Training....Me? wait a minute...

So one day everyone in my family got a text from Devin and it said something like, "There's a bunch of races in Boise on the same day, I'm running a Marathon and everyone should do one. Whoever doesn't is a chump!" haha I can't really remember what he said, but I'm sure it was SOMETHING to that extent. And if you know me at all, I am NOT a runner! I am part of a family that likes to conquer big things, go on ginormous hikes, jump of enormous cliffs. All of these crazy things where, I try to do the same, but really, lets face it. I am just not as hardcore as the rest of em! BUUUUUUT when it comes to running in one of these races, I WANTA DO IT! I've never been a runner, and I know that I will never train for something like this if I didn't have the rest of my family doing it.

I originally decided the 10k was for me. I thought it'd be perfect, I'd get to where I can go running without dying again and I won't kill myself trying to go too far. Buuuuut you know my family had to convince me it just wasn't good enough. "That's a race for Dad, you can do more!" Sooooo, I'm in the process of training for a HALF marathon! And if you don't know, that's 13.1 miles. I know, it sounds absolutely crazy. But, the training has begun. Before this, I had never ran more than four miles in row in my life. But, the other day, I am proud to say, I RAN FIVE MILES!!!!!!! That's right! I've beat my record.

At first running was extremely painful and horrible. Now, I'm sad if the day goes by and I didn't get my run in. It feels good, and lets face it! The muscles in my legs have never looked better! :) Alright, I'll keep you posted on how the rest of the training goes in a while. Can't wait for another big run where I break my record again and again and again!

The Holidays!

I realize its now February and I never posted anything about the wonderful holidays! Our Christmas and New Years were the BESSST!!! Before we move on to Valentine's Day coming up and everything else exciting going on, I need to say a few things about what we did!

This was our cute little tree we had in our apartment before we went to my house for Christmas. Even though its little and doesn't have any ornaments, I still loved it.

After making such a big deal about bring our camera while packing, this is the only picture we have our Christmas morning. :) This was us, bright and early, right before we went downstairs and saw everything Santa brought us!

My favorite dinner of the year is Christmas Eve. Yummy ham, my mom's homemade rolls, mashed potatoes and gravy, and so much delicious food! Originally I was going to have to work on Christmas Eve and miss all of my favorite traditions, but luckily we got it all worked out and I was able to drive home late the night before. So, I didn't miss a thing! Christmas eve ROCKS at the Limb House!

This year having lots of people home for Christmas, the presents start to build up fast! Having Karissa and Toby's little boys there this year made it so much more fun. I think the excitement ran through the whole house. We were all just WAY too excited to see what Zeke would do when he saw how many presents Santa brought everyone!

Christmas was perfect. For the first time I got to have all of my favorite Christmas traditions with my best friend! Being married is the best!!! Of course Connor did a good job at spoiling me like crazy and making this one of the best Christmases ever!


A quick word on New Years so I will always remember the fun time I had. First, I had to work, but I was able to get off work at five so I still had the rest of the night to party! When I got home Connor and I decided we'd go to Brick Oven Pizza for dinner! And my oh my, it was deeeeelicious! After we stuffed our faces, we went to the cheap movie theater and saw Despicable Me. I had heard so much about it, I wanted to see it really bad. And if anyone was wondering--It's a WAY cute movie and totally recommend it! After the movie we realized we can't bring in the New year without CHIPS AND SALSA!!! no no no, what where we thinking?! We ran over to the store and got our favorite kinds. NOW the New Year can come. We went home, played an intense gave of Settlers, ate some chips and candy, then finished the night off with another movie I had been dying to see! How To Train Your Dragon! Also, another real good movie.

If that's not that best way to finish a year and of bring in another, i don't know what is! I had my hilarious and fun Hubby, chips and salsa, good movies, and fun games. I am pretty sure that is most of my favorite things right there! OF COURSE IT WAS GOING TO BE A BLAST!

Well 2010, you were a goooooood year to me. But, I am excited to bring on 2011!!!! Let's see what adventures you bring us this year!

Gingerbread Houses

Building Gingerbread houses is one of my favorite traditions, and since I wasn't going to be home until Christmas Eve we decided we'd do gingerbread houses on our own. We got together with Karissa, Toby, Ryan and Meredith, and Trent and Catelin. Karissa, Connor and I came up with a brilliant idea of making cut outs out of sugar cookie instead of our traditional graham crackers. It was the best idea ever! Not only did they work, they were very very tasty! Here are a few pictures of the fun night!

We made a replica of our apartment!

Catelin and Trent's house was amazing! I wish I had a picture of their finishing product.

Making Gingerbread houses, listening to Christmas music, eating candy, enjoying good company. Can a night get better than this? I LOVE CHRISTMAS TIME!

SNOW DAY!

Dec. 21, 2010 I was scheduled to go to a color class for work in Taylorsville. Taylorsville is about 45 minutes away from Provo with NO traffic, and I had to be there at 9:00am. During the night it had snowed about 7 inhces and was still snowing! So, I needed to leave about 2 hours early in order to get through the traffic and snow and get there on time. When it was time to start the car and clean the snow off, there were other cars in the parking lot trying to leave and getting VERY stuck! So what'd I do?! I started to panic! That's what I did!! I called my manager to see if by any chance the class had been cancelled...it hadn't. But, fifteen minutes after talking to my manager she called me back and told me to not even try going. So i ran outside to get Connor from shoveling out our whole parking lot and tell him that it's officially a SNOW DAY!

After we woke up after going back to bed, we decided we should go to the temple since we both had the day off. And since it was so snowy, we thought it would be fun to walk there, since it's just up the hill.

Then we got there and found out the temple was closed. But it looked really pretty in all that snow

So, we came back and built a snowman

BEST SNOW DAY EVER!!!!

