Birthweek

Yesterday was my birthday.  It was a great day but the great thing about it was that it was the end of about a week long celebration.

Last Thursday Mom and Dad, Tessa and Zach surprised me with a trip to the Melting Pot.  I've always wanted to go there.  It was amazing!  We spent almost 3 hours eating.  Who could ask for anything better?

We started with 2 kinds of cheese and breads and veggies and chips.  Then we moved on to the main course.    This is Zach with his tempura battered broccoli.  

Mumsy and Papi at the end of the dinner portion.  They look like they are in a food coma because they are.

I got 5 chocolate covered strawberries that were as big as my head.  They went great with the white chocolate fondu and the smores fondu.  It was awesome!!!

On Saturday Zach's mom and dad came down and took us out to dinner.  We went to a little burger joint in Scottsdale called Delux.  It was awesome.  The chi was amazing and they had some of the best french fries I've ever had!

Monday night Tessa came over and read me Dr. Seuss's happy birthday story.  All I can say is that I'm glad I'm not 3 baked potatoes.

Tuesday morning Zach woke me up with breakfast in bed.  He made cottage cheese pancakes!  I spent a day at school.  My school friends took me out to lunch.  Then for dinner we did the traditional Joe's restaurant trifecta starting at Joe's Farm Grill.  

Desert of Salt River bars at Liberty Market.

And dinner for today at Joe's BBQ.

It was a great birthweek.  What more can a girl ask for?

12 Years!

Wednesday we celebrated Preston's 12 year anniversary of his heart transplant.  I think it's been a great 12 years.  The party consisted of good people, gourmet soda and Tessa red velvet cake.  I think those 3 things are perfect for a party celebrating Preston's life.  

Here's to another 12 + years better than the last.

Mindi and Jude.  Jude was way to into his cookie to smile.

The red velvet cake complete with Zelbie decor.  Yes, the fox is giving the owl his heart. (The cake was amazing by the way.)

Do you think this could be Preston's son?

And this pretty much sums it up!

Easter

Easter was pretty laid back this year.  The easter bunny visited our house early in the morning and brought us some candy and socks.  At church we had a good/interesting musical sacrament meeting.  Then we had a fun family dinner with some games and that was it.  

Easter is actually my second favorite holiday, next to Christmas.  Not that I need one but I like having a special reason to think about Christ and the resurrection and to be especially grateful for that.  This easter was no exception.    

Here's me with my special Tessa bag basket.  I love it!

 Zach and his basket.  We tried the snickers eggs this year.  They are delicious!

Impromptu Triathlon

A few Saturdays ago, Zach was participating in a sprint triathlon.  He went to check in on Friday evening and when he saw the course decided that I would love it and should participate.  Since I was going anyway (for support) I let myself be convinced.  We had a great time.  I didn't get any pics of Zach since he is waaay faster than me but he was nice enough to take some of me.  It was a short tri, 300 meter swim, 8 mile bike and 2 mile run.  Zach's goal was to finish in 45 minutes and mine was to finish in around 1 hour.  We both did great; Zach finished in 47 minutes and I finished in 1hour and 1 second which was the top 20!  For me that is awesome!  

PLACE PLC/TOT  NO.  NAME          PLC SWIM    PLC   BIKE    PLC   RUN    TIME

16  10/22    149 SHANON BROWN   42  7:54    20   33:37    21   18:30   1:00:01 

Here's Zach and I before the race.

Me on the bike!  My bike's name is Lightening because it's so fast.

Me at the end of the run.  I ran it in 9:15 per mile.  For me, that's super fast!

Both of us at the end.

It really was a great triathlon.  Anyone who really wants to do one but is a little nervous, it's perfect!  There's only 150 people and it's shorter than a normal sprint tri.  It's very chill and the location is great, right through a beautiful neighborhood.  I would highly recommend it!  

Spring Break

As I sit here in pharmacology trying not to get too mad I realized that I hadn't blogged about spring break.  (I needed to go to a happy place in order to calm myself down.) I had such a lovely spring break.  It started with a few crafts, which I will show you in another post but the real fun happened when the Bade's came to visit.  It's been 2 years since we've seen each other and it was great to hang out.

We went to Jesterz!

This is a picture of one of the places we went out to eat.  We also had pasties, Joe's Farm Grill and lots of good homemade food.  I didn't need to eat for a week after.

Once the Bades left (insert tears) it was time to hang with the fam.  We took Jude swimming.  He loved it but he mostly loved hanging out by the railings in the 7 foot deep area.  You can imagine how this would be a problem since I am only 5'6".  

These are the g parents.  They were down for a few days and it sure was great to hang out with them!  Love these two.  They are truly one of a kind. (Each of them separately is one of a kind and both of them together is one of a kind too!)

All in all it was a great spring break and much needed.  I'm now 2 weeks back at the grindstone and getting closer and closer to the end.  Yay!

Birthdays and Unbirthdays!

Now that finals are over, I can actually take a breath and hopefully catch up on blogging. Not a lot has been going on with all the studying but I did miss blogging about Mindi's birthday. She turned 31 on Valentine's Day. We had a little party with good dinner and dessert! I made a chocolate chip cookie pie. It was pretty good. Anyway, happy unbirthday today to Mindi but here are pictures of her real birthday!

This was Mindi's birthday banner.  Can you tell I do not have her or Tessa's craftiness ability.  This was the best I could come up with.

Mindi opening her presents.

Happy Mindi!

Jude putting Mindi's presents on his head.  It was sooo cute!

Ethan's Run

Today I ran my first "official" 10K.  It was awesome!  It wasn't the fastest I've ever run a 10K but it was half uphill and it wasn't my slowest time either.  I was pretty happy with my results.
The actual run was only part of the awesomeness of this race.  It was the cause that made it even more awesome.  Ethan's Run was set up to benefit children with congenital heart defects so it hit very close to home.  Zach and I debated doing it because of the money until I heard that a couple in my old ward had just lost their first baby to one of these defects.  Well, that broke my heart and I wanted to do something to help.  In these situations, there really isn't much to do but at least I could pay a little bit of money to help someone similar to them.  The atmosphere at the run was amazing.  There were tons of families all wearing shirts supporting their little kiddo with heart problems.
While I was walking around before the race I ran into an old Sunday school teacher of mine.  She told me that she had recently lost her little girl.  I was amazed at how strong these families who had lost their little ones were.  Not that they weren't sad or having a hard time but they were out helping others.  I really don't think I would be able to do that.  It was very overwhelming to me.  I am so grateful to know that families can be together forever and that these little children aren't lost.  They are with a loving Heavenly Father waiting for their earthly parents to come to them.