Farewell to the Holidays



I'll admit it.  Every year, I have a terrible time saying goodbye to the holidays and shifting into the routine of the New Year.  This year seemed especially hard, I think, because we had such a good time.  Sporty Spice had 19 days off of school, and although at times it was a little stressful, for the most part, I really enjoyed living in his world for awihle!  We fit as much as we could into the time, but also enjoyed some quality down-time.  We started the vacation with a couple of days in the mountains in Arnold.  No snow to speak of, which is so odd this time of year.  But we had fun nonetheless, and decorated our little house for  Christmas, which is always extra-cozy up there.

We came home for one day and then headed north again, this time to the Mister's family's home to do our "family Christmas".  Sporty enjoyed  time with his 6 cousins and the Mister and I got in a little training and beautiful riding as well as a little down time (I even got in a bit of thrifting!).

Then we headed home to celebrate the official Christmas weekend with our little family, the animals, our new housemate, and her dog.  Perfect and peaceful! 

We took Sporty Spice ice skating for the first time.  It had been years since I had skated and I loved it as a kid.  It was surprising how fast it came back, and how quickly Sporty "got his skate on".   By the end of the evening he was a skating fool.

 We also visited "Zoo Lights" at the Oakland Zoo, something we had never made it to before this year.  All the animals are put away, but they have the zoo decorated in lights and rides open.  This picture was taken on the train ride around the zoo, all lit up.  It was very festive!

 Sporty received a new bike with gears (!) from Santa!  We opened gifts in the morning with our housemate and had a super peaceful laid-back day on Christmas.  The Mister and I both had a run on our training schedules, so we took the kid and the bike and made a family affair of it.  For dinner we made
burritos and watched Elf.  I think the animals were happy to have us home and we had gifts for each species.


The week after Christmas we were lucky enough to meet up with our friends Amy and her son at The Cal Academy of Sciences in San Franciso.  They had reindeer and snow in the atrium!  Noah and I also got to go see "We Bought A Zoo"--the plot was hauntingly close to home.  And later in the week he had a birthday-playdate with three friends at our house.  That was an experience.  I'm not sure I'm "that" kind of mom.

 Sporty's Birthday is December 29th and he always gets a little gipped as a "Christmas Baby".  Well, not this year my friends!  The Mister and I had a little surprise up our sleeves.  Our kid has wanted to go to Legoland for-EVER and Legos are his all time favorite activity.  Sneaky parents that we are, we told him he was starting school the Monday after New Year's Day (really, he didn't start until Wednesday).   We even packed his lunch and put on a whole show...and then took him to the airport and flew to Legoland for the day!

 It was awesome, and so fun to surprise him!

 A great way to start the New Year!!  There were some rides, and (my favorite) all the crazy displays of legos--San Francisco!  New York!  Las Vegas!  All done in Legos.  And Sporty's favorite...all the Star Wars scenes; we are going through a major Star Wars Phase here.

 His favorite thing, though, was building his own Lego car and racing it against other kids' cars. 

So the New Year is upon us and 15 days in, I think we are finally starting to settle in to some sort of routine of normalcy, which is both bitter and sweet.  I'm excited for the year, and the major triathlon goal of Ironman Lake Placid in...well, just 189 days.  This year I am doing something, for me, completely outside my box.  I have decided to hire a coach!  I have been working with him for about 6 weeks now, and it has felt like a real whirlwind of emotions.  The first thing he did was to look at my training logs and tell me it was one of the scariest bits of reading he'd done in awhile.  He's from Australia, so when said with an Australian accent, it was even funnier/more tragic.  He immediately "grounded" me; ok, so he calls it "re-directing", and cut my training back to almost nothing and has me putting some serious measures in place to get my life back in balance.  I've been assigned craft time!  And massages!  At first I was enjoying it so much I could barely get out for the little bits of training he WAS having me do.  Then this week I started getting very nervous that there's not enough time and I'm not training....it has been a very WEIRD emotional experience.  We are just starting to ramp up a bit now, but he is completely re-working not only my swim and run, but my cycling as well!  I keep having to tell myself to just go with this.  It does feel like a bit of an adventure.  And I must admit I do feel happier.  Stay tuned! 

To this end, of balance, I've been getting to spend more quality time with Sporty, even now that he is back in school.  This week we went and painted our own pottery--it was fun and we both loved it.

The saddest part of our holiday was losing our sweet Emmalee.  16 years old, Emma was our 3rd-ever cat; she came from my very first vet job--her owner was pregnant and decided she didn't want a 4 month old kitten, claiming the litter box made her nauseous (whatever).  Emma was in a cage that first day right next to my computer at work--big mistake.  She was so outgoing and reaching through the bars, begging for attention, I took her home at the end of the day.  We refer to that time as her "homeless hours".  Smartest cat I ever met.  She will be remembered for her "dinner table run-bys".  At our old house, when the cats lived amongst us, she would jump on the dinner table.  She knew she would get swatted right off when she did it, so she'd wait until dinner was served, jump onto one end of the long farm table, and RUN accross it, to check out what we were having each night--just enough to see if it was worth the risk of going back.

Oh, Emma, such a big personality...and her absence leaves such a hole.