An Auction for Ray

Ray of Hope and Girl Power!

About this time last year, with the help of my family and friends, I raised over $300 for one of my favorite organizations, Girls on the Run while training for my first half marathon. This year, I am running the Portland Half Marathon with the Ray of Hope team. I've doubled my goal this year to $600 and am raising money for Ray of Hope and their Girls Empowerment Seminar. I'm still spreading Girl Power, but this time across the globe!

I am over half way to my goal, and Beth has graciously donated a birthday cake to help me finish it off. If you have not had the pleasure of enjoying a baked good a la Beth, then you are missing out, but you don't have to anymore! From tonight, Friday, October 1st until 5pm on Thursday, October 7th, you have the chance to bid on the birthday cake of your choice made from scratch by Beth.

A Riviera Cake, by Beth. Flourless chocolate sponge cake layered with mousse and lemon cream wrapped in dark and white chocolate and topped with chocolate curls. And yes, that was all made by hand from scratch.

The details for the auction are as follows: 

Bidding

1. List your bid in the comments section below.

2. If I don't know you personally, and you bid, you must email me your full name and phone number at betsy [dot] elizabethjane at gmail [dot] com

Winning:

1. The final, highest bid wins the cake.

2. I will announce the winner after 5pm on Thursday and directly contact them.

3. To confirm the winner, after I contact them, the person with the highest bid must donate said amount to Ray of Hope through my fundraising page here.

Getting the cake:

1. Once you are the confirmed winner, you will work directly with me and Beth to decide the type of cake and delivery method.

2. The proposed prize is a birthday cake, but if your actual birth date is too far away and you want your cake sooner, we will get you your cake asap!

Now get bidding and eat cake!!!

Thanks for joining in for a good cause.

A Married Life for Me! And Duncan!

(That's a play on A Pirate's life for me... just in case you didn't get it. I forgive you.)

*Disclaimer: This post was started WEEKS ago... I've updated some glaring inconsistencies, but this will most likely be my last blog on this current site. You can find me with my husband, here.

It's official, Dunc and I are married. More than a month! That's like forever, right? Most of you who read this were there, but just for the sake of consistency (we all know what a consistent blogger I am) or thoroughness (and we all know how thorough I am in this blogging game - super, right?) I can't really let the occasion pass and not blog about it. It's not every day that you commit to spending the rest of your life with your best friend, the love of your life, and share the moment (or weekend) with your family and closest friends. So there. 

Said best friend and love of my life is also much better at blogging than I am. We are currently in negotiations for shared ownership of a blog. I think he might win. Case and point. It only took him 11 days to blog about our big day... *And he did it again... so yeah, negotiations complete. I'm joining him.*

It all started back in 2003 when Dunc and I met on a stairwell landing in McCarty Hall. Hilarity ensued, adventures were had and in the end, or the beginning, we fell in love.

Dunc is well aware of this fact, but I fell pretty hard for this crazy husband o'mine during our freshman year. I tried to play it cool - you know, act like the totally composed, successful, single college lady I was - but I pretty much failed. Like the morning after I met him, he walked into Anthro 101 and I jumped out of my seat, waving and yelling "DUNCAN!" in front of 200+ undergrads. I am the epitome of cool.

Regardless of how cool or uncool we may have been or continue to be, we have spent nearly 7 awesome years together - not nearly awesome years, they've been totally awesome, but we are nearing 7 years. We had planned on getting married on our 8th/2nd dating anniversary, February 29th, 2012 - but we're impatient and in love. And thus, I give you our wedding weekend:

In the late morning on July 9th, Dunc and I headed down to Tacoma with Oly in tow. When we hopped in the car, "Going to the Chapel" was playing on the radio - okay, we were married in the courthouse and not the chapel, but stiiiilllll, it was a good way to start the day. We arrived in T-town, met up with Dad & Thonky, compared all the Hauenstein signatures, Dunc napped (he was super relaxed like Lin on her wedding day), I walked around the park with friends and family and then we got ready.

Some of you may know that Dunc and I aren't really traditional on many fronts and our wedding day was no different. We got ready at my Mamz's house together, we saw each other before the ceremony, heck, Dunc even saw my dress months before the wedding, but we wanted each other nearby and wouldn't have done it any other way.

A little pre-wedding noogie for good luck.

Ashley on hair duty. The queen of hair, wait 'til you see the haircut she gave me post wedding.
*Most have you seen it...*

Sarah, who made my veil, also was on makeup patrol. She's a makeup artist/stylist extraordinaire.

