Los Angeles, CA

In need of some warmer temps, I went to LA last week.  Short version/highlights: hit up Disneyland for a day AND bungee jumped off a bridge.  Not a bad weekend if you ask me!

I swear, I don't know why everyone doesn't live in California.  The weather there is just amazing.

Day 1 (Friday) was checking out the USC campus (they had a little fair going on or something), hit Venice beach, of course, and attended a live taping of Jay Leno.  Lucked out with front row seats and even got picked to go up on stage before the taping began to entertain the audience with a comedian!  Saw the Christmas lights and Hollywood square after dinner that night.  (The Christmas trees + warm weather really threw me for a loop...)

Day 2 (Saturday) was Disneyland!  I love that place.  I don't care how old I get, I think it will always be fun.  But again, the shorts and Christmas decorations are just a weird combo...  That night I went to the Lakers game, ended up with awesome seats for FREE (some guy standing out front just handed them to me) and got to see Kobe hit a last second game winning three.  Pretty cool.

Day 3 (Sunday) was a long, beautiful hike through a canyon, and eventually jumping off a bridge.  No big deal.  (See link above for a video of it).

Day 4 (Monday) was driving up and down the 101 down to Laguna and Santa Monica Pier, before heading to the airport that evening.

(More detailed post and lots of pictures coming soon...)

Road Trip: North Carolina to KC

My BFF, Kelsey, has been living in North Carolina for awhile now, but is moving back to Kansas City.  Make that DRIVING back to Kansas City, with all of her stuff in her tiny car.

Being the good friend I am ;)  I couldn't let her do the looooong drive by herself.

So I flew out to North Carolina, she picked me up at the airport around 2pm, and we immediately hit the road back to Kansas City. 

Her car was so packed, the passenger seat was pushed almost all the way forward, and the seat back was practically straight up.  Just slightly umcomfortable, haha.

Gassing up before hitting the road.  (And bought a road atlas...just in case.)

We only stopped for gas, snacks, and bathroom breaks -- which wasn't many stops.  I wish I could still remember where all of them were, but at least I took pictures at every stop!

 Sleep didn't come easily, although I do think I drifted off once or twice in betwen driving shfits.  It was cramped quarters in that little car.  Did I mention how much stuff she had packed in there?? ;)

After a long day of traveling and driving aaaallllllll evening/night long, we rolled back in to Kansas City (and my house) around 7am the next morning!

Driving by The K!

Home safe in my driveway

 
Needless to say, it was a long 24 hours.  But we made the best out of it and had a good time catching up on our cross-country (well, half way across the country) road trip!

1st Half-Marathon

For some reason, I had the brilliant idea this year of running a half marathon.  I've always enjoyed running, and have done my fair share of laps around a track and 5K's, so a half marathon just seemed like the next logical thing to do I guess.

Let me tell you, 13.1 miles is a LONG WAYS to run.  But I did it!  I "trained" for several months before the Kansas City Marathon (which was October 17th) using Hal Higdon's training schedule I found on the internet.  It worked, I guess.  I mean, I finished! It took me just under 2 hours to complete in the cold and rainy weather. 

1 hour, 54 minutes, and 56 seconds, to be exact. (8 minutes and 47 seconds avg pace/mile.)  

There were 2,176 females total.  I was number 315 to cross the line, and was 87th out of 663 in my age division.  Not terrible, I guess.  Certainly not great, and definitely slower than I was hoping for.  But I'll take it for my first attempt at a half marathon.

For official race results,CLICK HERE. 

This is the only decent picture I could (illegally) get from the internet.  None were good enough to pay the sky-high price to actually get a non-blurry version... So this will have to do!

Tanganyika Wildlife Park

Last weekend we took a road trip down to Wichita, KS, to see the new Tanganyika Wildlife Park.  It was a loooong drive...especially for the stir-crazy kids!

(Yes, those are Brody's underwear on Christa's head)                                                            

We finally pulled up to Tanganyika after a couple of hours in the car...

...and the race was on to get inside!

The first thing we saw were multiple giraffes!  Everyone was impressed!

Som fun by the pond...

Lots of animals to check out...

We got to PET kangaroos!!  The kids weren't the only ones who thought that was prety cool!

We also got to feed goats, touch turtles, play with bunnies, ride a camel, and learn about lemurs!

MORE animals:

I'd say it was a successful trip.  We all had fun...although no one was looking forward to the drive back.  Thankgoodness for the DVD system in my car!