Eskimo in training

I started off the week with another session of babysitting. It was a party as always with these kiddos. Tuesday night the boys wanted to stop by yogurt land for their 5 dollar night. So being the best sister I am... we went and got a ton of yogurt. Seth and jack both piled some huge cups of ice cream. They were happy boys. 

This is jack showing where his ice cream was piled up to. Thursday me and erin woke up early and headed to the temple. It's sometimes a struggle to make time for the temple, but it's always worth it. We had a good time and got some breakfast afterwards. 

Thursdays are some of my favorite days. Shawnee and I have #fancythursdays . It all started when I was either wearing scrubs on MWF or jeans/Tshirt and closed toed shoes on tuesdays for lab, so thursday was my only day to wear what I wanted. It has turned into more than just looking fancy though... fancy thursday is a state of mind. haha. 

Thursday I also had the opportunity to help at the local food bank. It was for the CKI club, but only three of us showed up... thats pretty normal though. It was fun anyways. We jammed to some christmas music and separated the different foods. I really enjoy doing little service projects like this every few weeks to spice up my regular day to day routine. 

Us four actually made a pretty big dent in this crate. 

Me and shawnee proudly spreading Mac n spam to families in need. 

Next stop for the week was denver. Yes, denver colorado. In the middle of november... not a good idea. Well it was our regional cross country meet. I think someone at the ncaa offices needs to rethink having a cross country meet in denver, but boy was it a crazy experience. So thursday night me and my friends bought some pjs at old navy... well I bought a pretty neat onesie. My friends dared me to wear it in the airport, so naturally I did. Besides all the weird looks I got from people, it was actually super comfortable. 

We spent the day jogging the course, looking around at the mall, eating and making music videos in the hotel. We jammed to bieber's drummer boy all weekend long and it was amazing. 

That night billie and erin made me sleep in bed with them. I knew it wasnt a good idea, but hey, why not. We told stories and slowly fell asleep. I woke up in the middle of the night and billie was gone. I looked on the side of the bed to realize she wasnt there. I woke up erin and told her billie was gone. Erin brushed it off and said "ehh she's probably on the couch, she's fine." Well I told ya it wasn't a good idea to have three girls on a bed because apparently I pushed her off lol. The next morning we woke up and got ready for race day. We ate breakfast, bundled up and headed out. I promise we tried our best to bundle up, but us st. george girls are just not good at it. I wore 5 layers on top and 3 on bottom and I was still freezing. We chilled in the car for a good long time until the boys raced. We jogged around trying to stay warm, but it wasn't really possible. It was about 26 degrees when we raced not to mention the wind and snow. Fun day. 

sorry for the profanity. Don't worry we actually flipped them inside out for the race :)

You would think 5 layers would keep you warm... I don't know how denver people do it. 

We had to be to the starting line about 20 minutes before the race. We tried to keep warm, but everything was getting wet and soon enough we had to take everything off to race. A lot of the girls raced with an undershirt or leggings. I on the other hand raced with a headband. Some people call it crazy others call it smart, but it actually wasn't bad. I feel like I would've gotten too warm if I would've raced with something else on. I guess everyone is different and luckily I know my body enough to know it warms up quick. The race was awesome! My eyes were watering the whole time, my nose was running probably faster than I was and my whole body was numb, but it was awesome. I felt so good and it was the best race Ive had all season. Ive been battling an injury for a while and a sickness this week so of course I was worried for how this was going to go down. In the end I felt way better than I thought I was going to. I do enjoy racing in different weather conditions so I think having the snow made it a somewhat more relaxing, fun race rather than a serious race... if that makes sense. I just wanted to have fun and enjoy the moment of racing and I did. Probably the worst part of the race was the finish. The moment I stopped moving, my body felt so weird. Its hard to explain, but I was so numb and once I stopped moving its almost like my body was happy to be done, yet it wanted to keep going because it was so cold. I don't know, it was just crazy. My arm hair had icicles and every time someone brushed up against me or touched me, it hurt so so bad because of how numb I was. In the end, we all raced super well. I finished 5th on the team close to a lot of my other teammates. We were all on such a runners high after the race, probably because it was one of the craziest races ever. Good times. As much as I want to move on from cross country and racing 5k/6k, Im gonna miss races like this one. 

Our girl billie placed 18th overall and was all-region. Atta baby. Once the awards were over, we raced to the warm cars and headed back to the hotel to change. We spent the afternoon at red robin and voodoo donuts - kind of a tradition now. 

This is rod scraping his mirror while driving through downtown denver haha. 

Everyone hates on me for getting the bubblegum donut, but its a must-try. 

That night our flight was supposed to take off at 8:30, but some things happened and we sat on the plane for over two hours before we could take off. I guess we should be grateful they fixed the broken plane because I would say its better to sit on a plane an extra two hours rather than crash land, but in the moment we were all ready to be home. We finally pulled in to st. george at 2:30am. whatta joy. Fun, fun weekend. 

Side note just for future memories - This week might seem all candies and rainbows but man oh man are y'all wrong. To be honest, this week sucked. I feel like I just couldn't catch a break. I dont have "bad days" or in this case "bad weeks" too often - or really at all - but this week has been rough. Im struggling a ton in school right now and facing the loss of my scholarship, thanks pathophys. I also failed my CNA skills test, which was a real disappointment considering I aced everything except one hand washing. Kind of frustrating. Lets just say I seriously contemplated dropping out of school or at least changing my major. Life is not always the easiest. Earlier this week I felt as though all I could think about was how much I was failing at literally everything in life. It took me a few days to finally step back, relax, and realize I am so not failing at life. maybe at school, yes, but not life. There are a lot of things that aren't going too well, but there are so many things in life that are awesome. As I was taking a patient out to her car, she saw a poor, crippled, old man and she turns to me and says, "when you think you have it bad, you have to remember there are a lot of people out there who have it worse." And she is totally right. I would rather be struggling through this semester than to not have the opportunity to go to school at all. Ive learned a lot this week and thats why we have trials right? There are soo many things in this world to be grateful for; we should never have to dwell on our failures. I'm glad I was able to be reminded of that this past week, right in time for thanksgiving!