Okay, I need to pause here to just say how thankful Duncan and I both are to have such awesome family and friends. Whether you were taking a bajillion photos, doing hair or makeup, making flowers, picking out adorable serving plates, making us cry with your tender words, brewing beer, baking cake, hosting events, or just generally being loving and supportive, we seriously would not have had the wonderful wedding weekend that we did. 

And we were off to the courthouse!

A little wedding pre-performance nerves. It totally felt like getting ready for a race or musical theatre.

The Future Sailors prepare to get hitched.

We spent a lot of time hugging and talking loudly outside the courtroom. Sorry Judge Orlando!

Then the whole gang moved into the courtroom. I think we may have had the most well attended courtroom ceremony, because we definitely took the judge and staff by surprise. Go giant family! GOOOO!

And then, bam! MARRIAGE!

We did it!

More hugging commenced + tears! 

After one hundred hugs and ten thousand tears of joys, we all headed out of the courtroom and the party moved to my wonderful sister, Katy's home. Dunc and I went off on our own married route. We checked into to our fancy "honeymoon" hotel, Hotel Murano. En route, a bike courier drove by us at a light, turned around and asked us, "Did you guys just get married?" After we responded with a resounding "YES!" bike dude proceeded to congratulate us. Dunc and I always appreciate a good, random interaction with a kind stranger and immediately concluded that being married is AWESOME! 

Finally, after snagging our fur child Napoleon, we made our way to the party that was well under way.

The grand pizza and bread stick entrance.

And then more hugs and tears, which seemed to be the theme of the weekend (this is where I wrap it up, because Dunc already talked about all of this). The major tear moments:

Thanks Logan!

Thanks Momlette! 

We love the CDs and book: one of the best gifts ever. Thank you all for contributing your love and words and your voices to such a fantastic weekend. Both Duncan and I felt so loved and the whole weekend just radiated with it.

LOVE LOVE LOVE!

Peace. See you on the Hauenstein Blog.

A Semblance of a Normal Life

After a month of moving, the last few weeks of half-marathon training and working on wedding announcements, Duncan and I are finally settling into a more normal life.

We've spent the last month between two houses and we are now officially down to just one. I cannot tell you how relieved I am to cross that huge task off the list; and how excited I am to have a real home with Duncan (and Oly and Butters).

We are making serious progress towards organizing our new home and we can wait to have visitors and guests join us in the coming weeks.

I also crossed off another half marathon off the list this weekend at the Seattle Rock N Roll. It was a CRAZY big race with 28,000 runners and walkers. The race started in Tukwila and ended right next to Qwest field. The morning was crazy as we found over 2 miles of solid traffic to the runner drop off zone and I ended up walking over a mile and a half to the start line. Hey, I'm already about to run 13, why not warm up with a few miles? Right? Regardless, I just barely made it in time to drop off my gear, hit up the port-a-pottie and make it into my corral to start. There were over 35 corrals of runners, I was in corral 13 and it took 17 minutes for my corral to make it to the start line. This race is serious.

Anyway, the run went well enough and I PR-ed! WOO!

Bib

FName

LName

City

State

Country

Age

Sex

ChipTime

ClockTime

Overall

SexPl

DivPl

AgeGrade

13626

Elizabeth

Evans

Seattle

WA

25

F

1:54:57

2:12:35

2430

1040

229

57.3%

They really don't want you to reuse the official photos, but here is my best try at snagging them. I look less like a t-rex than I normally do while running AND you may notice something missing that I usually wear...

No glasses! I started working in contacts last week and they have been awesome for running. Still a bit weird; I keep trying to push my phantom glasses up on my nose, it looks pretty cool.

Hopefully with a more normal life on the horizon, we can get back to some more food and animal related photography. Here's hoping!!!!

England, one million years later

Okay, so it isn't THAT long since we returned. But it has been so long that now we are nearer to Taryn & Tom's visit to the States than to our visit across the pond.

Speaking of England, it's currently #hateEnglandWeek on twitter and the trend is pretty funny, with tweets like (I didn't include the hashtag on all of these, but for the non-twitterers out there, the tags just link all the comments together on one page so you can read through what people are saying about one topic):

"They might have invented the serial killer, we perfected it. #JacktheRipper #HateEnglandWeek"
"The only kind of chips I want with my fish are Doritos."
"It took an American to play an interesting Sherlock Holmes. "
"You had to have 6 different James Bonds. We've only had one Chuck Norris. "
"... spice girls ruined my sixth grade year."
"Big Ben isn't even that big"
"Tea time is stupid."


You get the idea... However base and silly these may be, I've definitely giggled and am appreciating the rivalries developing around the World Cup.

I guess posting about what a great time we had during England sort of goes against the whole "Hating England" thing, but I've got time to blog and gall darn it, I'm going to do it. BUT I am still rooting for the good ol' US of A on Saturday, even Taryn is!

