My weakness

It seems I have developed a weakness for fabric.

I guess it was always there, just lying dormant, waiting to be unleashed.

Recently, my fabulous friend Kathryn sent me a gift that had some wonderful and unique fabrics in the package. My guess is that she procured them on her recent travels. I fully support her supporting my fabric habit. So you'd think my fabric itch would be scratched, right? Right?

Wrong.

Probably doesn't help that I subscribe to several craft/fabric blogs so I often get to look at new and lovely fabrics.

What do I make with this fabric? Well, you never know what I might be inspired to make. For a long time, I mostly just did home dec: covers for throw pillows, curtains, etc. Then I found out how to make baby carriers. Oh, the lovely fabric you can put on a baby carrier! I've since branched out into the occassional item for Sierra, as well as purses/bags (that's what I did for Christmas presents for my family this year). I'm currently working on a patchwork diaper bag for myself.

Not once, but TWICE this week, I had added fabric to an online shopping cart and then bailed, telling myself that I didn't "need" it; that I should be saving that money. Then, one of my favorite online fabric stores announced on their blog that not only were they offering a 10% discount on one of my lusted-after fabrics, they are also giving 3% of their proceeds for the next week only to Doctors Without Borders to help with the relief effort in Haiti. Fine, Fabricworm, you win. I could not resist a third time, and you got me. Happy? (Because I am!)

Fabricworm got me, but I got (or rather, soon will have):
Momo Wonderland Tea time in tomato
Momo wonderland Tweedle Dee in sugar
Patty Young Flora and Fauna Dandelions in Raspberry
Patty Young Flora and Fauna Hummingbirds in Lime
Riley Blake Bloom and Grow Birds in Blue
and Robert Kaufman Dill Blossoms Flower Blossom in Red
Sadly (or thankfully), they were sold out of Carolyn Gavin Wild Thyme Birds in Chocolate, or I would have probably bought that one too!
Just so you know I didn't go completely overboard, I managed to resist these and more!


Don't you want to go fabric shopping now??

Toddler humor

Sierra told me a joke last night.

I know you wanna hear it.

Me: Sierra, what does Thomas say?

Sierra: RRRAAAAWWR!!

Me: Thomas does not say "RAWR!

Sierra: *dissolves into laughter* ... Mew!

Hey, she thought it was funny, and I laughed (then and later) because she thought it was so funny

Pee-phah

"Pee-phah," for those of you not fluent in Sierra speak, is "Sophia."

This little girl's vocabulary is exploding! I remember back when I was listing the words she could say. Now there are so many, I can't even list them. And she's adding more daily. I think my favorites are when she "gets" names, like the aforementioned "Pee-phah." Sophie is one of our little buddies here at Woodberry, and she also say "Haw-paw" (Harper), "Aw-bee" (Aubrey), and "Massss'n" (Mason) in addition to many others. She tries almost any word you encourage her to say and she's repeating two and three word phrases. Today, she came out with "armadillo" ... um ... sort of.

We haven't done any video in awhile and I really need to do that. Her little voice is so cute. My luck, though, she would just clam up and not say anything. She does that on occassion, but usually changes her mind and decides she would rather talk afterall. Today, I had Sierra with me at the indoor track getting ready for a meet and one the guys that works here at Woodberry, Mark, was in his office next to where we keep all the equipment. I had to make several trips up and down the stairs with gear and after Sierra at first wouldn't say hello, then every time we walked past Mark's door (going in and coming back out) she would yell, "HI! MAWK!!" I'm sitting here laughing to myself just thinking about it.

Back to the track

No, no, not to run. But to time the track meet. The head track coach actually called me Wednesday night about an hour after we got home and asked me if I was ready to "get back to it." (I was) While in Phoenix, there were two track meets. I trained two of the assistant coaches on the system that we use for timing, but apparently, there were a couple problems and a few races ended up without correct times. It happened to me the first meet I timed as well; there's really a lot to learn, and they didn't have a lot of time to practice.

Anyway, the head coach is a pretty intense guy and he wants thing to run smoothly (don't we all?) so I guess it must have been a little stressful when the meet didn't go completely as planned.

I spent most of Friday at the track and was really stressing as the meet start time was approaching. The finish line camera wouldn't talk to my computer! I kept getting an error message. A quick call to tech support and Jeff had me straightened out and on my way. Phew! The meet ran flawlessly, at least from my perspective. I timed the first part of the meet, and then I had one of the assistant coaches who was learning the system run the finish line for the last several race. He did great. It's probably a good idea to have more than just me able to run that system. Good for job security that I can't be replaced; not so good if I am ill or absent.

I actually really enjoy the job and hope that Woodberry continues to ask me to it. I do love a track meet and it's nice to see how things run on the infield. For so many years, I wondered how they got times so quickly. Now I know. Because I'm the one that cranks them out.

It finally happened!

Sierra slept through the whole, entire, night!!!

