2nd Annual Manning & Egan Halloween Bash

We started Halloween off right, with an early morning 5K! The first annual Boston Halloween Costume Dash! Hundreds of people showed up to run in their Halloween best. It was so fun!

The race started in Copley Square and ended in the Boston Common. If you can't guess what we are you need to watch Cool Runnings again. "Feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme, give it up, it's Bobseld time!" It made for great costumes to run in. There was one group dressed in elaborate Alice in Wonderland Costumes, and Alice ran the entire 5K in heels!

Jeff, Michele, Sam, Mary, Dean

That evening we finished decorating and got dressed for our 2nd Annual Manning & Egan Hallowen Bash, hosted at the Egan's Haunted Mansion.

Our hosts, Harry Potter and Luna Lovegood

Mary even had Luna's radish earrings

The Halloween food! This year we did a lot better job of bringing real food as opposed to just candy. And boy was it good! Lauren Drean made the most delicious chocolate caramel apples I've ever tasted!

And I still need to get Rose's recipe for this cranberry jalapeno dip. SO yummy!

Here's the lineup of guests in costume:

Tom Brady and his wife, Giselle. 

Rosie and Jake as scientific oddities: Dark Matter and Oceanic Gyre

Aubree & Josh as: Baby Spice and a pregnancy test. Reveal of the night, they're pregnant!

Justin and Michele as: The Octoberfest Guy and Carmen San Diego

Hannah and Dan as Tourists!

Christian & Rhea: Lumberjack and Party Animal

Josh and Lauren as: Anger and Joy from Inside Out

Hana & Colin as: Batman's parents

Todd & Maddy as: Todd-in-Hood and Maid Madelyn

Sam & Jeff as: Bedtime Legos

We had fun making our costumes and setting up for the party. And no Halloween party is complete without a donut on a string contest! Good thing Mary and Dean have a deck now, so we don't make such a big mess in the house! This year we went for apple cider donuts which were much more manageable to eat in a time crunch than last year's : )

A few rounds of Halloween Heads Up to top off the night. We sure feel blessed to have made so many fine friends here in Boston. Thanks for making life a treat!

Happy Halloween everyone!

Boston BYU Alumni 5K Fun Run

About a year and a half ago Jeff and I were asked to become board members of the BYU Alumni Association in Boston. Jeff became the chapter treasurer and I was put in charge of chapter events! For the past year my main project has been planning and organizing the BYU Boston Alumni 3rd Annual 5K event. I learned a lot from the process and am glad I was given this opportunity! If you ever need to put a 5K together I've got a great list of "to-do's" and "how-to's" compiled that I'd be happy to share!

We were lucky enough (actually it had nothing to do with luck and everything to do with booking the site nine months in advance) to have the race at the beautiful Chestnut Hill Reservoir, near the Boston College campus. Several people came up to me after the race and said they were so glad we had the event here because they had never been and were pleasantly surprised at how scenic it was. Seriously, if you live in the area and have never made it over to Chestnut Hill, it is well worth the visit. Especially now that it is fall and the leaves are turning!!!

There was a misty fog rolling across the reservoir as we prepared to take our places and start the race. Made for a cool atmosphere!

Some of my favorite parts of planning this event:

Designing the t-shirts!

A big thank you to Rose Serago for using her Photoshop expertise to make the idea for the shirt design a reality! You did in twenty minutes what would have taken me a year to learn and figure out. Thank you, thank you!! They were a hit!

Decorating!
I really enjoyed being behind the scenes and getting all of the fun details prepared for this event. I couldn't have done it alone though! Thanks to everyone who showed up early to help set up!

We kept it pretty simple, but the decorations added a little flair and made the race official.

And of course, actually running the race!
What a great way to start a saturday morning, and a beautiful place to do it! So much fun! We did two laps around the reservoir and were welcomed by high fives from Cosmo, (the actual Cosmo was busy attending a cougar football game on the west coast but he lent a hand, literally, to our event) and a fun finish line with music and streamers.

Congrats to Emily Raymond! First place overall finisher!

And congrats to Jeff! First place mens finisher! And he even hung back with me for the first lap!

