Stone Soup

Right before Thanksgiving break, Seth's class performed the play "Stone Soup" and provided a lunch of stone soup for the family members who could attend.  Seth was one of the last ingredients, butter, and he only had one line, "Bubble, bubble!"  The class had so much fun, they're planning another play before Christmas!



triathlon season, behind the scenes

It takes a certain sort of dedication to be a triathlete, even more so to complete a half-ironman.  I've known since at least last December, perhaps even last October, that Nathan had his sights on Beach2Battleship this year.  It was a commitment we both made.  He committed to train, I committed to accomodating my work schedule to his workouts.  Throughout the winter, we spent Saturday mornings at the Y, him lifting weights, me putting in miles on the treadmill.  In February, 2011 triathlon training began, with weight workouts being replaced with laps in the pool, miles run pre-dawn, hours on the trainer in the basement.  As the days got longer, the workouts got longer, with lunch-hour swims, morning runs, and evening bike rides outdoors.  I tried my best to keep up with the laundry.  I found that if I did two loads every day, I could keep up...that included our regular laundry, sheets (remember dust mites are not our friends in this house!), and pool towels, as well as stinky workout clothes.  How dedicated was Nathan?  Here is his workout calendar, often made weeks in advance:

He uses a Garmin when he runs/cycles, and uploads the data online.  He holds himself accountable, and also posts his workouts to dailymile, which is kind of like FB for athletes, a community of like-minded people there to support you on the tough days and praise you on your successes.

And bad days?  He had more than his share.  The little beast that is asthma has reared its ugly head more than once.  The ol' IT band decides to flare at inconvenient times.  After running all winter, the IT band ruined Nathan's half marathon in March, which he was more than ready for.  I can't tell you how many Saturdays this year consisted of runs greater than 8 miles, although I could probably look back in his calendar and find out.  This guy showed up at our house after the half:

It is called a foam roller, and used to "roll out" injuries.  In July, Nathan didn't finish the run portion of the Stumpy Creek International Distance triathlon.  It looked like the pesky IT injury was going to shorten triathlon season.  Enter our new best friend, "THE STICK":

Before and after workouts, and sometimes at random times in between, Nathan would ask me to "roll out" his hamstrings, calves, and sometimes IT band.  It loosens up whatever tightness is in the muscles.  It is a torture device.  I love it.  If you've ever seen the scene in The 40-Year-Old Virgin where Steve Carell's character gets his chest waxed, well, that's what the particularly painful sessions were like.  It got to the point I could tell ahead of time if it was going to hurt really bad or not.  haha.  It really is a great way to get your stress out!  (I am so mean!)

Now we're a month post-half-ironman.  The wetsuit hangs nicely in the basement.  The bike hasn't left the trainer since we got home.  Stinky running clothes still show up in the laundry every once in awhile, but we're all enjoying a break in the intensity...just running for fun!  Coming soon...101 reasons why Sara will never do a triathlon!

Case is 6!

Our good buddy, Case, turned six a couple weeks ago, and we were once again blessed with really nice weather the day of his party.  He had a Phineas & Ferb themed party, and the world's biggest pinata:

What a fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon!

catching up on Seth

Seth has had a great November.  We had a skate date early in the month, and it finally clicked.  After a couple wobbly laps, we were skating hand-in-hand at a leisurely pace; I didn't feel like my right arm was going to be twice as long as my left at the end of the night.  He had a great report card.  He is a great little reader...he has to read 15 minutes every day for homework, and then I read him novels at night.  Right now we are a little over halfway through Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.  (We have already read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The BFG; Roald Dahl had one wicked imagination.)  His teacher is back to school part-time right now, and Seth is super excited to go to school every day.  We moved the lego table from the basement to his room, and he has probably used it more in the past two weeks than he has in the past two years.  His first adult tooth is almost halfway in (lookin' crooked like his mom's dang it), and tooth #2 is loose.  I expect he'll soon be singing,  "All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth!"

