Mountains and Running

I love the mountains. People are probably very tired of me saying that, but I can't help it. They just blow me away every time I look at them. I love them. I'd marry them if Jayce wasn't cooler. One of my favorite things where we live is being able to go on a run and see this:

 Am I right? I just can't get enough. They've even surpassed fireflies for me. (But just by a hair!)

I can officially say that I have also come to love running. It took me forcing myself into 1 marathon, a half marathon, and a 25k to reach the "I actually really love this" stage, but I'm finally there. If you have toyed with the idea of signing up for a race--DO IT! I went from zero running experience to training for a race. You can do it! This is the first time that I've kept up with running after finishing a race. I'm not even signed up for anything and I'm running! That's a big milestone for me. :-)

One thing that I've recently come to enjoy about running is applying it to life. When my legs are tired and I want to walk, or my breathing is heavy and I want to slow down a tiny place in my brain says, "Run harder. Run faster." Now that has transitioned into other areas of my life. When the day feels long and the tantrums seem great I just think, "Run harder. Run faster." This isn't the first time this has happened to me. In college I felt like Heavenly Father was pushing me to "jump higher" by continually raising the bar for me. "Run harder. Run faster. Jump higher." It feels good to have words to rely on when life gets hard.

I just got new shoes for Christmas and I've got to confess that I took like seven of these kinds of pictures to try to get a "cute" shot and not one that made my thighs look like buffalos. ;-)

I kind of really really like them.