Marathon Blog

Meaning I will post marathon pictures and it will be a very long posting since I haven't posted since...August. I had to check to see how long it had been.

First off, the marathon was mostly a success! We ran at the end of August on probably the coolest day of the summer. We were very lucky. We started out from our apartment parking lot at 5:30am in just a little bit of rain. We ran through downtown to the Centennial Trail in Riverfront park. From there we followed the trail through Spokane Valley, past Liberty Lake and Stateline, and we finished in Post Falls, ID for a grand total of 26.2 miles (or so we guessed on the whole point-two thing). We had arranged beforehand for my Dad to meet us at Sullivan road in the Valley for some water and a snack, but through some miscommunication (consisting of my Dad writing down Sullivan when I talked to him but waiting for us at Harvard about six miles farther down because he remembered wrong) we got it a little later at Barker road once we got the miscommunication cleared up. To this point we were feeling great. It had been raining for most of the morning and we had gone about 19 miles. At about mile 20 my right knee started hurting and by mile 22 I couldn't run without feeling like it was going to give out. So my sweet husband walked the last four miles with me and my parents and little brother held up a tape for us to run through at the finish line. And then we went home and Danny watched Lord of the Rings while I slept. Then we went to Tomato Street. End of Marathon Day. Oh and we made t-shirts.

Next on the list: we went to Mexico! It was a blast. We were in Puerto Vallarta for a week in September. You can see our pictures here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2290353&id=17805371&l=54b22d72d6.

Fast forward: we had a group Thanksgiving. We are grateful for both of our families who like each other enough to celebrate holidays together. My little brother Conrad came home from school at BYU-ID and Jackson came over from North Spokane and we all had Thanksgiving dinner at Mom and Dad Olson's with Chari and Joe and kids. Speaking of Chari and Joe, we have a new niece! Abigail was born two weeks ago and we love her so much!

Last on the list of things that I can think of to update is my job. I am still at Fulcrum supervising visits for parents and kids but things are looking up. I've been promoted to the Assitant Director of the Interchange. I now provide staff training and supervision, am putting together an agency policy book, developing a therapeutic visit program, and hopefully - if we get the grant money for it - I will be going to Indianapolis in February to start to develop a program for fatherhood classes. I'm very excited about the things I am getting to do.

That's the most interesting highlights I can think of from the past few months. Thanks to those of you who stuck around unti the end of the post!

Oh My Busy

Life is busy and life is fun. I finally got a job and started last Monday. This is the first time since then that I have been online. It's been that busy. I know.

My job is lame-o. I supervise visits between children and non-custodial parents and write down every word that comes out of their mouths and narrate everything that they do for hours at a time. I should start asking them to slow down, my hands feel broken. But good news, I have another job interview tomorrow. I really never wanted this one even before I applied for it but I was getting very bored at home and making zero cash. So now I baby sit parents with their kids. Cross your fingers for me on this job interview!

So now I work a full time job and a part time job. Danny goes to school full time and works part time. We're both marathon training and running for miles and miles. And we clean horse stables every week. And Danny just got called to be in the Elders Quorm Presidency. We're busy. But we're getting the hang of it and it's good to have lots of things to do. We see each other mostly on the weekends and we cram them full.

The Fourth in Idaho Falls

This weekend was the Miller grandparent's 60 wedding anniversary celebration/reunion/4th of July celebration. Danny and I carpooled with my parents and two brothers (a very crowded Suburban) to southern Idaho on Friday. We stopped at Fairmont hot springs (who does that in July?) for a very hot afternoon swim to break up the long drive.

My cousin Robin and her husband Scott graciously let us stay at their house and borrow their car so we could get back and forth to grandma and grandpa's. We stayed in their three-year-old son Matt's room and he was our best friend while we were at their house ("Hey, I can ride a two wheeler" "Hey, I can put on my own shirt" "Hey, my shirt has Micky Mouse on it. And on the back" "Hey, this is my motorcycle" "Hey, I'll go get my cars" "Hey, this is where my baby sleeps") but when we were at the reunion with everyone he avoided us at all costs.

