Key West Half-Marathon

So I know it has been about a month, but I am finally prepared to write about my half-marathon! In order to make this race the best experience possible, I decided to run it in Key West, Florida. I have ALWAYS wanted to visit Key West, and I must say, it is BEAUTIFUL!! I love it there. I could live there. It's awesome.

So I ran the race on January 22, and drove down with the lovely Bradley along with our friends Amber and Danny. Brad and Danny were the designated photographers while Amber and I ran our little hearts out. I have to admit that I was very nervous for this race. I had no idea what to expect! I had slacked a little with my training at the end (I was running all the time, but I most I ever ran at once was 8 miles...eek!) and I was starting to get really sore with my side where I got surgery a while back, so I was nervous that my side would be aching the whole time. However, fate stepped in and I wasn't sore AT ALL! The race actually went AMAZING! I felt tired, but I never felt like I couldn't finish. I felt like I had a good pace the whole entire time, and I even felt like I was speeding up for the last few miles. I made sure to drink enough water and Gatorade throughout, which definitely helped me by the end of the race when it was getting hot.

The race started at 7:00am, but since it was a really small race, there weren't any sort of rules about us needing to be there early or anything. True to Marianne fashion, we arrived at the race BARELY on time (about five mins early or so). The only sad part was that the guys just had to drop us off and we totally forgot to get a before picture. Somehow, and I don't know how, Danny randomly snapped this picture of me at the very beginning! He was just taking random pictures of the crowd at the starting line, and we didn't notice until going through the pictures later that I was front and center! (not that I am easy to miss, being five inches taller than everyone).

These were both at about mile two or three...I can't remember exactly. Still having fun!

I truly don't know how Amber does it, but she actually looked cute in a lot of the pictures the boys got of her running. I was just happy that I didn't look like I was dying! It was really an amazing experience though. I was definitely tired by the end, but I made it through the whole race without stopping! I did walk fast through some water stations so I could drink Gatorade and water, but I never stopped moving! It was really so fun, and I highly recommend it to anyone. I really want to run another one. Who knows, I may even run a full marathon! It depends on where we move to for dental school. I think a full marathon here might be a little much with the humidity, but somewhere cooler would be so fun! Here are some pictures of our weekend adventure!!

About mile 5

The finish line is in sight! And yes, I passed the girl below at the very end. booyah!

Can't wait for the next race and the next trip with my Bradley!

Christmas in Florida

This year, we were lucky enough to spend Christmas in Florida with some of the Jurgensmeier family. I only had a week off from work, but the family was able to be here all week. We made sure to make the most of our time!! We went snorkeling, paddle boarding, learned to skim board, went on an airboat tour to see some gators, and overall just enjoyed the sunshine and the amazing weather!

Although the Jurgensmeier's didn't get here until late on Christmas Eve, we were able to have a small get together at the beach with some ward members during the day. How weird to spend Christmas Eve at the beach in 80 degree weather! It was our first experience paddle boarding, and Brad and I became a little obsessed with it.




When the family finally arrived, the fun began! We spent Sunday opening gifts, going to church, eating good food, playing games, and taking walks on the beach. Monday was spent just at our beach across the street from our apartment. Brad, Bryce, Kevin, and I (kinda) spent time learning how to skim board and soaking up the sun.


Tuesday was the day for our Air boat ride! We drive up to Sawgrass Mills Recreation Park, which is part of the Everglades. It was a bit chilly that day (chilly meaning you could wear long pants and maybe a sweater), so it was a perfect day to skip the beach. We saw a Gator and enjoyed some Everglades scenery. Then we did some shopping and played some games later in the day.

It sure was windy on that airboat ride!!

There was also a little zoo at the place we did our airboat ride, so we had fun walking around seeing and even holding some animals! We got to hold a baby alligator and a python!






Wednesday we went down to Key Biscayne, the first in the chain of islands known as the keys. It is only about a half-hour drive from our apartment. After getting lost for a bit, we found a fun little snorkel spot where the water was only about a two-feet deep for a long ways out. We also got to watch a bunch of people kite surfing in that spot, which was fun!