We came back in and spent the rest of the day hanging out, drinking hot cocoa and enjoying the day off

Zekes Program

After the program everyone got to ride the train all around the mall.


One of the times Zeke was actually singing along and not biting his nails.

This is what he usually was doing. Karissa says he only bites his nails when he gets nervous. But he still did a good job and was so cute.

I am so lucky to live close to my adorable nephews!!! The other day Zeke's preschool class performed in front of JCPenney at the mall. And I got to go watch it! Here's some videos of their performances, they are sooooo dang cute!

Things I'm Thankful For

This holiday season I have been feeling very blessed for the things in my life. So, I thought I would write a list of some of them so that I will always remember how good of a life I have.

Things I'm Thankful For: (in no particular order)
1. Connor
2. Family
3. Having family live close so there's hard days or boring days, I always have some of my best
friends around.
4. The Gospel
5. Connor going to a good school
6. Cell Phones
7. Car
8. Job ---And not having to work on Sundays!
9. Apartment
10. Comfy Bed--Thanks Dan and Annette!
11. Computer
12. Slippers
13. Connor's sense of humor
14. The Holy Ghost
15. Washer and Driers
16. Laughing
17. Having ability to see, and hear things
18. Being in a good ward
19. Being able to go home for Christmas!
20. Airplanes
21. Christmas lights (they're some of my favorite things!)
22. Living close to my cute nephews
23. Christ
24. Wonderful, loving and kind in laws
25. Being married to my best friend!

There are several more and I could go on and on and on. I am so lucky and am so blessed! I have a good life and am glad for the holidays to help me remember that.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving at the Willises! Boy oh boy was it a blast! The Willis Family sure knows how to PARTY! Well, I had to work on Wednesday the day before Thanksgiving and Connor and Ryan were done with classes by Tuesday. So they (Ryan, Connor and Meredith) were going to drive to Snoqualmie Tuesday after class, right when the storm hit! Freeways were closing and horrible blizzards were rolling our way and road reports stated it was life threatening conditions. So, they were set to leave early in the morning to let the storm pass. At least that's what I thought when I went to work that day.

I was having a good day at work when I decided I should check my phone to see if there was anything, where I found a text from Connor. This is what it said "So funny story, we're on a plane right now." and THAT'S IT! I just started laughing. I guess they had decided the roads would still be bad in the morning and as Dan and Annette were booking the flights they were over the phone telling the boys the confirmation code as they entered it in to get their tickets. They had decided and were off to Seattle in a half an hour. So, the three of them got there safe and sound, avoiding all of the ice and storms and road closures.

And now I'm sure you're thinking, oh no! what about Janiece! yessss well, I had another day of work,

so once I was done with work on Wednesday I spent the night at Annette's Parents house and was dropped off at the airport early in the morning to catch my flight. I was SO excited to get there!

Every year the Willis Family will fill out the Turkey of the things they are thankful for. That morning at breakfast we all took turns and went around saying our top 3 things we were thankful for. (And you couldn't repeat something someone had already said). This was a fun tradition I really liked.


We had the traditional Thanksgiving feast on Friday so Ron and Elizabeth could join us. And goodness gracious, it was worth waiting for. Annette is an AMAZING cook and everything looked and tasted soooo delicious. She even attempted and conquered making my favorite sour cream and lemon pie. oh yum yum!! And because there were only 6 of us left to eat all of the left overs I was able to have pie after breakfast, lunch AND dinner! Talk about spoiled right?!

The weekend was scheduled around the football games. --By Connor's request. I thought MY family watched a lot of football....well I stand corrected! That tv, I think, was on all day everyday with some football game on that Connor insisted he really wanted to watch. I luckily stole him away to play a few games of battleship and other fun family games. Oh, a fun thing we did was at breakfast that morning, before all of the important football games started, we had to fill out who we thought would win and what the scores would be. The person that was closest for that game got a prize. Connor got two prizes and Meredith got one. I on the other hand, was WAY off!

Saturday morning we were discussing what kinds of activities we wanted to do that day. We all agreed we wanted to go outside for a walk to get some fresh air and maybe walk off some of the food we ate the day before. Well, off we went, down the road. I was thinking, "this will be fun, going on a nice walk around the neighborhood." Well well well, don't be mistaken by the term "walk" around Annette and Dan. And need I remind you they live in Snoqualmie now, where there are trails just right in their neighborhood if they ever felt like hiking around the mountains. And that is JUST what we did! I for one, am EXTREMELY out of shape, and for two, had a horrible cold, and for three, wasn't prepared for Dan and Annette's ability to climb! Because of my cold, I lost my voice, had horrible pressure in my head, and had an extremely runny nose. All of these factored into my inability to keep up with Super Dan and PowerWoman Annette. Alright, I'm exaggerating a bit, the hike was a lot of fun. As Dan would walk he would inform us what each plant was as we passed it and would tell us good stories and jokes. We all had a ton of fun hiking around, laughing at each other, and telling stories.

Before Ron and Elizabeth left after Thanksgiving, there was the "revealing of the lights". We all got outside and waited to see their beautiful new house all light up for the Holidays.

It looked great! This will be their first Christmas in the new house!


Over the weekend we played lots of games. My favorites were Balderdash-Where Annette took first place and I came in CLOSE second! The fun thing about the whole game was, what ever word or story I made up, Connor always thought that it sounded the best! I'm pretty sure he would vote for mine 90% of the time! I guess he just thinks my sense of humor is the best! :)

My second favorite game we played was Pictionary. Dan, Connor and me were on one team. And Ryan, Meredith and Annette were on the other team. And let me just say I learned something very valuable about myself. I am GOOD at pictionary! We SMOKED the other team! It was a lot of fun, definitely a game I want to own some day. That is FOR SURE!