Soooo England... riiiight... since it took me a ridiculous time to even post about two days and an even longer time to get around to the remaining 4-5, I give you a pictorial journey through our trip accompanied by a few captions:

  (This is where the "original" American's sailed from, you know, Plymouth Rock! Taryn and Tom live in this lovely city.)

 A bird pooped on Sir Francis Drake's head... no respect...

 We headed to a small village with thatched cottages to solve a mystery... the village of Cockington! Hahahahahaha. Yes, we are immature.

  

 Proper tea time in Torquay.

 Pinkies up!

That's Devonshire Cream and it is AMAZING. We now have some in our fridge to relive moments like these:

 Priceless! Such a good looking couple.

 Album cover.

We had the pleasure of running some fabulous trails in Plymouth, awesome trails:

 Stretching for your health!

There was a dog or two along the trails, we had to stop to observe.

When you run in England there are really old bridges and ruins around you. Cool!

Our final meal in Plymouth was good ole Fish 'n Chips with a Bitter Shandy.

This particular brand was nasty, but lemonade and beer is not a bad idea, like a suped-up Arnold Palmer.

Then we headed back to London where we welcomed into my uncle's flat for our last evening. His wonderful driver, Colin, picked us up from the train station, showed us around my uncle's neighborhood of Chelsea and took us to the airport the following day. We promised him a pint upon our return to England, he more than deserves it!

Et voila! L'Angleterre!

NOW, GO USA!!!! USA! USA! USA! USA!

May the Fourth

I am a really bad nerd. Why? Because I never knew until today that this is Star Wars Day.

You don't know why? Because May the 4th Be With You... Oh puns, you never fail to amuse me or annoy me.

Anyway, Cake Wrecks did an homage to Star Wars (Jen, the author is a hugely awesome nerd) and other Star Wars nerds have been coming out of the woodwork on facebook and twitter. So there you go. May the Fourth Be With You. Hopefully if you fancy yourself as a true nerd, you already knew about this whole thing.

Running Updates

Since Logan and Jody are being much better at keeping the world up-to-date on their running achievements (nice racing skills friends, I wish we were closer so we could run more together), I thought it was high time to catch everyone up on what the heck I've been doing.

So! You may remember in January I stated my intent to run a race EVERY MONTH. Wellllll, that has not been the case. Not because I haven't wanted to, but because my hip/pelvis injury reared its ugly face and I could no longer ignore it. So I was back in PT and scaled my running down significantly. BUT as of March 15th, my pain was significantly reduced, core strengthened, balance in tip-top shape, hips realigned and I was cleared to train again! WOOOO. However, this delay put me way off track for marathon training with June 26th coming up quick, so I dropped my registration to the half marathon and am shooting for a full in October at the Portland Marathon.

Enough about the future. What have I done so far this year? This past weekend I made my triumphant return to the world of racing as part of the "Big DaWg" Relay Team at the Tacoma City Marathon Relay. I highly recommend marathon relays. You never get passed (if you start in the later legs, like at mile 11, with fresh legs... hahahah), you get a finisher's medal (cheating?) and you get to be a part of a real team. It was a great way to spend a Sunday morning.

Oh you couldn't see my head? Sorry, that is my fancy hunting camo Seattle Mariner's hat. 

Joel's fine art work rooting our team on in downtown Tacoma.

Our team was primarily UW employees (plus Maureen!) and we kicked major booty. Or some booty. There were 15 teams, the majority were in the same class as ours and we placed 4th. Our marathon time was: 03:47:08 (almost a BQ time for the under 35 ladies... just saying...). The course was exceptionally hilly and I could not imagine running the whole 26.2 miles especially because of the wind! Sheesh. (Sheesh signalling my disgust with the wind and my bad impression of it...)

I was lucky enough to have almost 5 of my 6.3 miles in Point Defiance Park, sheltered from the onslaught of gusts. But when I exited the park and had over a mile of hills left, I was hit head-on with the wind. Nothing like running against the wind. Even with the hills and wind, I still was able to finish my leg in approximately 50 minutes and 40 seconds.

We were chipped timed, but only got recorded at the start, half and finish. I tried to time myself, but my new watch confused me and at my first mile when I attempted to enter my split, I reset the watch... niiiiiice work Elizabeth. I was able to catch 2 or 3 relay teams in front of ours and passed the timer off to Machiko (my best work running buddy - we've even busted out 7 miles on our lunch break) who KILLED her 5 miles and passed another 2 teams. She squeezed all 5 miles in 38:40! Are you kidding me?!?! Speed demon. She will definitely help me as I train for a speedy Portland Marathon.