Every time I go to a family reunion a whole new generation of little kids have been born to my older cousins so I have to relearn the older ones and learn all of the new ones. There were about a billion kids under 6 there and one of them loved Danny. She would grab his hand and lead him around when I wasn't around and give him looks across the yard when I was. Had she not been family and 19 years younger than my husband I might have been worried. She was cute.

My dad made a very long slide show full at least 10 pictures of each and every child, grand child, and great grand child of my grandparents. It was fun, but the room was stinking hot and crawling with children when we were watching it - the kids got a little out of hand and one poor little boy got punched in the face by his younger girl cousin.

It was only a one day reunion and we finished it by bailing on the fireworks down town. Luckily one of the neighbors - we suspect the local bishop - but on a better arial and illegal fireworks show than the city did and we watched it from the driveway.

I was sick the whole time.

All in all, it was a great trip. Danny was a great sport and played wonderfully with all of the little kids, made small talk with the aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins and wrestled with my brothers in the back yard. Lucky us, we're headed back for the next family reunion in southern Idaho next month.

6 Months!

Happy half anniversary to us! We made it six months and still love each other - so that's good. Yesterday was officially six months but we were baby sitting and marathon training so we celebrated on Friday. We had a picnic at Manito Park and walked through the rose gardens and Japanese gardens. It was so fun. Then we used our wedding present gift card to Applebees for dessert (not a great selection of desserts there - I don't recommend the place at all, actually.) And we rented a movie from RedBox - Ironman. It was just a good day. And in the morning my sweet husband got up before I did and was back from the store with roses and donuts before I got out of bed for our real half anniversary day. I have pictures, but currently the camera is somewhere upstairs and I don't want to go get it. This is the lazy man's post today.

Grape or Cherry? Both Favorites

The past few days have been pretty awesome. Last night was our celebratory graduation dinner with the Miller family and we all enjoyed. Momma Miller, Jessi, and Jessi's brother Conrad are have all/are going to all graduate this spring, so we decided to celebrate in a big way. We all piled into the Suburban and headed out to Wolf Lodge Inn in CDA and for any of you who have never had the chance to eat there, I highly recommend it. I'm actually salivating as I relive the experience... The food was amazing, the atmosphere was very laid back and cool, the area was very pretty, and the food was amazing. I can't say that I've ever eaten a better steak, or better halibut, or better shrimp, or a better baked potato, or have ever had a bigger stomach ache. It was a great time for all and congrats again to a family of graduates! YAY FOR MY WIFE! With tummies full of yummy food, we went to bed to prepare for a long day of marathon training and garage saling at the annual LIBERTY LAKE GARAGE SALE!

Turns out that sleeping with multiple pounds of beef in your stomach is not very, well, possible. We both woke up miserable and were late for the sale. Once we got ourselves out of bed and out to Liberty Lake, the streets were already lined with crowds of people and cars. I didn't even realize that LL had that many people in it! There are tons of houses, but I rarely see people out in the neighborhoods when we're visiting the in laws. We walked around and found a few deals of our own, making our first furniture purchases as a married couple ever. It was really funny to see the different styles people tried to use while selling their merchandise. Some people had their stuff marked super high and wanted to bargain on everything while others had everything dirt cheap and were basically asking us to take stuff. We found an entertainment center that we like that was mark at $200.00 dollars, which was way too high for our frugal budget, so Jessi bravely offered him $100.00 for it. He sized us up, talked to his wife and countered with $120.00. We just walked away and as we were leaving after finding something better and cooler than that for only $35.00, we saw that hadn't sold yet and had been remarked to $90.00. Should've taken our $100... I hope that it sits in his garage till next year and no one buys it then either...

So this was probably the hottest morning of the entire year up to this point. I don't know if this is actually true because I'm usually in class or at work in the morning hours, but it was the hottest morning of MY year so far. I'm not much of a shopper to begin with; I have a phobia of spending money. However, when I'm shopping AND it's super hot out, I don't last for long. After about an hour I was shot and ready to call it a day, so after checking a few more places for tennis rackets (which we never found, bummer) we headed back to home base. Upon arriving, we discovered a snow cone oasis! One of the Miller's family friends had set up shop at the bottom of the driveway and were selling little bits of grape, strawberry, bubble gum, black cherry, and pineapple heaven. Considering the circumstances, my black cherry snow cone may have rivaled my steak from the night before for the title of most satisfying things that I've consumed in the past 24 hours. With my new found energy we loaded up and headed home to take a nap. It wasn't all that much of a boost I guess. And marathon training didn't happen today. Not only does a gut full of steak keep you from sleeping, but it also keeps you from running. But lets look on the bright side, we got some cheap, used furniture that we actually own AND a free snow cone. All in all, a delicious day.

