Phoenix Half Marathon!

  On March 1st, Caitlin and I ran the Phoenix Half Marathon!  It was my first half marathon and Caitlin's third.  We started preparing for it informally a while ago.  We would run a 4 mile loop here in our neighborhood and sometimes do the 6 mile loop.  We went to San Diego a couple times and ran 8 miles with Caitlin's mom and her friend since they were preparing for a half marathon in February and we also ran a 10 mile run with them.  Running there was really fun because it was around a lake which was different than just running along the street for a long time!  Then, when the race was getting closer, we ran our 6 mile loop and our 4 mile loop in one run!  That's basically the extent of our training.  Once, on a run by myself on the 6 mile loop a dog started chasing me and I was running really fast!  It was a little scary.  Here's a picture of our Garmin watch from our 10 mile run in Arizona -

The Proof

  When we tried to register for the run, we found out all the available entries for the half marathon were sold out, but Caitlin was able to find 2 entries for sale on Craigslist and we bought them.  So, we couldn't transfer the names to our names, so we ran as Mr. and Mrs. Owens.
  The morning of the race we had to wake up super early, like 3:30am.  Then we went to pick up Kara and her brother Weston because they were running it too!  We were concerned for Weston because he didn't train at all, but he ended up finishing before we did...

Weston and Kara on the bus to the start of the race

Caitlin and me

  The lines for the bathroom were super long and we saw some guys out in a dirt lot just peeing on a wall.  It was kind of funny but weird.  Luckily it was really dark, which actually makes me feel like we were the weirdos trying hard to see people off in the distance peeing on a wall...  Anyway, it started raining kind of hard right before the race started and was raining for the first couple miles.  After that it only rained lightly off and on for the rest of the course.  Our goal was to finish at a better time than 2 hours and 10 minutes.  With a little over a mile left in the race I looked at the watch and saw that it was possible for us to finish barely under 2 hours if we ran really fast.  We were both dead tired, but pushed on and ran the last mile as fast as we could.  We finished the race in 2 hours and 1 minute!  So close!  But we did really well and it was super fun!  Here is our picture after we finished the race -

Here we are with our awesome medals!  My shirt is wet because I was dumping water on my head during the race.  Just sayin...

  The after-race festivities were pretty cool.  There were a bunch of canopies set up with different snacks.  Someone was walking around with a tray of turkey dogs and I was fortunate enough to get one!  While I was eating it, every guy that walked by us asked me where I got it. 
  When we left, we went to Kneaders since that was one of our favorite breakfast places in Utah.  We had to wait though like an hour to get our food and there were no tables, so we took it home.  It was such a dumb breakfast experience that we kind of don't want to go back to Kneaders for a very long time.

That same night, I had agreed to volunteer at the Youth Cultural Celebration for the Gilbert Temple.  I was assigned to work in the parking lot at Costco where a bunch of the youth were planning on being picked up after the celebration was over, but I had to be there for the entire program and help before it started too.  It was very rainy and I was way glad I had an umbrella.  It was cool to be there and hear the talks and songs from the program.  Good job to the Youth! 

Gilbert Temple Open House

Caitlin and I went to the Gilbert Temple Open House on February 11th.  It was pretty awesome!  We had to wait in line for a long time since we didn't have tickets to get in, but we got in eventually and it was really great.  We heard a great story from our guide that a non-member lady goes to the open house every morning for a tour because she likes the way she feels in the temple and wants to start her day with that feeling.  We also saw Sister Ball who was serving in our ward and she was telling us that the open house is incredibly busy all the time, and there is lots of interest about the church because of it.  There's been a lot of blessings with the temple going up and I'm looking forward to seeing other blessing come from it.  It's so close to where we live too, so I'm excited about that!  Here's some pictures -

Waiting in line

Selfie while waiting in line

Walking to the entrance of the temple

Neat shot after the tour of the side of the temple with Angel Moroni at the top.

Me and Caitlin outside the temple after the tour

Weiss Sealing and Family in Arizona

  Caitlin and I drove to California and stayed at her parents house in San Diego to go to the Newport Beach Temple for Jody and Dieter's sealing to each other and to Maddison and Ceci.  They were sealed on January 17th and it was awesome!  The girls were both so good.  Here are some pictures of them outside the temple.

Ceci had changed a lot since we last saw her.