And that was that!

I have a few races to look forward to:
May 16th Beat the Bridge 8K
May 22nd New Balance Girls on the Run 5K at Seward Park (although I will just be coordinating all the volunteers and not running....)
June 16th Seattle Rock N Roll Half Marathon
October 10th (10/10/10!) Portland Marathon

Yee haw! I love racing.

Also, I promise to get the rest of England up. Prommmmmiiiiiiiiise.

England Days 6 & 7

When Duncan left off, we were enjoying Taryn's home-cooked curry in Cheltenham...he mentioned that we played Texas Hold 'Em that evening after dinner, he stole part of Day 6. Stephanie Tanner would definitely pull a "How Rude!"

S'okay Dunc, I forgive you. But I will elaborate on the evening of Day 5, we hit up the local movie theatre for Kick Ass! Which was pretty dang entertaining... however  disturbing, mostly for **SPOILER ALERT** the young child murdering people... 

But back to the English countryside:

On Saturday, we headed to Bath for the day. Bath is a beautiful town, filled with buildings that make you want to punch something because you are overwhelmed by the cute level. I had a number of cute attacks while traveling in England, but Bath was BEAUTIFUL and filled with a ridiculous amount of history. 

But first! FOOD! We were headed to a restaurant for bangers and mash - everyone was jealous of my sausages and mustard mash from two nights ago. It was worthy of their jealousy. So we were in hot pursuit for more sausages! On our way to said restaurant, we passed the "Bath Tub" and saw a comparable menu for cheaper prices. SOLD! And what a choice it was. I give you an Aubergine Stack, Bangers and Mash (topped with parsnips! YUM!) and a most excellent burger - despite the first burger attempt... success!

After lunch we made our way into town and stopped at a super cute shop "Found" and spoke with the owners for awhile about their current venture, their recent WOOFing expedition in New Zealand and a good local coffee shop... that's what happens when you mention you're from Seattle. Here's the view from their shop window:

 Pretty terrible right?

It was quite rainy though... We tried to be emo, but Tom and Taryn are much better at acting cool than I...

We headed further into town and spent a good chunk of time wandering Bath Abbey. Awe-inspiring amount of details and history in this church:

Notice the old English... "f" has replaced "s" within a number of words. Silly!

Check out the first recorded Abbess of Bath... 676 AD!!! And look at those Abbots' names... sounds like Middle Earth to me. Nerd? I show the rest of the list because I find the whole no last name prior to 1290 interesting, but look at poor Richard in 1476. Sorry Rich! No surname for you.

We left the Abbey, wandered around in the rain for a bit. Saw the outside of the Roman Baths... the line was way to long and it was again 15 quid each. Sheesh! On our way out of Bath I made the gang swing into the Jane Austen Centre, I love me some Jane and I had to check it out. Plus I got to see some paintings of Mr. Darcy as styled after Colin Firth in the best production of Pride & Prejudice ever.

Then we drove back through the countryside... gross:

That evening, Tom whipped up some Thai noodle soup... amazing. And we played poker and celebrity.

The next day was HOGWARTS!!! Well as close as we could get. Oxford!

B-E-A-utiful. Can you believe people go to University here? I would not be able to concentrate.

I'd be doing too many chin-ups on the Cotswold Stone buildings. Tony Horton would be proud.

We visited Oxford Castle. And got put in stocks...

It was pointed out by smarty-pants English pants: "Actually I think those were meant for your feet..." He was right... we just have small necks?

On the castle grounds, there was a massive hill, man-made with some sort of structure within it. I made everyone climb it. And jump off of it.

On our way back down we spied Tom throwing handfuls of pebbles. Taryn and I thought he was throwing them at people as they crossed his path...

He was really aiming for the daffodils.

(Look closely, see the rock in action?)

We walked around Oxford some more, admiring the ridiculously beautiful architecture and marveling at the locales where Harry Potter visited (or where the films were shot... details, details).

We saw a performer and his dog. The pup sang along with the harmonica, adorrrrrrable. 

And then Duncan tasted Millionaire Shortbread...

Near tears my friends... one tasty tasty treat. (I did not hold true to my "no sugar" rule while abroad, I had to taste the local delicacies!)

Then it was back to Cheltenham for a "pub quiz". In America, we call that trivia. It was good fun - in spite of our neighboring group insisting that we let them cheat off of our sheet. There were even questions about the US and Washington State. We were accused of cheating based on our accents when we got Mt. St. Helen's correct. Oh right, being born near an active volcano and knowing the year it last erupted IS cheating. Pardon me, dear Brits.

I know I was supposed to do the rest of the trip, but this is already getting out of hand (or long...) - I'll be back with more!