Thursday was probably MY favorite day. We drove down to Key Largo where we booked a snorkeling trip off of a Catamaran. The boat drove out about four miles and we snorkeled around the coral reef. It was so fun! The water was so shallow you had to wear your life jacket to keep you from touching the bottom. We even got to see a Sea Turtle! We had an awesome day.





Friday was another beach day around our place. Our friends were nice enough to loan us their paddle board for the day so we could teach the family. It was a fun day just paddle boarding, skim boarding, and soaking up the sun again. We were so lucky to have perfect weather pretty much the whole time the family was here.

Everyone left on Saturday, and Bradley and I spent the rest of the weekend recovering from the crazy fun we had all week! It was a great time, and we were glad that Karen, Dee, Kevin, and Bryce could come for Christmas!

This Week

This week was pretty awesome. I scored some SWEET couponing deals. Got $105.00 worth of groceries for $38.00...GAFLARGINBARGIN!! :) (for you, Erin)



Brad and I also got to spend some lovely time at the beach. We love living so close!!






Happy weekend everyone!!

Baby Got Back

So Miami. This place is interesting. I am greeted by new, different, exciting, annoying, odd, ridiculous, and unimaginable things on a daily basis. Maybe it's because I have been living in the bubble of Provo, UT, for so long, but I really don't think even Virginia can compare to the craziness of Miami. I was expecting to feel a little out of place when we first moved here, but even with those expectations things surprise me every single DAY.

Yesterday, for example. I decided to go to 7-11 during my break because I was craving some DP. I pay for my drink, and as I am putting away my card/wallet, a black guys comes up to the register and buys two cigars. (everyone here smokes. Whatever.) I end up holding the door open for him since we are leaving about the same time. I then proceed to get one of the stares I get daily. I usually assume that this stare is because I am glaringly tall. I tower over most people in Miami, and I get told on a daily basis, "Wow, you are so tall!" (Weird, I didn't know that??) Utah was filled with tall people. It spoiled me.


Yesterday, however, was a different story. This stare was more in-depth. The man proceeded to say to me, "Wow, you are tall." (...long pause, as if thinking how to put this best...) "You, know, you don't see many tall, thick (uses hand-cupping motion, as if holding a butt), white girls. hehe!"

Umm...thanks?? Haha. I had forgotten that this happens. Comments(/compliments??) like that don't really happen in Utah. Now, growing up in Virginia for a large part of my life got me used to people admiring a large backside, (which both Katie and I were so luckily endowed with) but this was just another level. Thank you middle-aged black man, for pointing out my tallness, my bootyliciousness, and my whiteness, all three of which make me an odd bird here in Miami. Thanks for showing me once again that Miami is in a world of its own.

Bragging Rights

I decided that since I am married to Bradley, I have full bragging rights about his awesomeness. As you all know, Brad and I are living in Miami for the next year or so while he completes his Master's of Biomedical Science at Barry University. The point of this program is to heighten his GPA so that we have greater odds of getting into dental school on the next go-around. The whole program is aimed for people trying to get into medical/dental school, so it is nice for him to have people to study with that are shooting for similar goals.

This past week Brad had (GASP) two tests AND a quiz, and this week he has THREE tests. It has been a little crazy lately, but after this week he has a break from tests until finals. I am so proud of Brad because he got 100% on his last quiz and 94% on BOTH of his last tests!! That means that he has straight A's except for one class (he has an 89%), and all he needs is an 88% on one of the remaining tests and he will have an A! Brad has been studying SO HARD. Day and night he sits and listens to his recorded lectures and goes over mountains of notes. Although sometimes I wish we could spend more time together, I know his hard work is paying off. A friend in the same program who is taking the 18-month route instead of the 12-month route had EIGHT dental school interviews this time around, mostly because of his improved GPA and DAT after studying at Barry. At this rate, Brad is sure to get some interviews next year, and I am so proud of his hard work! Love you Brad!

***This just in. Brad got a 96% on the "ridiculously hard test" he took yesterday!! He is awesome :)

Scribe

As most of you may know, I FINALLY got a job a few weeks back (yay!). Now that I have officially been a working woman for a few weeks, I really feel like I need to be a grown up (weird). I go to work from 9-5 every day, which can be difficult, but I am definitely really lucky. When I graduated from BYU, I never thought I would actually be able to work in book publishing. But here in I am, living in Miami, working at Scribe where I am working with books from publishers like Random House, Palgrave-Micmillan, etc. Big publishers like that hire us to do their copy editing, typesetting, html conversion, and e-book creation. Basically they decide what books they want to publish and we do most of the work behind the publishing process.