Dieter, Jody, Maddison and Ceci

   After the sealing, we all went to BJ's at Balboa.  It was the first time I had been in a car going on the ferry and it was pretty fun.

On the Ferry

Grayson was super funny during dinner and making crazy noises when he saw a soda because he wanted to drink it so badly.

Pizookie!

Here's one of Grayson before we left for the sealing. I think this picture is really funny!

   We all drove back to Arizona the next day and everyone stayed at my parent's house.  It was pretty fun, but pretty crazy too because basically everyone got sick at one point from this flu/cold type thing that was going around.

Dad with Carter wearing their stripes

  We did a lot of fun stuff while everyone was here.  We went to the Natural History Museum, the aquarium, bowling, played at the park where we played a game from Brazil that Dieter taught us called Taco.  Jenny actually tore her meniscus playing.  We also spent a lot of time playing around the house.

Putting together a puzzle at the natural history museum

Scarlett, Maddison, and Sierra

Dieter and Kara scoring some points in Taco

Dieter ready to bat. Jenny was on my team. This photo was pre-knee injury.

Me up to bat. This game was really fun! I'm really out of shape though.

Scarlett and Whitney

Grayson loves Aunt Caitlin!

The family

My dad was helping Whitney scale the wall outside the bowling alley.  People outside thought it was very amusing.

 Here's some pictures of playing around at home. 

Grayson brought this book to the table where Caitlin was and handed it to her and started pulling himself onto her lap.  It was really funny!

Fun with Aunt Caitlin

The kids love playing with glass door to the pantry.

I had Grayson at dinner and he decided to eliminate the middle man and go straight for the corn.

We had a birthday party for Ceci while all of the cousins where there.  She got a lot of good gifts that Maddison was pretty excited about too!

Uncle Dieter lighting the candles.

Singing "Happy Birthday"

Reading one of Ceci's new books to everyone - The Billy Goats Gruff

Scarlett and Grayson watching a movie

Jenny and her kids and Dieter left.  Dieter went with them so he could fly out of California to get back to work.  Jody, Maddison and Ceci stayed for a while which was really fun.  Jody got to do a lot of shopping and returned a lot of stuff she bought, eat at Del Taco which she misses when she is in Dubai, and spend lots of quality time with us!

Maddison liked to sit on the counter and help Pop-Pop and Grammy with breakfast

Caitlin and Ceci watching a show on my mom's Nook

Ceci was cute and would prance everywhere.  This may have been when we were having our snowball fight.

I went with Jody and the girls to Jump Street where they got to play on the trampolines.

I had some fun with a feature on my phone that lets me do sequences

Ceci didn't move as fast as Maddison, so she is in tighter clumps

It looked like Ceci knew what to do on Dance Dance Revolution.

We cooked smores one night and it was pretty fun.



Christmas Break!

  We had a pretty eventful Christmas break this year.  This year was supposed to be Christmas at the Sutherland's house, but I only had Christmas day off from work, so I couldn't spend Christmas there.  Caitlin and I went down to San Diego the weekend before Christmas and I drove back to Arizona on Sunday to be back at work on Monday.  Caitlin stayed in San Diego, enjoyed Christmas there, drove with her family to Utah for her cousin Greg's wedding, then on the way back from Utah her family stopped at the Las Vegas airport and she flew back to Arizona.
  I'll start some pictures from December 1st.  Caitlin, my mom, and I decorated the Christmas tree and the tree looked pretty good!

Me wearing my cool sweat pants that are pulled up a bit.

Caitlin admiring the tree

This is what my dad likes to do during the tree decorating.

    On December 19th before we drove to San Diego, we opened a few presents that we got for each other and that my parents got for Caitlin since she was going to be in San Diego for Christmas day.  It was pretty fun to open presents early!  Caitlin knew what all of her presents were though!  Well, all but one - she didn't know that the jewelry stand was a jewelry stand thing.  I'm not sure what it's called.  The present opening started with a snowball fight!  My mom bought soft "snowballs" from the Hallmark store for each of the families in our family to have snowball fights with.  It was a lot of fun!

Caitlin throwing a snowball.  My dad went up to the second story and was attacking from above.

Caitlin with her jewelry thing.

Me opening up a gift.  It was an awesome flannel shirt!

Caitlin with some presents to unwrap.  It's a cupcake cookbook and the complete set of the Magic School Bus.