Amelia update

As you can probably guess, life has stayed hectic.  I'm trying to catch up.  Amelia has really had a mental burst lately.  She can regurgitate all sorts of random facts she learned at preschool.  She has memorized almost all the songs for the church Christmas play (better than her brother, I might add).  She has been on an arts and crafts kick.  The first picture was taken at 6:30 one morning:

Another day, she asked Nathan how to spell pretzel.  She doesn't "know" her ABCs by sight yet, but she can mimic handwriting:

 This was at the library after storytime last week, make yourself at home there, little girl...

a night out for mommy

First of all, pardon the quality of the picture, and the delinquency in posting.  As only I seem to be able to do, I have managed to misplace the camera's memory card somewhere between the camera and the computer.  A couple Fridays ago, I went for a ladies' night out to a paint-your-own pottery place.  I made this:

It is going to be our Santa cookies plate.  It was so much fun!  I want to go back again and make something else!

unexpected expenses

This post was supposed to be titled "21st century kitchen".  Two weeks ago, I put two pans of apple crisp into the preheated oven, turned around, and heard a "poof".  Turned back around and saw a small flame making a slow-burn around the wire.  I turned the oven off and called our local fire department's non-emergency line.  They came over, turned off the breaker, and told me I needed a new range.  Since ours is probably over 18 years old, it didn't hurt my feelings too much.

Flash forward to this past Sunday.  I was leaving work, alone, at around 11:15.  Normally there are a pack of us that walk out together.  The only other person leaving parked in the pay deck.  There was a creepy guy leaving the library behind me, so I was in a hurry getting into my car.  As I started to drive down the ramp, I noticed the van bumping.  Parked the car, and I have a flat tire.  Fantastic.  Called security, who thankfully arrived in under a minute, and he searched fruitlessly for my spare tire.  Called AAA, and my only option was to tow it in the middle of the night.  My dear friend, Melissa (who had parked in the pay deck), turned around and picked me up, so I wouldn't have to wake up Nathan and the kids.  After we get the kids off to school, Nathan and I meet AAA at the parking deck.  Nathan finds the spare (hey, it was super dark the night before), but we need some sort of crank to get it out that my car doesn't have.  I have the van towed to the place by the mall, and I spend the next three hours shopping while I get new tires and an inspection.  Not exactly how I pictured spending my Monday. 

what a trooper

Seth's school sends out a folder of info from the PTA everything Tuesday.  Amelia and I go in every Tuesday morning so I can stuff folder's for Seth's teacher (sub).  She also has me return all the week's homework in the folders, which unfortunately isn't collated, so sometimes we are there for a while.  Last spring I got suckered into volunteered to co-chair the Art by Me fundraiser.  I love it when my kids do it.  However, keeping track of the art, and then the magnets, and then the money, for almost 800 students has been something else all together.  I have been at the school so much in the past month that teachers are starting to make jokes about it.  The day we mailed it in, the head chair had everything organized the way I probably would have done it all along, had I known that was how it needed to be at the end.  So at least I have a plan for next year!  Amelia has claimed a couch in the teachers' lounge, and I have resorted to bringing DVDs and lollipops to keep her entertained.  She has been so good, and the staff love to check out her outfits each day!

Halloween 2011

Seth was still on Fall Break on the 31st, but Amelia had to go to school.  After our weekend away, Seth had to run some errands with me, but he seemed to like that it was just the two of us.  We went trick-or-treating with our neighbors again.  This year we had a Super Mario and a Sleeping Beauty.  She was supposed to be Cinderella, but we could not find her costume anywhere.  The next day I found it stuffed under the construction paper.

It was chillier than it's been in years' past, so Amelia ended up snuggled in a blanket in a stroller most of the night.  Seth had a great time running across yards with his buddies.  That afternoon, we did carve one of our pumpkins (the big one had rotted out):

We've got it down to a science, I do the prep work, Nathan does the carving.  This year, an Angry Bird:

Our mommy-daughter manicures for the night:

not so easy this time...

The kids had been looking forward to last Sunday all year.  As promised, I took them to the corn maze before we left Cary.  This is the design for this year.  There were six checkpoints in the lower area and four checkpoints in the top section.

It was MUCH harder this year.  The trails were better, but it seemed like we'd never find the first star, and then the second star, well, you get the idea.  Mom and Dad went with us:

After well over an hour, my parents took Amelia to play on other parts of the farm.  But you know Seth.  He had to find every single checkpoint.  We found #5 after some intense searching, but we hadn't run into anyone who found #4.  Ugh.  Finally we found it!  Corn maze complete, but I think then it took us almost ten minutes to find an exit!