India

Hello all. Sorry we take forever to update. First of all - good news! I'm going to graduate! I passed my scary orals exam last Thursday and just went to my last class. Now I just get to wait in the mail for my diploma and I'll be the real deal.

Second of all - we want to go to India! One of Danny's mission companions is starting a charity over there called LDS Charities to help Indian RMs start their own businesses - a mini business school, if you will. The missions in India are English speaking, so the returned missionaries come home with excellent English and people skills. They then go out and get jobs in call centers where they work 80 hours a week and therefore have very little time to serve in church leadership or to raise families in the church. So the idea is that with new business skills and micro crediting they will have the opportunity to be lucritive as well as serve and help with the growth of the church in India. We have volunteered our time to do some fundraising and then to spend a week or two doing interviewing of potential candidates for the program in August or September. In order to go over to help we need to raise between four and five thousand dollars by the end of the summer. We're very excited and we also need some good ideas of how to raise money and who to talk to. We'll keep you posted if we come up with any big events that you can come to.

Oh! And in other news: we moved. Not far - we still live in the low-income housing complex that I work at, but no longer in a studio. We now have two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room, and a kitchen. It's a huge step up from the one room we were living in.

This is called putting off homework...

I have no pictures. I have no exciting news. Just a great need to not be working on my presentation that I have to give tomorrow and have not yet started.

We had a great weekend. I intended to paint the office for work and we were both going to do homework but none of that got done. Danny and I don't get to see each other too much during the week because of school, work, internships, etc. so we bailed on almost all responsibility and just played.

Friday afternoon we went to the temple as usual and then A&W for root beer floats. And then to a fantastic pizza place downtown called Rocky Rococco's. And then we went to play lazer tag. It sounds like an expensive night, but we had coupons. And a blast. It was someone's birthday in our ward and they invited us to play lazer tag with them - we got 1st and 2nd out of the 31 players in our game and 3rd and 5th high scores for the whole day. We rock. Our code names were Samson and Delilah. And then I think it was that night we went home and watched The Secret Life of Bees and I just sobbed and sobbed. It's a great movie, but definitely a tear jerker.

Saturday morning is our long run day. I think I wrote in an earlier post that we are "in training" for a half maraton so on normal Saturday mornings we go run, and we like to go on the Centennial trail downtown instead of in the scary neighborhood where we live. However, when we do run in our scary neighborhood we have to take both our building key and our apartment key to get back in the building so we just take those two off of the keyring so we don't have to carry them all. This particular day we had driven downtown to the trail and therefore needed the car keys and not the apartment keys. We didn't realize until we had finished our run that we had the wrong keys. So we ran all the way back home and Danny got the car keys and ran back again to get the car while I took a shower. Our total mileage: Jessi 3.5 miles and Danny 5.5 miles. Turns out we're not training that hard yet.

We spent Saturday afternoon doing laundry and homework and then we went out to eat yet again. We were going out with my parents and met them at the Indian restaraunt that we were really excited to try. Danny and I got there before them and walked out after about 2 minutes. There was a terrible belly dancing show being performed by over-weight, middle aged white women. It was terrible. We tried to call my parents off to meet us somewhere else but they were determined to see the show for themselves. Once they got there it didn't take long to convince them that we go out for Mexican instead.

Sunday was great as well. Danny and I work in the nursery at church and get to play with about 20 toddlers for two hours a week. We have a blast. However, one of the leaders got released last week abandoning the two of us keep the battle front on our own. We'll be fine. Pray for us. That evening we had an ice cream party with some people from our ward and finally started making some friends from church. We mostly only know their babies.