Caitlin looking through the cupcake cookbook.

Caitlin was pretty excited to open her iPad Mini that we got at the Thanksgiving Black Friday sale.

Glued to her iPad.

The view from the second story.

 Caitlin and I drove down to San Diego the next morning.  We had a ton of fun there.  I ate tons of cookies, like tons!  Caitlin and I ran 8 miles with Tricia and her friend Jen.  It was the farthest I have ever gone!  I felt good.  Then later that night we went down Christmas Card Lane which was pretty awesome.  Here are some pictures.

Sponge Bob

Spiderman!

Caitlin and Cody being funny in the car.

Busy street

  While I was there I got to open my Christmas gifts!  I got a new skateboard, a couple shirts, the Man of Steel movie, the Nokia Lumia 925, and a Fart Machine!  It was really fun.  It was too bad that I couldn't stay for Christmas though.  It was a lot of fun to be with Caitlin's family, even for a short time.
  Caitlin stayed in San Diego and I came back to Arizona because I had to work.  On Monday, I went to the Gammage theatre with my parents and watched Michael McLean's Forgotten Carols.  It was fun because it was a Christmas play around Christmas time and when Caitlin and I were dating, we went to see the Forgotten Carols at the UVU events center.  It was our 5th date I think.  Here's a panorama I did with my phone during intermission -

  Christmas morning was fun!  It was like I was in high school again because it was just me and my parents.  We had fun opening gifts.  Here are some pictures -

My parents got me a Nintendo 64!

My dad has worn the same striped sweatshirt for like 30 years, so Jon and Kara pitched in with me and Caitlin and we got him this new, hip Volcom striped sweatshirt.

This is a pretty cool Under Armor running jacket my mom got me.  It came in pretty handy when Caitlin and I ran the half marathon - I'll post about that later.

  After we opened presents, I got on Skype and my virtual presence was had at Caitlin's house.  It was fun to be with them on Christmas morning.  Caitlin got a lot of good gifts!  She was very excited about the Fossil watch that she didn't think she was going to get.  Here's what it looks like -

It's a rose gold watch called the Cecile.  Cait's been drooling over it for a while now.

 The picture was blurry on Skype so I kind of got a headache watching, but it was worth it to see my hot wife!  Here's what the screen looked like -

Pretty blurry huh?

  Jayce was pretty funny on Skype.  The first thing he said to me was he asked, "Hey Billy, do you notice anything different about me?" I didn't notice anything, so Jayce said, "I am not sniffing as much anymore."  And that was hilarious because he's been doinging these really loud sniffs repeatedly.
  Later in the day we went to an early dinner at Uncle Tom and Aunt Karen's house.  The food was good and the Wyatts, Tom Barnes Family, me and my parents were there.  Here's a picture of the multi-colored Jell-O that Alysa made, it was delicious!

  Everyone there was asking me where Caitlin was, so I had to explain to everyone a million times that she was at her family's house in San Diego and I couldn't stay there because I had work.  It was funny that everone asked me about that separately from each other.

  I spent the rest of the Christmas break hanging out, playing Hang Time on my N64, grading papers for Caitlin, working, and stuff.  Here's some pictures -



The Sutherlands love pushing the limit with their cars and drive way past the empty line so confident that their cars won't run out of gas. I always am so nervous when I'm there for this, but I was driving home from work and the needle went past the empty line before I got to Costco to fill it up!  I had to send this picture to Caitiln and her mom so they'd be proud of me!

Caitlin doesn't really like going to Panda Express and I love it, so we rarely go.  She's a good sport sometimes and goes because she knows I like it so much.  I had to make sure to get my fill of it while Caitlin was in San Diego so I wouldn't want to go so much when she came back.

While grading some assignments for Caitlin, I found this answer to question #6 which was "What are your plans for Winter Break?"  I was a little freaked out and I thought this response was funny.

This response literally killed me and then I came back to life!  I thought the answer for #56 was so funny, I wanted to give them the points for it, but it's completely wrong so I marked it wrong.

I sent this picture to Caitlin just to remind her, in case she was having too much fun in San Diego, that I am fun too and that I make some darn good cookies.  Caitlin's mom makes way good cookies, so that wasn't much of a strong argument...

  Christmas break was a lot of fun!  I love Christmas and I'm glad that Caitlin got to take a break from teaching and get in some good time with her family.