A Lover of Lover's Day, and proud of it!

This is my Valentine shout out to all of the lovely people of this magnificent planet!

When people are asked to name their favorite holiday, they will most likely choose Christmas, Thanksgiving, or Halloween. But me? If you were to ask me, I would tell you that Valentine's is my holiday of choice. Because of it's close proximity to my birthday, I have always considered it my personal holiday. And it's all about LOVE! Not necessarily boy/girl love, but love of everyone in your life--past, present and future. The ability to love is one of the most glorious thing about being a son or daughter of loving Heavenly Parents.

Many years ago, our family's Valentines Day tradition morphed into a celebratory breakfast, complete with sugar cookies, strawberry crepes, hand written Valentines cards and flowers. What girl does not love receiving flowers? No matter what ever else is going on in their personal lives, all of our girls get some loving from their mommy and daddy.

This year, we have a daughter with a built-in flowergiver, but we wanted to show her and husband how much we love and appreciate them. On a whim, we drove down to Provo and heart attacked their humble little patch of grass and front door. Then we stayed and had a nice visit. They didn't even know about the heart attack until we left to go home!

Last night, Steve and I stayed up after the girls went to bed to make our Valentine's Day preparations: table set? check. Flowers? check. Cookies? check.

Love sentiments in cards? check.

Happy Valentine's Day, darling girls! We love you!

Holly Golightly goes to a dance....

We love Audrey Hepburn at our house...especially Madi. She has a lot of Audrey inspired clothing, and she definitely has the body type...although she isn't as tall as Audrey.

When it was time to find a dress for the Bountiful Sweetheart dance, Madi took a page out of Audrey's design book. She found this luscious little number:

She looked absolutely stunning!

I've decided that I have to pose with my arms bent so that you can't see my "bat wings."

Thanks, Adam, for inviting her with 50 beautiful and perfect long-stemmed roses. We have been enjoying them in our entryway for the last two weeks!

It's All about the Hills

Last week I received an email from my Ragnar team (RunWalkCrawl) with our "assigned" legs, and I noticed that, although I had requested leg 11 or 12, I was asked to do leg 10. The asking was followed by a bunch of "please, please, please!" All I remember about leg #10 during last year's race was watching Lisa S. run 4 miles straight up a gravel path on a very hot day. She had her Camelback on, but as her support vehicle we were still worried about dehydration. We all watched in wonder at her studliness while at the same time silently sending up prayers to the heavens that we weren't running that leg. So, with great trepidation at receiving this "assignment," I pulled up the Ragnar course map:

Yep, it is still as gnarly as it was last year. But with a huge "gulp," I typed back a "yes," closed my eyes and hit the "send" button. I am committed to leg #10, with it's Easy 3.6, Hard 7.7 and Very Hard 4.0.

Now for the training. I am so lucky to live in the foothills of Bountiful. If I want to go anywhere, it involves going up or down a hill. I knew that I could come up with a good simulation for Ragnar. I clocked a great training run in my car, and today I ran it and it felt great! Mentally and physically, I know I can do this. And I will definitely live up to our team name of Run, Walk, Crawl (as I will be doing all three!).