Living Life to the Fullest

Hey Bloggers-

I hope you have all been staying warm over these past few COLD weeks!  I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for it to be 70 and sunny again!!  The past few weeks have brought me great triumph and great sadness.  The start of the semester has been going pretty well- classes are super busy, as expected, but they are all super interesting so that’s awesome!  It’s always really cool when homework feels more like fun than like work!  Nothing like some good ol’ fashion chemistry fun, right??
The past weekend I raced my very first triathlon!!!  It was AWESOME!  I am a huge runner, as you may have guessed from my last post, but I just recently started training for triathlons to give my training some variety.  I crushed the run and the bike, but I’m not ashamed to say my swim was absolutely terrible.  Actually, it was beyond terrible… but I finished it!  And I learned to swim a week before the race, so I’ll accept just finishing for this race.   The triathlon was an indoor triathlon at Iowa State University and I went down there with the tri-team here at MSU!  It was so fun!  I’ll put a picture at the end of the blog of all of us after the race.

After my race things turned much more somber.  When I called my sister to tell her how it went I could quickly tell something was wrong.  It turned out that a childhood friend and classmate had passed away in a car accident.   After hearing this news I was in complete shock, I didn’t even know how to begin processing the hefty information I had just learned.  I had danced with Caitlin starting kindergarten through my senior year and she was an incredible friend with such a joy for life.  After getting back from ISU I went home to find some comfort (thankfully we didn’t have class on Monday so I was able to) and then returned home again later that week for the visitation and funeral.  Although there will always been a hole in my heart from now on, I have learned a lot through this loss.  It has taught me how precious life is and how every moment is a beautiful gift.  It has been a reminder to live every day to the fullest and take in all the joy and love the people around you have to offer.  So, go out and do something you have always wanted to do!  There is no better day than today!!

I hope you all have a great next few weeks- stay warm!

Kira