Running Tights!!

One thing I love about running in the winter is getting to wear running tights. They are super comfy and really warm. I wish it was acceptable to wear them every where, because I love them so much.

My favorite brand of running tights is Nike. They fit the best and they have the most styles and colors. During the winter you can find running tights from Nike in Dick's Sporting Goods, Scheels, and almost every other place that sells sporting wear.

Here are some of my favorite running tights.

 
These are the thinner Nike Pro Combat tights which are really comfy and perfect for races.

I just bought this pair of the thicker Nike pro combat tights and they are very warm.

These are really cute and look really warm, so I think I might buy them with my christmas money!

Memphis!!

After eight hours of driving to Memphis for the Iowa State vs. Tulsa Liberty Bowl game, we arrived at the hotel, unpacked and went to a really cool restaurant called Blue’s City Café, which had a really cool pink Cadillac hanging on the ceiling and really nice and funny waiters. I had really good chicken tenders with amazing barbeque sauce.

The next day we went to Graceland and got a tour of Elvis’s house. After my dad forced us to listen to about three hours of Elvis radio on the way to Memphis, I wasn’t really looking forward to going to Elvis’s house, but I was pleasantly surprised. He got headphones which told fun facts about elvis’s life, his house was decorated very interestingly and we got to go into his two planes. We saw his funky looking outfits, his rooms which were very gaudy looking (one had crazy patterned carpet on the floors, ceilings and the walls), and after spending a few hours there I can say I am now a fan of Elvis. After we visited Elvis’s house it was around 1:00 and we were starving so we drove around and found this restaurant called the Butcher Shop, which happened to have one of the best burgers in town and we didn’t have to weight very long at all for them. Then we went back to the hotel, relaxed a little, visited a couple little shops, and got ready to go to the rodeo. The rodeo was a blast! It was extremely entertaining (except for this annoying clown that was supposed to entertain you, but just made dumb jokes and interrupted the actual rodeo). That was the first time I have went to a rodeo and I would love to go to another one!

We started the next day by going to the Peabody hotel to watch the ducks walk in. Every day at 11 am five ducks ride down the elevator from the roof of the building to the fountain and walk back to the elevator and back to the roof every day at 5:00 pm. So we waited a while, some guy gave a brief history about the Peabody and the ducks, and then watched five adorable ducks wobble down to the fountain. After watching the ducks we rode a trolley down to a restaurant called Central Barbeque. I got barbeque pork, which was extremely good and possibly the best barbeque I have ever had. Afterwards we went across the street to the Civil Rights Museum. The museum was interesting, but I think it focused too much on Martin Luther King Jr.’s death rather than his inspirational life. After the museum we went to the mall Wolf Chase Galleria and shopped a while. That night we went to a place called Silky O'Sullivan's, where we enjoyed some appetizers and then spent a couple hours singing songs, listening to the band, and cheering with the other Iowa State fans, which were starting to take over Beale Street.

By our fourth day in Memphis we were starting to get tired and there were cyclones everywhere. For every Tulsa fan we saw we saw easily over 50 cyclones (all wearing red and Gold). You could not go anywhere in downtown Memphis without seeing a bunch of fans. Restaurants on Beale were even running out of food and beer, because of how many cyclone fans there were!!! We decided to go to BB King’s, which is a pretty famous restaurant, at 11:00 am, because we figured that would be our only chance of actually getting to eat there without a two hour wait for food and not getting a table, and we were probably right. We had to wait a little less than an hour and I ended up getting to taste by far the best fried chicken, which you dipped in a mouthwatering gravy sauce. After we ate we walked around Beale street, I bought a really cool hat, and then people started lining up along the road for the parade, which didn’t start for a couple of hours, so we lined up along the road too. This was probably not very smart, because even though we got a really good spot for the parade it was freezing, we were tired and after the parade (which lasted way too long) we didn’t even feel like going to the pep rally. We lazily walked over to where the pep rally was taking place and saw how packed it was. I heard someone say that they weren’t allowing anyone else in, because there wasn’t enough room, so we walked around with numb feet looking for a restaurant that we didn’t have to wait over an hour for a table. We found a little restaurant where we could sit down right away and soon realized that it wasn’t crowded, because it was quite expensive. We ordered appetizers and headed back to the hotel, not even attempting to party on Beale Street, because of how cold and tired we were and how crowded everything was.

The next day was game day. We headed down to a really cool stadium and tailgated for a few hours and then headed into the stadium, which was almost as cool inside as it looked from the outside. The Iowa State side was almost completely full, while the Tulsa side was almost empty. The game started out really good. Iowa State was winning 17-7 by the end of the first quarter, but then it took a drastic down turn and we ended up losing 17-31. After the game we ordered Aldo’s pizza, and ate some very delicious and unique pizza’s.

