Dear Grandpa Jim

I know your probably up there in heaven having a good old time with your mom and your sister, but down here we sure are missing you.

I want to thank you...for all that you have given me. For my amazing Grandma and Grandma Nessa, for a great aunt and uncle, and last but not least a mother that means the world to me. I believe that there is a lesson for all of us on why things happen when they do. I know that I want to be able to tell you "I love you" one last time, I wanted to go steal some Oreos from your fridge one last time, I wanted to ask you to fill up my bike tire one last time, even steal a coke for Grandma Nessa from the machine. A lot of times lately, I think our family has constantly asked, "Why does this happen to us?" Why did we get all these hardships thrown at us all at once?
I know there is a God,  and he loves each and every one of us with unconditional love. Part of this love sometimes are experiences we never want to go through. These experiences define us, and make us grow. Even though you leaving was by no means a positive experience, I believe it was meant to bring our family closer than I ever thought we could be. And in the end, each and everyone of us will get to be with you again someday.
There is a lot of time I spend in my life thinking about God. Everyone's trying to tell me that they think their religion is the only way that we can be together in heaven. I beg to disagree to all religions that say this. I believe that God would be proud of all the pathways we have found to get closer to him, whether you wear beautiful dresses to church, you wear Levi's, or even a turban on your head. Whether you read the bible three times a day, or three times a year. We have different ways of expressing our love to God. And your way was through the people you loved.
You've taught me a lesson Grandpa, we don't have to go to church every Sunday or read the scriptures to go to heaven, because I know your their now. Every day you put smiles on the seven kids that loved you most. You brought in a part of family that I don't think I could live without. You gave me childhood friendships that I still have
from birth to this day. You gave me three more aunts that I couldn't love more. In this process you kept us together as a family.
I know you've probably met God up there, and he is proud of you for being such a great man to the people that mean most to you. You left a place in my heart that will never fade. I will never ever get sick of "Grandma Nessa's House." When our fridge breaks down, I am going to remember you. Running across the catwalk will still be an adventure, and when we make the semi's honk their horns, I know that you will hear them from up there.

Thanks for bringing me here Grandpa, I Love You, and hope to see ya later.

Love your, Oreo Lovin',Bike Ridin',Top Ramen Eatin' Grandaughter

Race to the Finish

     This week and most of last week I have experienced and helped out (he knows who he is) with some pretty rough situations. I think there are always times in our life that force us to look up to the sky and ask "why me". Mentally, this has been something I have often wondered lately. "Why would God put us on this earth to struggle, why does he make life so hard on us sometimes when life is supposed to be a gift?" This thought surges throughout minds everyday, because there is always someone on this planet who is struggling to find a meaning in life.
      Our meaning in life is to finish our races and begin new ones.
     There is always that someone in that race that forgets to tie their shoe and feels the burn from their small mistake as they fall to the ground. Even some of the most advanced runners still forget that they can't wear their  brand new shoes to race the next day, as they  suffer the consequences of painful blisters along their toes. That Mexican food that your mom made last night, that doesn't sit well trying to finish a race. And there's always that jerk at the starting line that thinks he owns the road and tries to prod people out of his way, which can cause a domino effect of racers crumbling to the asphalt.
      It's how these incidents are dealt with that determines how we finish our race. Some fall at the beginning of the race, some at the middle, some fall right before the finish line. But it's not about how hard we fall, nor is it about "who saw us fall", it doesn't even matter where we fall. What determines our standing is how we recover. How much faster can you get up, and chase down the person in front of you. At times we fall, we break down in tears, we tell ourselves we can't do it. All this time we spend on the ground, do we realize the clock is still running?
     I ran a race today, and as I was coming up on my second mile, I watched one of my opponents step in a hole. It was a pretty decent sized hole, causing her ankle to roll one way, then roll again the other, resulting in a pretty painful injury. Her facial expressions went straight to pain, she tensed up, and she looked like she was about to cry. But one thing didn't change about the girl after she stepped in the hole, was she was still moving.
     Her steps became smaller and smaller as I began to catch up, but she didn't stop. Even if she slowed down to walking speed, she didn't stop. With every step we take, may it be a small step or a leap, we are moving forward. Moving forward is more beneficial than sitting still. With each step our finish line becomes closer it may take us longer to get there, but we will get there eventually if we keep taking steps. When we reach trials in our life, it's so easy to say "I am done, I wanna go home, I don't want to do this, why is this happening." Every time we fall, we get up stronger than we were before. God only puts these trials here to make us strong. He knows what we can endure, so he puts us to the test. A test no one wants to fail. When we fall, we can sit on the ground pouting and stewing about how much we hate life. Or we can stand up fast, shake it off and get that adrenaline pumping again.
   

We are not perfect, everyone falls sometime in their life, but don't be the person that stays down, be the one that stands up stronger and finishes the race.

Because our team got third the other day, it was a happy day for this chick.

