Arrivederci!

You won't see us for the next two weeks (not that you see us much now. We stink at blogging). We are off to Rome, Siena, Florence, the Cinque Terre, Venice, Paris and Brussels. Have a great last couple weeks of summer, wish us luck, and check back in a few weeks to hear the tale of our journey through Europe. It will be epic.

The Gap and Ness

A Wrinkle in Time with the Davis'

Jenessa just got back from a girls trip to Cali

Bradford has a hurt jaw from lacrosse

Jenessa is sunburnt

Bradford has a book report due Friday for a book he hasn't read

Jenessa has all her spelling lists written out through Christmas break

Bradford has a sweet black pocket knife for protection

Jenessa highlighted her hair and it looks adorable

Bradford has a birthday on Monday, and is getting a _______

Jenessa won't tell

Bradford wants to be in the BAU with Agent Hotchner

Jenessa wants to be in Italy

Bradford wants to have long hair to his shoulders, but can't

Jenessa wants to give a shout out to Sholly

Bradford is going to be starting his own business with a friend

Jenessa loves the book Peter Pan

Bradford's jaw still hurts

Jenessa is sick of him complaining

Bradford won't be going to the Explosions in the Sky concert...because of the book he hasn't read

Jenessa is excited for TV series to start back up

Bradford is ready to drop out of school

Jenessa won't let him

Bradford just got a text

Jenessa needs to DI some clothes

Bradford seconds that

Jenessa wants to be best friends with Taylor Swift

Bradford needs new music

Jenessa is tired

So is Bradford

Peace, Love

The Gap and Ness

Oh hello summer

Well, I don't know about you, but summer seriously crept up on me. Those last few months of school flew by! I am blaming the weather. It kept making me think it was march/early April because of all the rain and chilly temperatures. Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining about summer. No, no, no, we love summer!

We brought in summer (well at least my summer) with a fabulous weekend. Friday night was dinner and a show. That show was Les Mis. If any of you know me really well, you know I am slightly obsessed with Les Mis and couldn't concentrate the day of the show because I was so excited. It turned out to be spectacular. Bradford had never seen it and he loved it! He still regrets not getting a shirt. Last night he said, "If I ever have a hard decision to make, I could have looked down at my shirt and remembered to say 'Who am I,' and then I would make the right decision." Haha...such a nerd. Unfortunately, we didn't take a picture, sorry!

Saturday morning brought with it a lot of mud. Mud you say? Yes mud because we did in fact run in the dirty dash. I am not a lover of running (and this was only a 5k) but this was sweet. I'm sure many of you have been overloaded with pictures of it on fb, but I hope those pictures are persuading you to run in it. Trust me, you will not regret it. Here is a picture of my husband that was in the sl trib: (thanks Amanda for spotting it. And no, that is not me climbing the wall. I am being covered by her. boo.)

For another great dd video, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk5rtyB84fk&feature=youtu.be

The next thing I need to share came from our last post. Our Mitt pictures are up! I realize Brother and Sister Romney look like cardboard cutouts, but I promise it is them. Let us have our moment of fame! There are way more pictures, but once again I will let you look at fb for those. Sorry it is tiny!!

P.S. My brother gets home from his mission today! Eight hours and counting :)

Love,

Ness

National Call Day 2011

Alright, so Ness is not being prompt in updating the blog, and I am too anxious about this post, so I decided to do it myself. I apologize in advance because there are going to be a lot of pictures.

So about a month ago my good buddy Stephen Welling called me up and said that Ryan Beck had hook ups with the Mitt Romney Campaign and that he could get us to be volunteers for his National Call Day down in Vegas. Mitt was going to be putting his volunteers up in the Venetian for the weekend before. The call day was on a Monday so I initially told him that we couldn't, because we both have to work. I came home and told Ness about it and she was like "Are you kidding me?? I can totally miss work!" So we pondered about it for all but 20 minutes, called up Stephen and told him that we are in. This was the week before we would be leaving. It was very spontaneous of us and we were both very scared. Who knew it would turn out to be one of the most memorable trips we have had thus far.

(Mac Wood just came up to me and was like "what are you doing?" "Just updating our blog." "What? you blog? I didn't know guys blogged, I thought it was a girl thing." real funny Mac, real funny)

Anyways, going down to Vegas thus far was Ness and I, Ben Barrus, Chase Call, and Stephen Welling. Ness did not want to be the only girl out of our group so she invited her cousin Taylor Hunt. A money group in my opinion.

We headed down to St. George friday night, slept at our condo, (went trail running the next day, as noted below) , Stephen and them came over and we all went swimming, quick bite of Rio and we were Vegas-bound!