Although the game was very disappointing, I am glad we went up early, had fun, and ate extremely good food.

 

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My official last post about the Holidays

This will be the last post I will write about the holidays, because they are almost over. Christmas was yesterday and the only holiday left this winter is New Years. The Holidays coming to an end is sad, but also kind of good. The holidays are really fun and no one really wants to go back to school yet, but they are also stressful. I spent the holidays a lot differently this year than I have in the past.

 

Every year for as long as I can remember, my family and I go to my relative’s (not quite sure how he is related to me) Girl Scout camp. We eat turkey, talk, and walk around the camp attempting to burn off all the calories we had just consumed. This year my grandpa was in the hospital, because he had been falling a lot and they found excess water in his brain, so my grandparents wouldn’t be doing anything for thanksgiving and we decided not to go to the Girl Scout camp. Instead we went to my Uncles house. We had always spent Thanksgiving with my dad’s side of the family, but this year we were going to my mom’s side. It was nice to go visit them for a change, but it was also kind of a hassle. They really didn’t know what they were doing and we didn’t eat until 2 o’clock. They also have a super hyper dog that annoys the crap out of me and we spent most of the time sitting around or listening to stories that we had heard hundreds of times. Even though it could have been better, I did enjoy hanging out with my mom’s side of the family and I was glad we got to visit them.

 

                Christmas was also very different this year. My mom’s side still came down on Christmas Eve and it was a lot of fun, but instead of going to my paternal grandmother’s house on Christmas Day, we spent most of the day in the hospital. We celebrated Christmas on my dad’s side on Saturday, because it worked better for most people and it was really nice, I don’t see my cousins very often. We didn’t have any plans on Christmas day, so we decided to see my dad’s best friend and a very good family friend who was in the hospital. After having a kidney stone removed, he became really sick and could hardly breathe and was diagnosed with pneumonia. He has been in the hospital for a week and at one point was doing really bad. He is getting a little better though, and we ended up spending hours at the hospital with him and his family. One of his daughters came home with my family that night and went sledding with my sister. She came home limping and later went to the hospital and found out she fractured her ankle. So I spent most of my Christmas in the hospital, which actually turned out to be okay and reminded me how lucky I was.

                This year for New Year’s Eve we are going to Memphis to watch the Liberty Bowl!!!!!! I am extremely excited, but I will miss going to a hotel with family friends like we have done in the past.

The holidays were a lot different for me this year, but they ended up being equally as good. Although I am sad that all the holiday fun is ending, it is also quite relaxing. Hopefully I will be able to spend more time running now that the holidays are ending. :)

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The True Meaning of Christmas

There is twelve more days until the best day of the year! CHRISTMAS! Christmas is my favorite holiday, family, food, presents, but I find myself having a hard time remembering what Christmas is all about. Christmas is all about Jesus, which in a materialistic world where everything is about who has the best clothes or the newest technology, it’s really hard to focus on the real meaning of Christmas.

 

Presents are still an important part of Christmas, but it’s not about what you get, it’s about being grateful and giving, like Jesus was grateful and giving. Everyone makes a big deal about what they are getting for Christmas (including me) and nobody really thinks about what it means to give. My sister has a huge list of very specific gifts she wants and she is constantly reminding and begging my mom for the gifts. I try to tell her to stop it, but she gives me glare that says “you’re stupid” and she tells me, in a creative way to shut up. So I drop it and leave her alone to beg, and I occasionally find myself begging to and thinking too much about the presents. Presents are an exciting part of Christmas, but if it is the only thing you care about then you are missing all the other great things about Christmas and all the wonders Jesus gave us.

 

Not taking things for granted is also very important during the holiday season. Instead of focusing on not getting that IPod 5, like all of your friends be grateful that you even get presents and that you have someone who gives them to you. There are plenty of people who don’t get any gifts for Christmas (and not because they’re Jewish) or have families that would even give them gifts. It is important to be thankful like Jesus, who died on the cross for us and suffered so much, yet never complained or even cared about how hard his life was. So every time you feel pity for yourself, because you didn’t get the things that you wanted, just think of all the good things that you have and be grateful for them.

 

Presents can be great, but it can also cause people to be ungrateful. Not getting what you want for Christmas should not be a big deal and people should focus more on family and Jesus then getting everything they want for Christmas, but every one occasionally finds themselves thinking about presents or being ungrateful for what they have. Try to focus more on the real meaning of Christmas this year.

 

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Just Keep Running

As the days get colder my miles are getting shorter. I am finding it hard to get up off the couch and run and I am finding it hard to not turn around after a mile of running. I don’t know how much I should be running; all I know is that I haven’t been running nearly as much as I did for cross country.