Positives and Negatives

Today I have realized how much it means to have a positive attitude, not just for the people around you, but for yourself. The pursuit of happiness can never be accomplished when you can't keep a positive attitude. I believe that money by no means can but happiness. Like the car I got for my sixteenth birthday, that car means nothing if I don't have the people around me to share it with. Positive attitude goes farther back than just simply staying happy in the toughest of times, but finding ways to cancel out the negatives, by finding more positives. Its like a magnet that has electrons on one side, and neutrons on the other. When a positive charged side of the magnet touches a negative side, they cancel each other out and bind together. I have a very high belief that if your magnet is constantly flipped to its negative side and is only looking for the negative portions of problems, you will result in never finding happiness in your life. We spend all this time screaming and fighting with each other, but deep down do we remember that our only goal in this world is to be happy? At times our magnets become unbalanced, we think we are lifting heavier burdens than others. We tell ourselves we are unhappy lifting others weight, but the only person that determines that unhappiness is ourself. We may even be giving more positives than recieving, but its our minds that determine this. There is no manual on how to live your life, but if there was, what would be in it? Believe it or not, there are people on this planet who have more negative than you and I, but are still happier than both of us combined. The only thing logical that would be in that manual was happiness. Just to simply be happy. On the other hand, some people are constantly fixated on how they can have they least amount of negatives. Why aren't they more focused on how many positives they can produce to get rid of those negatives? Using this way of thinking, no one is perfect, everyone has negatives, but its what we do with those negatives that defines us. Are we going to try to perfect ourselves or just find more positive ways to make they.situation better?

Shoes

Mom,

I hate writing letters. I don’t want you to think that everything that I write in this letter is something I can’t say to your face, but I can tell you right now that’s not true.  So I have been thinking about some clever way to make this letter somewhat entertaining. But as you have mostly likely figured out by now, running has been on my on my mind quite frequently.  When I was running today, I was trying to find ways to compare running to life, and I had a thought. I know my thoughts are crazy, and sometimes extremely irrelevant, but bear with me with this one. I was trail running when I thought of this so, I am comparing it to trail running.

 As we are running on the trail of life, sometimes we come to a fork in the road, which causes us to choose one path or the other.  Most of the time while I am running on a trail, one of these paths will be harder or more uphill then the other. This can become a very complex decision for me and my two companions running with me. Because when you think about it, if we take that uphill trail, we will become stronger but it will be more of a challenge. But if we take the easier path, we won’t get stronger, but it will be easier. I think that sometimes in life we take the easier path because we are scared that we would fail on the other path or we are too tired to push harder. There have been times where my buddies and I took the way we thought was easiest, and we came to an extremely steep slope. At times running up hills like this got so hard; we would stop and take a breath. Sometimes our trials in life come when we think we are on the easiest path. And while we are on our easy path in life and we come to unexpected points where we have to stop to breathe, that’s when we notice the view from above and how grateful we are to have it.

Now comes your role in this, I compare my mom in my life as my shoes.  Shoes come in all shapes and sizes, and you use them for different purposes, just like moms. Our shoes protect our feet from the trail we call life. When you’re wearing your shoes, they don’t decide which path you take them on, instead, they tag along with you no matter what.  My shoes sometimes get caught on the rocks causing me to fall and gain more bruises to my legs. But every time I fell, it made me open my eyes and realize that I needed to pay attention to my path. It also becomes challenge when your shoes become untied, even more so during a race. But every time that my shoes became untied, I tied them a little tighter each time.

But what would running be without its shoes? What would my life be without you? Sometimes I want to say I hate you because you might give me some blisters along the way. But through every blister, bruise, and hard fall, I came out stronger than before. I know that sometimes I can be so mad at you, but how would I finish my race without you. When runners finish their race in first place no one says “It’s because of their cool shoes.” You don’t get enough recognition for what you do for me.  I need to remind myself more often of how grateful I should be to have you. Some runners on the other side of the world don’t have shoes. Some even have multiple pairs, but I am grateful for the pair I have today.

My pair of shoes is strong, they are durable, and make me stronger each step I take. They are fit just for me. And without them I don’t know where I would be. My shoes give me support no matter what path I decide to take.

I love you mom, I have loved you from day one. You are the best support system I have. You helped me not only follow my dreams, but chase them down. Sometimes our shoe laces become untied, and in some cases we trip and fall. But with every fight or disagreement we have, I take something new from it, we tighten our laces tighter than we have ever had them and move on. I know that there will come a day when I will go my separate ways. But I want you to know that I will never get rid of my running shoes, I will carry a piece of them in my heart forever. They will get older as I get older but I will always remember the memories I had with them, and the places they took me. You will always be in my heart, and don’t you ever forget how much I love you.

“Give a girl the right pair of shoes and she can conquer the world.” – Marilyn Monroe

REAL CHAMPIONS

 Last week I had the great opportunity to go to UtahState's cross country camp. I met some great people there and I also learned a lot about myself. I had 6 girls in the same dorm as me, they all had very different personalities, most from different teams, but we all got along very well. I went with Kaden, Ky, and Ryann, and it was always great to have them by my side. This camp was not easy, and there were many times that I had to dig down deeper and pick my head up and keep pushing. We had a few speakers that came to talk to us. And one really stuck out to me, he was one of the first to talk to us. By the time we got to him, we had just barely had dinner, and we were all very tired, and no one really cared to listen to him. I kept telling myself "stay awake Jerra, just stay awake." One of the girls at the camp was named Lucy. Lucy holds a state champion title, and she also holds a national title I believe (she runs a 4:35 mile.)

