HIGHEST PEAK

For years, I have wanted to hike to the top of Humphrey's Peak. Yesterday I finally got to check it off of my bucket list with three of my amazing trail running friends. While the trail post showed the summit as being a 4.8 mile one way hike to the top, our smart watches calculated it being somewhere closer to 5.8 miles. We hiked a total of about 12 miles in just over 8 hours. It was hard and beautiful and exhausting and gratifying. He had some high highs and some low lows. We sang, we danced, we ran. And we most definitely poured a bit of blood, sweat, and tears into the hike. We made friends with strangers and gave them affectionate names like Tacos. We annoyed the hell out of people with our obnoxious demeanors and Disney music. And we freaking climbed to the HIGHEST POINT IN ARIZONA. I would do it all over again with these awesome people! Just not any time soon. TEAM PIZZA!

READ IT

A few weeks ago, I completed another of my '30 before Thirty' goals: read 30 new books. It took about 20 months to tackle, which was longer than I had anticipated. But, you know. Kids. There were books I loved. There were books I hated. Some were read in 2 days. Some were read in 2 months. Science Fiction. Autobiographies. Thrillers. Romance. Religious. Classics. And everything in between. I read books that I had long hoped to read. I read books that I had never heard of.  It was lovely. And guess what. I'm not done. This goal reignited my passion for literature, so you'll likely find me with my nose stuck in a book. In alphabetical order, here are the books that I read (with links to each on Amazon):







If you made me pick ONE right this second to call my favorite, I would have to say Little Bee. I love Dean Karnazes. I love Ellen DeGeneres. I love Gillian Flynn. But Little Bee has stayed with me in a way that none of the others have. Maybe it's the way that it's written. Maybe it's the tie to Africa. Either way, it reached deep and left a lasting impression.