Right now all I do is convert regular book documents into html e-book documents, but after my three-month training/probation period, I can take the editing test and become a more full-time copy editor! It is just such a dream come true to be able to work with books and to know what kinds of new ideas authors are having. I am excited to start editing more so I can really read each story and get to know the characters. I know I am so lucky to even have a job right now, but the fact that I have a job in the field that I love makes me even luckier.

I have also begun the game of (somewhat) extreme couponing. It is so addicting!! I am not good enough to get everything for free all the time, but I have gotten pretty good at least saving fifty percent on the my grocery bill. It is actually pretty fun, and I like being able to get the things I need for a steal! The best deals so far have been on things like make-up and toiletries. If you pay attention, you can get that stuff for almost nothing!

Anyways, I promise to be better at the blog in the near future. I need to keep you all up to date on our crazy life in Miami! (literally the foreign country of the U.S. At least I have a foreign-sounding last name now! I fit in way better. haha)

The Big Move

So I haven't posted in a long time because I am really lazy. That is really my only excuse ha. We have been trying to get out apartment together and buy furniture, but it is definitely a challenge! This post will be I guess a little bit of a collage of what has been going on in our lives for the last while.

Before we left for Florida, we had a last rendezvous with all of my editing friends. I have been through a lot with these girls, and it was fun to get together one last time before we all went our separate ways. For those in the fam, Melissa (far left) is actually Melanie Mullis' sister! Small world. But we all had a lot of fun together.

From left to right: Melissa, Sarah, Callie, and Me!

Our drive across the country was definitely interesting--and LONG! Being a foodie myself, I was excited to drive through the South and eat some seriously good food along the way.

I found out that I will probably never feel the need to live in the state of New Mexico. There is seriously NOTHING there. We drove right through the whole state. We stopped one night in Albuquerque and decided to get some burritos at this little place we heard was good that was across from our hotel. The burritos were seriously SO SPICY!! I literally could not eat mine, and I even got a breakfast burrito! It sounded harmless, but little did I know that neither Brad or I could eat half of the food because of the spicy chiles. In Texas we stopped at a BBQ place called Lon's, which was DELICIOUS. We had some BBQ turkey and brisket, and Brad and I really enjoyed it. We were able to stop in San Antonio to see Jeff and Kathy, but unfortunately I didn't get any pictures. It was fun to see them though and check out their cute new house :)

After New Mexico and Texas we drove through Louisiana and Mississippi, which Brad LOVED. There were swamps and lagoons and water all through our drive, and he just couldn't get enough of it. We stopped at a place down in Mississippi called The Blow Fly Inn. It's food was featured on Food Networks Diner's, Drive-In's, and Dives. Brad had some crab cakes and I had a seafood pasta filled with shrimp, sausage, and CRAWDADS. It was actually really good, and we had a good time trying some local cuisine. The rest of our drive was basically through Florida, and by this point we just wanted to get home.

Florida was basically a full days' drive since Miami is ALL THE WAY AT THE BOTTOM, but we are excited to be here. I have to say that we are definitely the minority living here! There are so many different types of people and so many different languages being spoken it is hard to keep up! Even our ward is mostly filled with Haitians, and I think our ward is like the only non-Spanish speaking ward in the stake. At stake conference we even all sang one of the songs in Spanish! It was definitely been an interesting ride thus far. Far cry from living in Utah and going to school at BYU. However, there are actually a good number of young couples from BYU in our ward that are at Brad's school for his program or in the podiatry program, so that is good. We hope to get to know them better.

Other than that, we are just trying our hardest to get settled into our apartment and adjust to life at the beach! Not too bad, all things considering. We do miss our friends and family in Provo though, that is for sure. And of course my parents had to move all the way out to the west coast the same time we were moving back to the east coast, but we hope to visit them soon!!

Oh, and of course a big CONGRATS to all of my pregnant SILs! We are so excited to have more nieces and nephews on both the Jurgensmeier and the Bell side!