberly had to get up super early to catch a morning flight back to SF and head right into work. If was super fun weekend and I'm so glad Kimberly and Jason could join us for it. Now I'm super sore and have some pretty good battle scars to heal before hitting up the beach next week! Let the good times continue!

Pre Muddering

After and obstacle

I couldn't make it across the monkey bars, so I fell into the water :(

In the water! 

Just finished the 12 crazy miles!

Happy to be done!

Back in Whistler Village