      The first thing that this particular speaker talked about was who a champion is. He asked us to shout out one word answers to what we thought a champion was. Words like determined, hardworking, stubborn, and committed came to my mind at first. As kid by kid replied their answer, they were all naming answers similar to mine. Finally one kid said "A champion on and off the track." When he said that, I didn't really put much thought to it, it was a topic that seemed pretty cliche to me. The speaker replied back to the kid "that's what I was looking for."The speaker continued talking, he mentioned that out of the dozens and dozens of athletes he coached, the athletes he remembers most weren't the state champions, they were the kids that raised their teammates up. He said that a state champion title means nothing, if you don't have the attitude for it off the track. As he continued his speech. out of the corner of my eye I saw Lucy, someone who I admired very deeply at the time. Lucy had her head laid on the counter, not even paying attention to what the speaker had to say. I looked around the whole room, and I also noticed that  ALL the runners that had done so well on the run that day, weren't even paying attention or were talking to their friends, not much respect on their part. As we continued on with the camp, I continued to notice the same things happen, the kids that weren't even that quick had the most respect for the coaches and their teammates. We got to one of the final workouts of the camp, called the Amazing Race. This was where we were split into teams to do certain tasks and find certain locations. I had four people on my team, three boys and two girls. One of these boys was named Dillon, Dillon was a very special kid. He had been the outcast for the whole camp, and he was by himself quite frequently. He also had some autism. As the race went on, we came in last for every event. There was nothing much we could do, as Dillon often times would get tired and start to slow down. Me and Kaden stayed back with Dillon and kept encouraging him, I wanted to at least be a champion off the track. We came up to our last event, and the coaches (being generous to the losing team) gave us a head start. We started off the last event running uphill as fast as we could, and Dillon was doing a great job. But out of the corner of my eye I could see the winning team starting to catch us. One of the boys on this winning team who everyone called Carlton, was a three time state champion in three distance events. As Carlton came up to Dillon, he did something that blew me away. He grabbed Dillon's team bandanna out of his pocket and threw it into the bushes. Right then and there is when I realized how little worth a state title is if you can't even treat those around you right. Real Champions are the kids who not only have a great running record, but are also an all around great person. I don't want to be remembered like Lucy and Carlton were. I don't care if I am remembered as the state champion, I want to be remembered as the girl who was nice to everyone. BEING A CHAMPION ON AND OFF THE FIELD.

The dorms were a party!!

The highlight of the trip had to be the amazing dinner and great chocolate milk :)

Sisters Before Misters

Lately I have put a lot of thought into the relationship that I have with sister. These past couple weeks we have spent a good amount of time together, it has made me realize how much she means to me. How grateful I am to have a sister that is so close in age with me, that we are practically best friends,even though we do fight occasionally. I know that lately she has been having a hard time having to share my attention with Kaden, which is something that is going to happen sooner or later with her too. As a sister, it is hard to have to split time between family and friends, but at the same time I feel like that is a part of growing up. I want to get out there and meet new people and become more independent, but there is a place in my heart that will just want to be home with my parents and siblings. As we get older, we are going to drift farther apart as we go our separate ways. But I never want to loose the relationship that I have with my sister. Even when we both have families in the future, I want to still have that same relationship that we have now. The same goes for the twins also. I need to constantly remind myself to keep cherishing that quality time that I do have with them, because before long it will become harder to find time like this. As much as I may think differently at times, sisters will always come before misters.

Love you Sis :)

I will always be here for you.

On a positive note....here are some pictures we have took this week :)

Life's not fair....

Today I learned a very important, yet a very very hard lesson. Life just isn't fair, plain and simple. It sucks sometimes!! It becomes even harder to juggle when there are so many things that make you happy. I have big dreams, I want to go far with what makes happy, and what I learned today, is that not everyone understands how much it means to me. They don't know the feeling I get when I can leave the world behind, to run, to just be happy. I don't need a phone in my hand or music in my ears, I need running shoes and a destination. This is my passion, this is my dream, I was living in it, wish I could keep living it, but LIFE ISN'T FAIR. That's what sucks about life, people don't understand, nor do they care. They can take away something that makes you happy in an instant and not feel a thing. They can take away everything you dreamed of being  all in one shot. I have a dream, its not small, and I knew from the beginning it wasn't going to be easy. I put in the work for it every day, and didn't regret any second of it, because I knew I could do it. I was going to have to make changes that would effect my lifestyle, but I still believe that when you want something, you go get it. People are going to try to stop you, tell you its not gonna work out, or you can't do it, but you have to follow your heart. I wish I had a happy ending to this rant, but I dont. I can't say I have accomplished what I have set my mind to. But I can tell you right now that I am not giving up.                                                                                                            

"You got a dream, you gotta protect it. People can't do something themselves, they wanna tll you you can't do it. If you want something, go get it. Period."--Pursuit of Happiness Movie