This is when Stephen informed us of a new idea that Ness and I will continue to use on our vacations. The Adventure Card. Every person has one (1) Adventure Card the whole trip. You may use your AC when you really want to do something. When you use it, everyone has to do the activity that you want to do. For example, Say I wanted to go on the NYNY Roller Coaster. I could use my AC and everyone would have to do it, no questions asked. Pretty Solid Right?

When we got to the Venetian, there was a mix up about rooms, so we all ended up in the same room. Two queens, four boys, two girls, one room. So naturally we put the mattresses on the floor so we could all fit.

Those are Stephens fingers. He did that so Taylor would tag him in the picture.

And again

Again

Again

We spent a couple nights on the strip which are always monumental. We walked the entire strip, just to go play the $3 black jack at the Hooters Hotel. Mind you that we passed like 40 $3 blackjacks on the way. We all played about 40, and all lost it. Hooters was not good to us.

Driving down the strip

The group.

The next day walking to the spaceship mall.

Laying out at the pool. They were pretty uptight with the rules. We had a Utah football that we had with us everywhere we went. We brought it with us into the pool and they got pretty upset. Clearly we did not know that the pool was just meant for picking up chicks.

The next day was National Call Day! We had to get up around 5:10 to get over to the convention center in time. We got our sweet shirts and hats that we had to wear. There was probably 100 college students from various places that came to volunteer for this. We got assigned to be the Tech Support for the callers. What was going to be happening was all of these big wigs that like Mitt will come and call all their big wig friends to donate money. Our jobs were to help them with the donation process. They would log on to a website of sorts and enter the amounts. Lots of them were new to the system so we had to help them. Lets be honest though, that last like 30 minutes, the rest of the time we were just walking around looking busy. But there were some sweet people there, like the owner of the Jets, some serious Olympians, and some serious CEO's from back east.

Us at the early morning training. Ness had gotten into the liquor cabinet already.

Stephen was nominated as President, and I was his secretary. We are hard workers.

Ness and Tay are the lookers of the bunch

Thanks to Mitt's great volunteers like us, he was able to raise $10.25 million dollars that day.

In traditional Mitt fashion, we had to pay for our own food. And by "We" I mean Mitt. He gave all his volunteers $15 to get some food that was brought in. All the other callers and big wigs had to pay for theirs.

Once Mitt made his final speech, he came down and started signing things. So naturally I ran up there to get him to sign my hat. Mission successful.

We all got pictures with Mitt, but their camera crew has yet to load them up to the website, so once those are up, they will be posted.

For some reason we all just clicked this trip. It was like we were all family, and every moment of it was a blast. We talk about this trip daily. Best spontaneous decision we have made.

On the drive home, we passed Chase, Ben and Stephen in the car, only to see this:

The cherry on the top.

Viva Las Mitt

-The Gap

Trail Running

I have found my new hobby when I cannot play lacrosse.

That is Trail Running.

It all started back in New York when I got some New Balance Minimus shoes. These shoes are made to give you the least amount of support possible. So it's basically running barefoot, but the bottom of your feet are protected. Two reasons I was sold on the whole "Barefoot running" 1) If you buy shoes that have a lot of support and comfort, in a sense you are making your feet and your legs do less, thus wearing away the muscles. For example, if your arm is in a sling, the muscles get weak and useless. But once you take it out, you can use them to their full potential. Same goes for your feet. There has been rumors that once you start barefoot running, your feet shrink a size or so because you are using muscles that you have never used before.

Interesting.

2) The sales lady (who is a hard core runner) said "God did not create us with shoes, He created us with feet" but also "When we were created there wasn't asphalt and concrete to run on." so there is definitely a limit where you need some protection when running on roads and such. But you think about it, why are the people who live in Africa natural runners who are so much faster than most others outside of Africa? They don't have really comfortable shoes, they have their feet.

So I decided that these were going to be my new running shoes. They came with a warning on them.

Pretty Intense

I started doing some more research on the matter and found a bundle of studies showing that running barefoot causes less strain on your feet and legs than running with traditional running shoes does. Obviously this is after you slowly build up to running barefoot. I found this cycle in one study. Pretend the ---- lines are arrows :)

Wicked Cycle of Shoes: We buy shoes with cushioning and support --- Muscle atrophy (The wearing away of muscles from lack of exercise)----Loss of Nerve Senseitiviy----Increased likelihood of injury----We buy shoes with cushioning and support----Muscle atrophy-----Loss of Nerve Senseitiviy----Increased likelihood of injury----and back to the beginning. Makes sense right? It's like a vicious cycle downward that cripples ourselves.