I am having a really hard time breathing in the cold air and after a couple of miles my lungs are burning, my body feels weak and I am ready to turn around and head home. I know I should try and push myself more, but I am finding it really hard to get motivation. I have so many goals set in mind, which would normally be very motivating, but once I step out the door all I can think about is how cold it is. Winter also means that it gets darker a lot earlier. Between the freezing cold weather and the fact that I can’t run in the dark, I am really struggling to find time and motivation to run. Going to the gym is helping though. I can’t run as much miles at the gym (you have to run 10 laps to run a mile and running a lot of miles on the treadmill hurts my legs), but at least I am running. Running is hard during the winter, with the cold and daylight savings, but going to the gym does help.  

It seems like everyone is always busier in the winter. I don’t know if it’s because of school or holidays or a mixture of both, but I am having a hard time finding someone to run with and I really don’t like to run by myself. The people I normally run with either can’t run right now, don’t want to run right now, or I just haven’t seen in a long time. So I am left running with my sister and she has less motivation then me. I find it almost impossible to run more than four miles by myself and my sister hates running more than three miles, so most days I am only running two to four miles. Considering that I ran at least five miles a day in the weeks before cross country started, four miles being my longer runs is really bad for me. With everyone being busy, I am left running shorter miles.

 

Cold weather, daylight savings, and the busy season is making it really hard for me to get my miles in. I am going to continue to try to toughen it out and push myself to run more.

               

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An Inspiration to All: Drew Wall

A couple of weeks ago a really great guy passed away. His name was Drew Wall and he was an inspiration to all of us at Kennedy High School. He had been battling cancer since 7^th grade and on November 26^th, he passed away. He was an amazing guy and I look up to him.

Drew was in my Chinese III class, after skipping Chinese II, because he was extremely smart and he was in my Biology class last year. His health made it really hard for him to make it to class, but on the few days that he showed up he outsmarted all of us. I have never heard him say one thing bad or negative about anything. He was a good student and even though he went true so much he always stayed positive. We get too caught up in the little things and life and we find the need to complain about everything that doesn’t go our way, but Drew battled cancer for 5 years and never complained, never lost hope, and always remained optimistic. I hope that I can be like him one day and I hope that he inspires others to be more like him too.

Another thing that really impresses me about Drew is that he always had faith in God, even when everything wasn’t going his way and almost everyone else was asking God, why did it have to be Drew, how could someone so good have something so bad happen to him? But Drew never lost faith and I will never forget that.

Drew was also one of the strongest people I have ever met. He went through so much, but he always seemed like he was doing just fine. He was a golfer, he went out for swimming for a while last year, and he did everything that a normal teenager did with one leg instead of two. He was extremely brave and he let nothing get in his way.

I will never forget Drew’s positivity, everlasting faith, and strength, which continues to inspire me and a lot of others at Kennedy High School. Drew will be missed by so many people, but I hope that everyone learns something about him, whether that be to remain faithful in God during all times, or to simply complain less.

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Gift Giving

Christmas is approaching and I need to try to come up with gifts for my friends and family. For some people this is quite easy to do and for other people, like me, it’s almost impossible. I am extremely poor right now (just spent my last dollar at Chick-fil-a last night), so that pretty much means I have to either beg my mom for cash and get everyone really cheap crappy gifts or I have to make them something. Why is gift giving so hard?

I think standards for gift giving have been raised a lot, especially as I am getting older. People either want something expensive or something meaningful. What happened to the days when I could just draw my parents a picture and give my sisters and friends a pack of gum? Now everyone can buy their own gum and my parents have stopped appreciating my poorly colored pictures from the coloring books I have owned since I was 6. I really would like to get people something meaningful, but thanks to my lack of creativity that’s a lot harder said than done. I have been spending hours on pinterest trying to come up with something creative, but everything involves money and a lot of time and talent. So every year I end up getting my friends and family something from the dollar store, while they get something either expensive or creative and I end up looking really stupid. Expectations for giving gifts are getting ridiculously high.

It is also hard to know who to give gifts to. I definitely can’t afford to give gifts to all my friends and there’s no way all my friends will give gifts to me, but how am I supposed to know which friends are going to get me something? Some of my friends are doing secret Santa, which I thought meant that I didn’t have to give any gifts to any of the friends that are also doing secret Santa until one of them came up to me and said that she was so excited to give me my gift and that it was such an amazing gift. Great. I have no idea who I am supposed to give gifts to and I don’t want to be mean and not give someone a gift when they got me one. So I am left trying to think of the people who are my best friends and would give me a gift, which is extremely hard.

I am not sure if it is hard for everyone to give gifts. Maybe it’s just natural for some people, but for people like me, gift giving can be a long and difficult process. With the higher expectations and trying to decide who to give gifts to, preparing for Christmas can be quite stressful.  

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