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High school graduations? Meh.  They are just really long events with a lot of painful reminders of what my children experience during high school.  There is no question that my children will graduate, so we wait for them afterwards and head to Applebee's. College graduations?  The BEST!  Seeing Ethan graduate from college was such a proud moment for John and me.  And the cherry on top?  Rebecca was graduating too! It was fun to spend two days celebrating the big event.  John and I started out the day by heading to the Mt. Timpanogos temple.  I'm not going to lie--I'm incredibly jealous of all the members of the church in Utah who have easy access to fully functioning, large-scale temples.  It's my dream someday to live close to a temple. Afterwards, we headed to commencement.  All of the kids graduating at any level (undergraduate, Master's, Ph.D.) gathered together in the Marriott Center.  It was an honor to be asked by Etha...

John surprised me the next morning by telling me that he wasn't really interested in returning to the Grand Canyon.  Really?  I had planned this trip FOR John to finally visit the Grand Canyon.  I had to agree though--the Grand Canyon is overrated.  While it's beautiful and (in the truest form of the word) AWESOME, it's overcrowded.  So during breakfast, I scrambled to remember some of the places the kids and I visited back during our Tour of the USA trip in 2004.  Walnut Canyon, to this day, remains one of my favorite places to visit out west, so we drove there first. Walnut Canyon National Monument sits outside of Flagstaff.  It's a series of geological ancient cliff dwellings.  While there's a nice hike next to the visitor center that gives great views of the canyon (which we hiked and snapped our typical selfie), you can't really appreciate it until you hike down into it.....which, of course, we did. It's nice, because the trail is complet...

Knowing that we had several days between the marathon and the graduation, and knowing that John would not be his happiest hanging around Provo, I came up with a plan for the two of us:  a quick getaway to the Grand Canyon.  I have only visited it once, and John has never been there, so it seemed like a fun idea. One reason to love Utah (since I can't find many others)? You better believe John took FULL advantage of this! One reason NOT to love Utah?  The high altitude.  I discovered at an early age, when my parents and I would travel to Colorado to ski when I was a kid, that my body does not like altitude.  Back then, it was a lot of dizziness.  I might have the same kind of dizziness now, except that I don't move as quick or demand as much of my body now that I'm thirty years older.  However, I have terrible symptoms:  exhaustion, lack of appetite, trouble breathing, nausea.  Even when my body isn't stressed and is at rest, I just f...

I am a very slow runner.  I believe that I have covered this before, but I will state it again:  I am a very slow runner. My first memory of this realization is from first grade.  I attended a public elementary school in Lubbock, Texas, and we were taken outside for recess.  By "outside", I mean a wide couple of acres of hardened, packed-down, brown dirt with a view that stretched for miles.  We were lined up at a starting line and told to race to the playground equipment.  Even at this young age, I appreciated the  fact that I could beat most of my classmates at anything....I could do this "inside", that is.  Any competitions of mental ability or endurance were my bag.  Naturally, this would extend to the "outside" also, right?  Wrong-o. When the teacher said, "GO!", I was off.  I felt like I was running like a cheetah, bedecked in some flouncy dress my mother had put me in for the day, complete with white tights, and black pat...

When John and I knew the dates for Ethan and Rebecca's graduation, John's first thought was whether there was a marathon somewhere in Utah during that week.  As fate would have it, the Salt Lake City marathon was the weekend before graduation.  BAM! John signed up for the full marathon, despite the fact that he's never really prepared for a spring marathon, coming off the winter break.  I signed up for the 5K, because on any given day, I walk or jog more miles than that.  Johannah and Ethan signed up for the half marathon--Ethan signed up because, miracle of miracles, he is developing his own (father-inspired) love affair with running, and Hannie signed up for it....just because.  Rebecca was a sport and signed up to do the 5K also, although I have no doubt that she could have gone much further. I can't begin to express my happiness at doing something like this as a family again.  I've spent too many races sitting on the sidelines, and I didn't want to ...