The medal!!

First things first. Since my marathon, Michigan has done much better-coincidence, I think not! Second, I did run with my tape player and I was the only one. During my second mile, I went to turn it on and it started to eat the tape. I almost gave up there and decided to go home. But I bravely pulled out that tape, while I was running and wound it back up. Yeah, I got a few stares, but they were just jealous that they didn't have to fix their Ipod. Well, there is the most beautiful medal of them all. It really does weight a lot! I thought about getting a lettermans jacket and sewing it onto the front, but it was too expensive. Maybe I should make it a hood ornament for my van!!!The other picture is of the congratulations banner that my roommates made for me. They are really nice girls. That's the little appendage to the first novel.

BOOTY CALL!

Tad sent home some pictures as an update. We scanned and posted them here for your viewing pleasure. We included his original comments for each picture.

Elder and sister Walker Quorum of the 70.

I just can't stop eating. Wait, who's that fat guy? Oh it's me. I'll get it down.

The ripping of the pants! First day in the new area (Barton Creek/Lake Travis) Booty Call!!!!

Conquering the Mountain. Surprisingly no injuries either.

My family in San Antonio. Greg, Jouline, Me, Justin, Steve Thurgood!

Crossing the Flooded road. good times. this road could be flooded 4 times more than it is now on a good rain.

Look at that intense sewing. The concentration!!! I didn't ruin them either.

Top of Utah

I am officially a marathon finisher!!!! And as my teacher, who has run many marathons says, "Once you have run a marathon, you can do anything." Ok, down to the details. The first 18 miles went really well and were quite fun. The canyon was beautiful because the trees had started changing colors and there was a little river. Then the last 5 miles helped me realize why this marathon is a once in a lifetime deal. I thought that my body may fall apart about mile 23. And then heaven smiled down on me and a lady was standing there handing out Swedish fish. I almost cried when I saw them and wanted to take the entire bowl with me. Upon nearing the 26 mile marker, I remembered the .2 miles that I had left. Why couldn't it just have been 26 miles. Anyway, the top picture is of me sprinting to the finish-yeah, I don't look like I am sprinting, but Carl Lewis would have been left in my dust. I finished and promptly drank tons of Gatorade and water and ate an ice cream sandwich. Two girls from my program came up and they are Annah and Megan. They cheered me in, which was really nice. And, just for the record, that isn't sweat, it's water. I kept dousing myself to keep myself moving. I ended up running the whole thing and kept about 10 minute miles. My official time was 4hours 32 min. And I was only 1hour 40 min. behind the leader-Maybe I will try to beat her next year-Maybe not!! In the Filly(fatty marathon runner category) I finished 27th out of 109 people! I wish that I could up load the picture of my medal, which I know you all are waiting to see, but I don't have a computer cable, so I will do it later-Promise!!

Summer Lovin Had Me a Blast

Well, this summer was filled with lots of good times. Here's just a few highlights. Connie brought me down to Manti for my first Manti Pageant experience. We drove down and had a little picnic before enjoying the show.

We did lots of fun stuff with friends and family. One night we went on this huge scavenger hunt with 11 other couples. The girls put their names in a hat to be drawn by the guys to determine who would go with who. Connie's name was obviously left out of the drawing. So we went with Con's sister Corinne and her date. Here's a picture of us in Maceys holding our favorite candybar. The four of us thought we were going so fast, and starting talking about how bad we'd feel for the team that comes in last. Well, as it turns out, we were dead last by a long shot.


Then of course there was that magical day on July 2nd. Connie made my favorite cake/pie (whopper baby)! This was at the end of a marvelous day which started with us getting engaged. Here is one of the few pictures we have together where Connie's wearing her ring. Since she forgot it for our engagement pictures, we really don't have that many together with it.

Lori and Mother can back me up when I say that Con's Ma is a little crazy, though I'm sure they have no idea just how crazy fun she can be.
So she had the idea to set up this huge slip n slide. How cool is that. So we all had a blast flying down the hill. Her mom was probably the next best, behind me of course. Connie started to get the hang of it after a while, and as you can see was having a blast.
As most of you know I took the job at the golf course for the summer. Though I wasn't able to go until my test was over, we definitely took advantage of the free golf after that. As you can see I had the hottest caddie on the course, and after a while she even started recommending clubs. Con's favorite part was driving the cart, but would play the par 3's with me.
For my last day of work I woke up and walked outside to find this written on my sidewalk. Just a little example of the cute little reminders she'd give me throughout the summer. That sidewalk chalk ended up staying there for weeks to follow.

And of course what would a summer be without our yearly hike up to Stewart Falls. This year we went with her mother, cousin, sister, and friend. We did a lot of biking, hiking, park playing, and what not with her fam. Though it seemed to breeze by more quickly than ever, it's now so nice to know that a few months from now we'll be together forever.

We also got to go wakeboarding one afternoon. Con didn't try it, but took some cool video of me wipe'n out. Check it out if you haven't.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HabwLB7DJK0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0bRzHXQ-KM

Getting our GOLF on!

Last week for date night, we randomly decided to play putt putt. I found a relatively cheap course nearby, so we drove out. Well, we found out why it was so cheap...the course was a joke! The greens were all curling up at the edges and there was no castle or waterfall or bridge or anything! It was big fat lame. BUT, instead of calling it quits, we decided to buy a bucket of balls and hit the driving range...that's when things got interesting....
I had never actually hit a golf ball for real before and it had been several years since Preston had gone, so we were both lookin like pros, as you can imagine. First we chose a spot, under a wooden porch type thing, because we wanted to be away from the other golfers (so as not to show them up, of course). But this spot proved to be a little dangerous...after a couple balls ricocheted off the beams and back at our heads, we decided to move out into the open. Preston had some great hits and I basically made a fool of myself - A successful date night!