Anyways, that was longer than I was planning. I have found some wicked sweet trails to run on thus far. Unfortunately I did not bring my camera on them, but I will in the future. I have been up behind Red Butte Garden.

I ran along here, but unfortunately these people were not there.

Also when we were staying the night in St. George, I went and ran on Owen's Loop. It is on a very large plateau on the edge of the city. The trail runs along the edge of the plateau which was so sweet.

It is up along the top of this plateau.

(Apparently this was a really large picture)

Ness will explain why we were in St. George for the night in the next post ;)

-The Gap

Spring Break 2011

Alright, so I haven't thought of any blogs lately and it has been a while since we have posted. So basically this is just a desperation post. A little updating on our lives over the past month. Lots of pictures...

We got to watch this little Bug a lot this past month. Living so close to my sister and brother-in-law, we get called up for babysitting opportunities. This is little Madison. Basically the cutest little thing I have ever seen.

As you can see, Jenessa became a huge Harry Potter fan this past month. So much, she asked her doctor to carve a lightning bolt on her wrist. That's how the story would of played out if she and I could of chose. Actually she had surgry. She had a nasty little cyst on her nerve that was causing some serious trouble, so it got annihilated by Doctor Ramasha. She is recovering very nicely and cutely.
This is my supportive wife waiting in line for our new baby. iPaddy. She was extra happy that morning.
On our walk


Unfortunately, I had a bad ingrown toe nail this past month. I still can't get my shoes on.
Next we took off to the Empire State. Ness had spring break late and it was the same time as my moms back in Connecticut, so we arranged a little Spring Break get-together with my sister and brother in law back East. We decided to go out early and spend a couple of days in the Big Apple for our anniversary.(Month Late) We decided to keep it simple and avoid all the touristy places and find local things to do. All in all I think it was a success.

Went to Bloomy's to visit Rachel Green. Wife got a Medium Brown Bag. I'll let her tell you what she got.


Where all the magic happened back when we got engaged. ;)

The Rodriquez family

Frozen Hot Chocolate...
The Yankees game. $8. Unfortunate Ness got really ill mid way through. Nonetheless, solid experience. (ok this post has become way too long)
In addition to seeing my mom and step dad, we got to meet the newest addition to our family. A Golden named Beau.(Bo) Madison LOVED Beau, but unfortunately her eyes would water any time he got near her, so their relationship was cut down in its prime.




And now, for the highlight of the entire trip...On the flight home, I was the winner of the inflight 20 questions game that is played through-out the entire plane. If you can read that, it says "Beef is the Winner!"


I am a Winner.



The Gap

Secret dream

As a little girl, I wanted to grow up and be a lot of different things. When I was younger my career path of choice was leading me to the national soccer team, then a lawyer who studied at Harvard, followed by a mom, intermingled with desires to become a teacher, a writer, and a few other random occupations. All my ambitions were obviously developed by my likes and dislikes at different points of my life.

There was, however one dream of mine that I never let anyone know about. It started when I was 5 years-old on a daddy-daughter date to Capitol Theater. The dress was black with sunflowers, the dinner was Bache, the show was Les Miserables; I felt like royalty that night. During the show I sat on the edge of my seat engulfing every sound I heard and memorizing each image I saw. I fell in love with Les Mis that night, but even more, it became my secret desire to star in a broadway show. Obviously that dream did not come to pass; first, because I can't sing. Second, I can't act or even keep a straight face. It just wasn't in the cards for me. Even though I knew I wasn't going down the broadway path, I secretly wished I was, or at least could just belt out a broadway hit. I can pick up any sport fairly quickly and I always was a decent soccer player, but I was always jealous of anyone who could sing in front of a crowd. So if you are reading this and have that talent, I think you are pretty cool.

Don't worry, I am not bitter that I didn't make it on broadway because Husband let's me perform for him. Lately I have been belting "don't cry for me Argentina," "On my own" (my les Mis classic), and of course, a little Wicked. He tells me I sing well and I would have been a great broadway actress. I like to believe him :). And a random side note, husband and I celebrated our one year mark, boo ya!

Love,
Jenessa

P.S. I just remembered I tried out for my stakes production of Saturday's warrior when I was about 7 and didn't make. Lisa Hilton just had a better voice than me. And she wore a really cool dress that she let me play with sometimes (the cape part could come off). My mom, being the good mother she is still did the show with me after I didn't make "Emily" and we were just part of the choir. I think after that I focused on athletics. Colliding with people or scoring a goal was just a little bit more exciting to me I guess. The end.