We made friends with some local runners who were excited to be part of the fun : )

Our volunteers did an awesome job of cheering everyone on!

It felt good knowing that all of the effort and proceeds from the race would go towards need-based scholarships for local students wishing to go to college at BYU Provo, Idaho, Hawaii and LDS Business college. Two cheers for education! A worthy cause indeed!

Thanks to everyone who came out to participate and support the event! Special thanks to Jeff for supporting me as I planned and stressed, especially in the weeks before the race, and for putting together a rockin' playlist for race-day. Thank you Josh Drean for being an excellent emcee and pumping everyone up before the race, even after taking a red eye flight into Boston the morning of the race! Shout out to Lauren Drean for getting the PA system ready for the event. Thank you Julia Blake, our chapter president, for taking charge of registration on the day of the race. To Roy Brinkerhoff, my contact at BYU, for getting our online registration page set up! Many thanks to Jessica Sainsbury, a previous BYU Alumni Chapter president, who helped me along the way answering all of my first-timer questions and sharing her wisdom! And thank you to everyone who came out and had a good time! I'm so glad we have a strong alumni presence on the east coast and that we can get together for fun activities and BYU reminiscing. Go Cougars!!!

That Time We Worked Out With Tony Horton

One evening in August we were hanging out at home and saw something online about Tony Horton offering a free public workout in his hometown of Westerly, RI. We immediately made plans for a weekend adventure in the ocean state. 

The event took place at Wilcox Park, and the workout was tough! We definitely worked up a sweat. It was so cool to exercise with our favorite fitness guru who we've been training with in our living room for the past two years. It felt like being with an old friend : )

Tony knows a lot when it comes to health and fitness. He talked about our nation's "healthcare crisis" - our general lack of control over what we put in our mouth and our failure to exercise and take care of our bodies- and he urged us to live intentionally.

Got some TH Fitness shirts, post workout

After the workout we spent a little time exploring Rhode Island and getting a bite to eat. Later that evening we returned to Westerly for a book signing with Tony. It was awesome to hear about his journey to fitness and how he does what he does every day. We left with a intensified desire to focus more on healthy eating in addition to our daily exercises, something we've slacked on up to this point. As tony says, you have two choices when you eat anything- to eat poison or to eat fuel. We are excited to take our fitness and health to the next level!

Thanks for being our inspiration, Tony.

Let's Week-end in New Hampshire

Finally made it out on a camping trip this summer! And what a beautiful site to camp at. Right by White Lake, New Hampshire with a gorgeous view of the mountains.

Jeff and I drove to the campsite Friday after work and had a nice time setting up camp and exploring our lakeside site. We roasted hot dogs and went fancy for dessert, with chocolate eclairs cooked by campfire! It was actually pretty easy. Just wrap the dough of a crescent roll around your roasting stick and cook it (rotating) until it gets puffy and lightly browned. Let it cool for a minute, then spread some chocolate icing over the top and squirt some whipped cream through the hole left by the roasting stick, and voila! A delicious campfire treat!

Mary and Dean met up with us on Saturday morning and we all drove to the base of Mt. Chocura, we we took the Champney Falls trail to the mountain summit.

It was pretty steep in some places.

There is a part that flattens out for a bit, where you have a nice view of the mountains around you, including the Presidentials.

Looks like we're at the top, we're not! Just a nice resting point.

Almost to the summit!

We scrambled up the ridge of the peak and made it up to the breezy top!

Perfect day to summit the mountain

After eating our packed lunch and enjoying the views, we started our descent.

When we got back to camp we made the most of our prime campsite and took a swim! We even rented a kayak and got to explore more of the lake. Credit to Dean for taking his camera into the water!

After drying off and eating some tasty campfire dinners (potatoes, carrots, onions, and meat) we were thrilled by a gorgeous sunset.

Such a beautiful place. Nature rocks. 

White Lake at early morning

Campire breakfast done right. Blueberry pancakes & bacon mmm!

We're so glad we were able to make this trip happen between all of our busy summer schedules! We love camping with you, Mary and Dean! Hats off to summer camping.