Thanks for reading this far. I think I can start my homework now.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone. This is really great for us. Two posts in one week. We spent the day before Easter at Mom and Dad Olson's house having a monster egg hunt and potluck dinner with all of the family and some friends. These are some of the eggs - they're full of confetti. I've never seen a hunt like this before, you find the eggs and slam them on people's heads. It was great.
This is Danny. I write in blue. Easter at my parent's house is pretty much chaos. This year it was really toned down, only about 10 kids. As for these confetti eggs, they're what make the hunt interesting/fun for the adults. They're the only ones that the adults were allowed to pick up and with about 15 dozen of them spread throughout the yard, that means plenty of ammo.

If you look carefully, you can see about 3 pieces of confetti in Jessi's hair. This picture didn't convey the effect we'd hoped it would. But look close... really close. And use your imagination if you need to...

Easter was also my Dad's birthday and two days before Danny's birthday. So we spent Easter day at Mom and Dad Miller's house. Here is Danny with his birthday/Easter strawberry shortcake.
This was just a great moment in time for me. I was getting sung to with cake in front of me AND I'd just found the SPECIAL EASTER EGG! I had a chocolate bunny waiting for me in the other room. Wow, what an evening, and it's not even my real birthday for two more days!

What to say in a blog...

So, Danny and I started taking pictures of things we do to post on this blog...and then we stopped. And I haven't posted the ones that we've taken. So, here's an update on somethings we've been up to.

We took my little brother Conrad and his cute date, Ellen, to a Plain White T's concert at the Knitting Factory and made him a dinner (my first pot roast ever - it was massive).

Danny helped me to make Easter decorations for our apartment to replace the St. Patrick's Day ones. He wasn't thrilled but didn't hate it too much once he found out how simple they were - he even came up with his own ideas. Maybe I will post pictures of those, they're cute.

We both started a new quarter at school. I have only two more classes until my MSW! Yay! Danny started at SCC with a plan to transfer to EWU in the Fall to take any prereqs he needs for the nursing program. It's interesting with me going to school in Cheney and working downtown, and Danny going to school in Spokane Valley and working on the South Hill and only one car. I'm becomming a master of the bus system around here.

We've started training for a half marathon that we want to put together for this summer. Anyone who would like to run it with us is invited, it's going to be on the Centennial Trail...somewhere...on some day in the summer....but it's going to be great. And we're ordering t-shirts.

I won the Miller family March Madness bracket tournament! The only one in my family who didn't have a clue about any of the teams playing and the only one who scored any points in the last three rounds of the tournament. Go me! I got some of the new premium M&Ms, a can of almond roca, and a Whitman's Sampler. Mmmm. I love March Madness now.

Danny and I got called to be nursery leaders. I'm pretty sure I never posted anything about that. We have about 17 toddlers split into two rooms. It's a blast. We play with play dough, rice, sing songs, and eat snacks. Absolutely the fastest church has ever gone in my life.

Well folks, I think that's about all I've got. Pictures will be posted of something at some later date. Promise.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Here it is. Your first insight to how the Olsons live. I decided to make all green food and put up some very ugly shamrocks I cut out of construction paper. Danny was a great sport and ate all of my green food, despite being nauseated to begin with. Flu season. Poor guy.

We had green kool aid, green blueberry muffins, green scrambled eggs and not ham, but sausage and olives and cheese, and pistacio pudding for desert. I made him a fruit smoothie later on but was merciful and let it be pink.

We also listened to Irish drinking songs, courtesy of Flogging Molly, and wore fun green clothes. We also watched 'Invincible' in which Danny pointed out that the team wore green uniforms. A perfect movie for the day. He's a good sport to play along with me.

We have a blog!

Danny and I have now been married for well over two months - time to join the bloggers. Since it looks like we'll be spending the next several years in Spokane and away from many of our friends I figured this would be a way to keep in touch...as long as I keep up on it.

The latest and greatest news is that Danny has switched his major from civil engineering to nursing - thus our decision to stay in Spokane. We're currently working on finding out the prereqs and getting him applied to different schools and ready for school in about 3 weeks now. I'll be graduating in June with my masters in social work and looking for full-time work to support our happy little family so if you hear about any social work jobs...