I :/ NY

Have you ever loved something, but also totally not loved it at the same time? 
 That's how I feel about New York. I would like to "heart" it, but i'm not quite ready for that kind of commitment yet.


Let's start with the Empire state building. I don't understand what the big deal is- Alica Keys named a song after it, it has special mention in the Lonely planet, but it's just a tall building. It's not the tallest in the world, or United States so why do people line up for hours to see it. Awkward. 


The Statue of Liberty is a symbol of freedom, and the American dream. For us she was a symbol of sweating tourists elbowing you out of the way for a spot in line to catch the Ferry. What's worse is you can't even go up the statue, so your $20 will get you a nice view of her feet. Conclusion- we did not take the ferry but instead admired her from afar. 


If you want to get anywhere in New York for very little then the subway is the best way to go! We paid $29 for a 7 day unlimited pass which I think is a pretty reasonable amount of money to pay to get all over the city. The downsides are 1. There are rats 2. It smells like urine 3. Crazy people will use the subway as a captive audience to collect " money for the homeless" 4. These said homeless people will moon you as you get off the train and then proceed to light firecrackers in their anal region. 

Street food is a New York must have. Nuts 4 nuts was my personal favorite, roasted almonds with a sweet and crunchy coating.. hmmmm. Pretzels are a filling and inexpensive snack, if you don't mind being hit in the face with a case of ultimate dry mouth. Tuks decided to get a Gyro from the Halal cart. All I am going to say about that is that's a lot of trust to put in a stranger with a metal box full of meat. 


There are trillions of cabs in New York trying to run you over as your cross the street, or honking their horns while you try to sleep. But, do you think we could find ONE cab at midnight while we were in a dodgy area. Of course not. When we managed to track one down, he didn't listen and drove straight past our street. Excellent.


The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway was the best experience of the whole trip. The set blew us away, the music was incredibly touching and nearly every song brought us to tears. That could be because we are both pathetic or the performers were very talented. I liked to think it was the latter.




Central Park was a real treat- we rented bikes and cycled around for an hour. The downside was we didn't see one dead body like they always seem to do on SVU and Law and order. One morning we even managed to wake up early and go for a run through it.

 Walking. New Yorkers do lots of walking, which is wonderful. I like that physical activity and fresh air is a part of the cities daily routine, but do they have to walk so fast! Where are they all going? Why don't they just leave a few minutes earlier? With all the walking we did, our feet killed every night. 

MoMA was amazing. Tuks and I are still glowing knowing we stood next to pieces by Van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Andy Warhol and Picasso. They even had a DJ pump out funky tunes as we worked our way though the galleries. 

The Magnolia bakery. Nom nom nom... sorry can't talk my mouth is full of cupcakes and snickers pie.

" The city that never sleeps". Really? Not ever? Hmm like not even when you're really, really tired? I guess the benefit of this is that there was always something to do. The downside was it was always happening right outside our bedroom window! 

Ok so did we hate New York? No. Did we love it? Occasionally. I think we fall somewhere in the middle which is why we :/ NY or feel neutral about it. There were a lot of wonderful things in New York that we know you can't find anywhere else. And there were a lot of things that we could have skipped and just watched on Youtube or on a post card- like the Statue of Liberty. So in conclusion the Big Apple was pretty o.k.    

The land of the Prophets

 Tuks and I have been in the land of the free for seven days now. We spent our first night in Inglewood, LA and didn't get shot or mugged.

The rest of the week we spent in Utah with our good friends the Summerill's. My wonderfully talented friend Erin who shoots weddings when she's not too busy taking care of her four kids or going to Harts to refill her Big Chill, has shown us all around the town.

We worked out every morning at the Pleasant grove rec center where Erin teaches Aerobics.  We went to Park city to see the ski fields and strange Moose sculptures,  shopped at the outlets and toured around BYU Provo. We did a live endowment session at the Salt Lake temple and looked at the muesums around temple square. We got special tickets to the Utah Jazz game, that came with a meal before the game, unlimited snacks during and sat only 12 rows back from the court!!



We went to General conference, and later that day met John Bytheway at the Deseret book store who signed my DVD's and books. Last night we watched "Unicorn city" at the $3 movies and did more shopping at Walmart. Can I also mention that I have done a lot of driving here and there is not one scratch on the car nor have we had any near accidents.

In between those things we have filled up on candy, frozen yogurt and Mexican food. Which takes me back  to the Big Chill. People here drink so much soda, and I know because the cup sizes are massive and every time we go to Harts men, women and children are all loading up on their gallon of soda. Like this guy who thought it was amusing that I thought his drinking habits were amusing enough to take a photo:

I have had a few favorite Utah moments, the first was a conversation I overheard at Ross between a mother and daughter.

Girl:  How about these Mom? ( points at a pair of jeggings)
 Mom:  Uh uh.. jeggings are NOT ok

For obvious reasons I had to have a conversation like this while I was here:

Sister: Are you visiting with your family?
Me: Just my husband and some of his family.
Sister:  Oh, how long have you been married?
Me: About two and a half years
Sister: Neat! Well, how many children do you have?
Me: Oh I don't have any yet, I'm only 26!
OK so I purposely did that to get a reaction from her... and she was suckered in and produced just the reaction I was expecting.

Tomorrow we leave Utah, and I am a little sad. Farewell trips to Harts to buy the Big chill, and Walmart to buy all 7 flavors of M&M's. Goodbye late night conversations, midnight corndogs, early morning aerobics, thrift shopping, awkward singing girls in public bathrooms, healthy smoothies made by Mark, embarrassing unintentional insults towards Erin's mum, running into people you haven't seen in years and laughing endlessly at jokes that never get old.

