Author: Jess

My sister, Joanna, and Ben tied the knot on July 12 and it was quite the party.  Though they were originally going to have their reception at the IMU, the alternate site, the UI Athletic Club, turned out to be fabulous.  It was an excellent party.  Check out our pics in the gallery here.

While we were in Iowa celebrating Jo and Ben’s wedding, we also celebrated our first anniversary.  It’s difficult to believe that we’ve been married for a year now.  Where has the time gone?!  Scott and I have had so many adventures this past year: moving to Arizona, starting new jobs, buying a house.  It’s gone by so fast!

As most of you know, I’ll be running the P.F. Chang’s Rock ‘N’ Roll Half Marathon this Sunday, January 13. It’s finally here! I’ve been running since November and I’m pretty much sick of training so I am really looking forward to actually doing it. The half marathon starts at 8:30 am. However, because it’s a wave start I probably won’t actually cross the start line until about 9:00 am Mountain time (that’s 10 am Central time).

I will be wearing a time chip during the race. If you would like to check and see where I am on the course, you can log onto the website at www.rnraz.com and click the Live Results button located at the top of the homepage. My time will be recorded at the 5k, 10k, 10-mile marks and finish line. My race number is 45119 in case you need it to look me up online. My goal is to finish the race in less than 4 hours…and in one piece! Wish me luck!

Follow Jess’s Progress on Race Day 9am MT 

Recently I got this crazy idea in my head to run a half marathon.  For those of you unfamiliar with distance racing, that’s 13.1 miles.  You’re probably thinking that I must be crazy…and you’re probably right.  I will be doing the Rock ‘n’ Roll Arizona Half Marathon in mid-January.  I have always harbored a secret desire to do a half marathon.  Luckily, I know some people who will be participating as well so I won’t have to go it alone.  So be thinking of me on January 13 as I’m running (and walking, I’m sure) my 13.1 miles!  My goal is to get it done in about 3 and a half hours, which is the amount of time it takes some people to do a full marathon!  (Marathoners…now THOSE are the crazy people).  I’ve been training for awhile now so hopefully I’ll be ready by the time January rolls around.

On another note, our weekends as of late have been filled with picking out tile, carpet, cabinets, countertops, etc. for our new house.  They’ll break ground within a week or so after our permitting has been cleared.  At this point, our house can’t be built soon enough.  Scott and I are pretty much over the apartment life and are ready to move into a house.  I’m sure we’ll have plenty of pictures to post in the near future as our house is built so stay tuned.

Hello, everyone! After many hours of unpacking, our apartment is finally presentable enough to show you. Check out our apartment when you get the chance. For those of you who don’t know, we are living in a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment in Northwest Tucson. So far it has been working out pretty well. There are two pools on site, a workout room, a tennis court, a putting green, and a zen garden. The zen garden really sold Scott and me on the place. 😉 (Actually, we haven’t been able to find the zen garden yet…it’s hiding somewhere).

Yesterday we went to Mount Lemmon to cool off a bit. Mount Lemmon is about an hour’s drive north of Tucson. It was much cooler on top of the mountain (about 20 degrees cooler!) than it is in the city. We did a geocache, which was a lot of fun (when we actually found the geocache). We attempted 2 geocaches, but the first one we tried didn’t turn out so well. We found ourselves hiking up the mountainside in the forest without any trails in sight. After about 30 minutes of this I called it quits. (Sorry, Kieran, I’m not a die-hard geocacher). But at least we found the other geocache we started!

Once we were done geocaching, we headed up to the summit and ate at a little cafe that had AWESOME pie! I had strawberry rhubarb and Scott had raspberry. Don’t worry…we took pictures of the huge pieces of pie! When folks come and visit us we will most definitely have to make a trip back to the top of Mount Lemmon for some delicious pie!

These last few weeks have been an absolute whirlwind for Scott and me.  Our wedding was absolutely fantastic.  Ok, I might be a little biased.  But really, it was so great to see everyone and celebrate.  We have some wedding pictures that we have been meaning to post for a really long time.  These pictures are from Scott’s camera so check them out if you have a minute.  We also have pictures posted from our rehearsal dinner and gift-opening.

The Wednesday after our wedding we left on our honeymoon to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.  It was an awesome vacation!  The first day we did the canopy tour where we went to the rain forest and did the zip lines set up there.  It was absolutely amazing to be swinging through the trees at 400+ feet!  On the second day we went scuba diving around an island that was about an hour boat ride away from the port.  Scott took his underwater camera case along and was able to take some pretty great underwater photos.  The remaining days were spent lounging by the beach and soaking up the sun.  We did fit in parasailing, which was pretty incredible, I have to say.  Initially I was nervous about a little speed boat pulling me around the bay so I made Scott go first. 😉  He managed so I figured that I could handle it.  Let me tell you, if you ever have the opportunity to do it, you should, because it is an amazing experience being up so high above the water.  All in all, Scott and I had a really great honeymoon.  Thanks to everyone who contributed to our honeyfund account!  You definitely made our honeymoon a lot more fun.

We are currently in the middle of packing…and it’s pretty UN-fun.  After the excitement of our wedding and honeymoon, the reality that we need to pack up everything has finally set in and frankly I want to go back to Mexico!  But we are very excited to go somewhere new and packing is just a necessary evil, I suppose.  We’ll be picking up our 22-foot moving truck on Sunday and then heading out to Arizona on Wednesday, August 1.  We plan on arriving in Tucson on August 3 and then we’ll move into our apartment the following day.  Hopefully it all goes well!  We’ll be sure to post pictures of our move and our new place as soon as we can once we arrive.  Hopefully Scott and his dad can drive that 22-foot long moving truck without any problems!  Oh yeah, and did I mention that we’re towing Scott’s car behind the truck?  Yeah, it’s going to be LONG!