Somehow the end of 2007 came and went in a blur of activities and holidays, and we're already well into 2008 without an update. I hope I can do better for the rest of the upcoming year! Let's see if I can recap some of the things that went on.
November brought us Thanksgiving, where we were so thankful to have friends and family celebrating with us. Note to self for next year: before Thanksgiving, clean the oven before attempting to cook the “2-hour turkey” – which basically involves putting the oven on combust for 2 hours. Smoke pouring through the house and the blaring of the smoke detectors was not the Thanksgiving atmosphere I had in mind! Oops... Second note to self: don't let Andrew do the oven cleaning at all - as that involves fireballs, black smoke, soot and a LOT of cleaning to everything other than the oven. : @
After Thanksgiving it seemed like a blink and it was time for the California International Marathon, which I trained all year for. I started a whole blog post about the marathon afterwards and never finished it. And now it sounds too daunting to write it all out. But all in all, it was a very cool experience. I’m so glad I did it. Just seeing the spectators, the energy, was pretty cool. For some reason, at about mile 14 my stomach started killing me and the second half of the race was tough. I was really looking forward to seeing the kids see me run by, but unfortunately I never saw them out on the course. They made these great signs with tons of glitter on them to cheer for us. Before I got to the finish, I was thinking, “cross this off the list – I never have to do this again!” But only a day or two later, I was thinking about when I run it next year. : ) Somehow, I thought I would feel some sort of transformation after accomplishing this goal, but huh – nothing. Maybe because I didn’t meet the time goal I was hoping for. Or because I didn’t feel good. No matter - the good news is that a lot of other people were inspired by my accomplishment and have since been motivated to go for their own goals. So maybe that’s even better.
After the marathon, December was filled with holiday preparations. Somehow it was a complete surprise to me that Christmas was coming : ) This coming year I vow to start everything earlier! One of the projects I will be overseeing well before next Christmas is the construction of some sort of tree table/stand thing. Every year Rich freaks out that we’re going to put a heavy tree on a crappy little three-legged table and every year I tell him he had 365 days to figure out a better system. And every year we have a tree that is leaning precariously over the piano, making me nervous. And every year Rich says it’s not leaning. : ) You be the judge. I have to do a scrapbook page about this!
Christmas Eve we had Mom’s delicious spaghetti sauce and had a nice visit with Stu, Megan and Luke.
The kids tracked Santa on the NORAD Santa tracker and Garrett was frantic to get to bed before Santa passed over California because he knows that Santa can’t come if you are awake. This caused him to not be able to fall asleep, due to excitement, and he was absolutely freaked out that we were not going to get Christmas at our house. Poor kid. He probably didn’t fall asleep ‘til after 11. Luckily for everyone, Santa made an exception and circled back and Christmas was saved. ; )
Santa left a rock polisher and a pogo stick for Garrett and Brynne asked for a penguin snowglobe and a pack of chapstick. Thank goodness they ask for such reasonable things, because as Garrett pointed out when I mentioned that something was expensive, “the elves MAKE it – they don’t’ buy it, Mom.” Eeek.
One of the gift highlights was the giant box of bubblewrap that I gave the kids. At least 15 minutes of pure bubble wrap popping delight ensued upon opening. We were deafened by the sound but it was especially fun to watch Brynne running and leaping onto the bubblewrap!! My coworkers are horrified that I considered this a gift, but when I showed them the photos they had to admit that the kids look pretty darn happy. And then when I explained that last year Santa brought ranch dressing to great delight, they understood our family a bit more. : )
So Garrett has become the king of Pogo… He is up to over 400 bounces at a time now!
New Year’s Eve was spent at home, as I was a bit under the weather. The kids enjoyed getting to drink sparkling cider from wine glasses and stay up late.
Which brings us to 2008… I have so many resolutions it’s hard to know where to begin. Blog more, would be one. : ) I have a list of places I want to go this year, including visits to Erik and Jaymee as well as to New York. I want to snowboard – since last year there wasn’t ever enough snow to try. I want to surf again. I want to run a half marathon in under 2 hours. And on and on. I think this is quite enough rambling for now…