Onto the next chapter of our adventure, here's hoping it's just as fun.

Auckland Half Iron Man

On the weekend I participated in the short course of the Auckland Half Iron man. Our team was called the Spider Pigs and I did the 30km cycle.  My friend Crystal did the 7km run and Anthony did our 1km swim.

Here is me almost dying on the ride:

The good news is we came first out of the teams. ....What I want to leave out but should tell you is there were only four teams in total. I still think we rocked it!

Reserve, restore and refill

The past week has been a downpour of stressful situations. As amazing as girls camp was, there were many late nights leading up to it that really took a toll on my body. Those things never go 100% as planned and that can, and did add to my stress levels.

Immediately after camp our car decided to pack up and die leaving us stranded. I have no idea how I will get to work each day or how we are going to purchase a new car.

That afternoon we witnessed a 6 year old girl get hit by a car on our street. I called the ambulance and had to console the babysitter who was in a serious state of shock. I was also responsible for phoning the mother to tell her that little Ava was being taken by an Ambulance to Starship hospital- that was probably the most difficult conversation I have ever had. Tuks jumped straight out onto the street to begin directing the traffic. I love him and the way he reacts to stressful situations.

Sleep time finally came, but I woke up at 3am with terrible nausea, a fever and aching muscles. While feeling sick and spending the morning organizing a tow truck for our car I still had to go into school because there was no reliever available.

My landlord called  and told us she was raising the rent and that I couldn't leave my bike inside anymore....there was nothing to eat for dinner.... my eyebrows have grown an inch thick.... and  finally when I was at Mutual I realized my energy was completely depleted.

I have done a lot of reading about energy in the past so know that we only have a certain amount. This energy needs to be conserved and restored and in times of stress I need to keep giving back to myself to refill my tank.

So I took today off to do absolutely nothing. I went for a small walk and sat the rest of the day in my PJ's allowing myself time to BE with myself. It has been wonderful and I realize that when I don't take time to do this I become stressed, irritable and not the type of person I want to be in the world.

I spent some part of today reflecting on the interactions I have had with others in the last few days and I truly believe we are all connected to each others energy fields. Whenever I walk into my classroom, my office, spend time at Young Women's, on the phone with the mechanic or strangers on the road my energy is either restored or taken away from me. I realize there are people that I associate with regularly who sap me of my energy and I need to find a way to put up a barrier to keep their negative vibes away.

I also have a couple of energy idols- people whose energy amazes me President Orgill ( President of the PCC) is one. I have no idea what I would do if I had to wake up at 4am like him. And there is nobody like my good friend Erin. How does she do that? And with four kids!

Energy is the essence of life and I need to decide everyday how I am going to use it. Situations can be as stressful or carefree as I choose. And that, for me is the key- it is MY choice. 

Girls camp

I just returned from my ward's girls camp. Our theme  was " Arise and Shine forth" which is also the LDS Youth mutual theme for the year.

The purpose of the camp was two fold. First, to get our YW to become more confident in themselves and in their interactions with others and second to solidify what " Arise and Shine forth" means to them this year.

I will expand on the second purpose in another post- but as for the confidence building, we took them to the beautiful Woodhill forest where an adventure wonderland awaited for us. We climbed 10-14 meters above the ground and completed very challenging activities as we wound our way through the treetops.

The girls blew me away, they were fearless and showed a real go get em attitude that we don't often see on Sunday or at mutual.  Later that night we talked about the need to apply that same attitude to everything else they do this year and challenged them to really push outside of their comfort zones. The girls have huge potential, but don't often see it so it was a great object lesson.

Here is a picture of us before we took to the trees:

26 going on 16

Remember that time the All Blacks stood me up? I was hurt and confused and angry that I had worn my heels all day for nothing.
Well, today they totally made up for it.

I know I am a married woman, but I have no shame in admitting I go weak at the knees every time I see Sonny Bill Williams on television. He is my ultimate celebrity crush, and if my husband didn't give me the crazy eye every time I mentioned his name I would probably own a lot more of his fan swag.


While we are being totally honest here I have to admit that in order to get a photo with SBW I had to run onto the field during his rugby game and ask for one. Some may call that crazy, I call it dedication. This morning hubby and I watched the news coverage of this event and he joked that he couldn't see me chasing Sonny down the field. Ha ... ha..... ha.

Imagine our surprise when we came across this photo.

Who's doing the chasing now! he he It's good to know I still got it ;)

Does my bum look big in these?

In two months I have clocked over 400 kilometers on my bike. It's true. My odometer says so. During this time I have increased my endurance and strength without the harsh impact on my joints that can often come with running. But have I increased in other areas too?

The majority of those kilometers are made up of my rides to and from work.It was after riding to work one morning that a colleague said she would never take up riding because it gives you "a fat butt and huge throbbing man quads". Now, even though I have not always had a road bike I have for years taken spin/rpm classes. If it gave me a big butt or big vein covered legs like some steroid soaked body builder or Tour de France rider then I would have stopped.  What's funny is that my pants HAVE been a little tighter lately, however, I can almost guarantee that comes down to the tub of ice cream and family sized portion of ginger slice I ate last week, not because I have been cycling more.

During one of our training rides Mr Triathlete stopped for a photo op. I now give you permission to look at my butt. I don't think cycling has given me quads that belong on the world's strongest man competition, but I want you to be the judge- is my butt looking big?