Beach2Battleship

After Seth got out of school Thursday, we loaded up the car and headed to Cary.  My parents kept the kids for the weekend, and Friday morning Nathan and I headed to Wilmington.  This was not a romantic getaway.  Nathan participated in the PPD Beach2Battleship Half Ironman.  Friday afternoon we went to the expo to pick up his race packet, picked up some racing last-minute racing miscellaneous, dropped off his bike at T1, and dropped off a trash bag full of the stuff he needed at T2.  Then we checked into the hotel, watched a movie, went out to dinner, and bought a toaster.  (See, not romantic.)

Saturday morning, we got to T1 before the sun came up.  Nathan got all his stuff ready, and I got coffee from a vendor.  At 7:45 he got on a trolley to head to the swim start (with yet another trash bag full of stuff), and I headed back to the car.  Spectators could walk or bike to the swim start, but could not drive.  I opted to miss the start, which for Nathan was at 8:45.  The swim was 1.2 miles, finishing at the marina in Wrightesville.  The current was kind, and Nathan finished 7 minutes ahead of when he told me to start looking for him.  

They had to run about 300 yards to transition, take off wetsuits, and get bike-ready.  He was all smiles as he headed out on the bike. 

The bike route was 56 miles, which Nathan expected to take between 3 and 3 1/2 hours.  I drove to the Target that was across the street from out hotel, and bought a hoodie and a hat.  It was way colder spectating than I expected it to be.  I spent about an hour at the hotel, then drove to downtown Wilmington to find a place to park.  From there I took a boat taxi to T2, which was at the battleship:

 

The weather was not optimal, and the wind was fierce.  Let's put it this way, I was wearing a t-shirt, a running jacket, the hoodie I had bought, a windbreaker, and a thermal hat when Nathan finished the bike.  He finished at the 3:30:00 point.  The wind was not kind.

 At T2, he put on his running shoes and was off to run a half marathon (13.1 miles).  He projected his time to be 1 hr 50 minutes to 2 hours. 

I got some lunch, then parked it on the bleachers at the finish line.  Nathan has never finished a half or a tri run earlier than expected.  He's been at his earliest projected time, but never earlier.  So at the 1 hr 50 min point, I stood up and started watching.  And waited.  And waited.  And waited.  And began to worry that he was hurt somewhere along the route.  I took out my phone, looked at the live tracking, and found he had finished six minutes ahead of schedule.  Way to go Nathan!  So then I was in a panic trying to find him.  By the time we found each other, he had eaten, and reclaimed all three bags of his transition stuff.  Here is a picture of his finisher shirt and medal:

We took the boat taxi back across to the car and spent the entire evening warming up (me) and recovering (Nathan) in the room.  Sunday morning we picked up his bike on our way out of town.  I am so proud of him.  He has planned and trained for this all year long, and it paid off!  Final time, 5 hrs, 51 min, 31 seconds.  Whew!

Seth's fall party

For the last day of the first quarter of first grade (how did that happen already?), Seth's class had a Halloween fall party.  To get around costumes, the school has dress up theme days the entire week.  Thursday was favorite sports team day.  Our fall party had a definite Halloween theme, but I don't think anyone was offended.  The kids got so much stuff...it looked like an orange and black Christmas morning on all their tables!

sick again

We are not really catching a break around here...Seth's school hosted a Family Fun Night on the 21st.  It is a big deal, with inflatables, games in classrooms, vendors, and a silent auction.  Seth's class didn't have a lot of parent volunteers, so I didn't get to play as much as I'd have liked to, but Nathan made the rounds with the kids and took them on a hayride.  I got to help them paint ceramic pumpkins, and I am thrilled to have these little pumpkins as keepsakes!  Anyways, flash forward a few hours, and the kids and I were all up with a stomach bug/food poisoning.  As the week went on, Seth's and my dry coughs got worse...Seth got an official diagnosis of walking pneumonia.  I never went to the doctor, so I don't know what I had.  By the end of the week, Amelia had a cold, and Nathan was able to hold off until this week.  This Thursday was the best I've felt in several weeks.  Today Nathan finally feels human again.  We're not used to being sick so much, time to up the vitamin C around here!

fall open house

On the 24th, Amelia's preschool hosted an Open House, where the kids could wear their costumes and show off their classrooms to their parents.  Amelia LOVES school, and she loved to show it off.  She was front and center as they performed "five little pumpkins", "five little monkeys sitting in a tree", and their class song.