I put her to bed at 9:30pm (still on Arizona time, I guess) and she was still sleeping at 7:30 this morning when Jason went to get her! (We had to close the door to protect ourselves from marauding cats and were worried we wouldn't hear her when she woke up) Whoo-hoo!!! Let's hope for many more of those!

The journey home: a series of close calls

When Monica asked me what time I needed to leave her house, I told her 5:00am, so I could be at the rental car place by 5:30 and in the airport terminal around 6 for our 7:10am flight. Someone that got all discombobulated in my mind and I set my alarm for 5:00am and was out the door shortly before 5:30. It wasn't until I got on the road that I realized that I had already wanted to be there! Yikes!

Don't worry. I remained calm. I didn't even speed (much). I called the rental car place and they assured me it wouldn't take long to check me out (it didn't). However, there was a bit of a wait for the shuttle to the terminal. (trying not to panic)

Thank goodness I had 1) already checked in and 2) only packed carry-on luggage. There was quite the crowd around the airline counter so I think that if I would have had to wait and check a bag I would have been sunk. Getting through security, thankfully, didn't take an extraordinarily long time, though they did have to look at my lunch individually because of a super dangerous fruit cup!

We got to the gate just as the plane was boarding. Phew! On the plane, ready to go, the pilot speaks over the intercom to let us know we are next in line to take off. A minute later, he comes back on to tell us we are heading back to the gate because of a fuel filter problem. "It will be about 10 minutes"

The next hour went something like this: "It will be about 10 minutes for the maintenance staff to check out the problem."
"It will be about 10 minutes for the maintenance staff to come back with a new fuel filter."
"It will be about 10 more minutes while they fix the part."

I had a pretty long lay-over (1 hour 40 minutes) but I was getting more and more nervous as it was an hour past when we were supposed to leave, then an hour and 15 minutes, then an hour and 25 minutes. We got in the air at 8:38.

Luckily, when we arrived at our connection, we were at Gate A13, and the next flight left at A19 so I didn't have to run all over the airport and jump on and off the train/people mover thing. I arrived at the gate and had literally 90 seconds before boarding began. Good think I packed a lot of snacks because there was absolutely no time to get anything at the airport.

Sierra was pretty good on both flights. She slept a little bit on each one, but the second flight she was definitely getting a little antsy. She squawked a little bit and wiggled and squirmed a lot, but we again had seats to ourselves, so it was okay (good thing she was relatively calm on the first flight because otherwise the guy next to us would have been kicked a lot more than he was!).

Jason arrived at the airport just as we did, so that worked out nicely and since we wouldn't arrive back at Woodberry in time for dinner, we had a family date. I really needed some real food after pretty much snacking all day! Sierra napped a little on the way home, and then didn't go to bed until 9:30, but that's okay; I anticipate it will take her a day or so to adjust back to Eastern time.

Doing and not doing

As Sierra and I prepare to head home tomorrow (well, as I prepare; Sierra just goes along with whatever at this point), I think our trip to Phoenix has been a good balance of "doing" and "not doing". While we've gotten out to see friends and have fun, we've also had plenty of time to just relax.

The last couple days I had to add the afternoons to the "not doing" category, but not by choice. It's been raining! In the desert! Who knew?! I suppose I'm glad it's raining for the sake of the people who live here, but I had hoped to visit one more park, Estrella Mountain, and do some more hiking before we went back to Virginia, but it just wasn't in the cards. Yesterday, it rained most of the day. I thought it was letting up in the afternoon, so I loaded Sierra up and headed toward the park. On the ride there, it started raining pretty hard again, so I just turned around and headed back to Mark and Monica's place. I thought that we might try again today, but even though the morning was pretty nice, there's been a steady rain since Sierra got up from her afternoon nap.

And why didn't we just go to the park in the morning? Sierra and I had a "date" with Kristi and Sydney. Kristi and I ran cross country together in college and Sydney is just 2 months older than Sierra. The last time they were together, they were just 3 and 5 months old, so needless to say, they were a lot more fun this time around.

We met at the Children's Museum of Phoenix. Kristi and her family are members there and they had a couple extra passes for Sierra and I, so we were happy to join them and grateful for the treat. The Children's Museum was such a fun place! Right after we entered, we spent some time shoving cloth balls into a series of tubes with suction through them so the balls get pulled through the tubes and flung out the top. Then the girls rode through a little play carwash and Kristi had a turn too, which was hilarious. Kristi is due with her second baby in just a couple weeks so it was really funny to see her riding a bike that was way too small for her pulling two toddlers. I offered to take over, but Sydney would have none of it!

There was a little play room with a short, fast slide, a tiny kitchen, stairs and bridges and little boxes at toddler height with fun objects in them like a bell or a bumpy ball. Then we headed to the store where there were tiny shopping carts and check out lines and shelves filled with items for the kids to "buy." Sierra wasn't into all that, but the store also had a big bin filled with lentils that had two scales above. Sierra and Sydney had a grand time scooping beans and spreading them around.

The next place we visited at all different types of ball mazes. Sort of like a marble run, but on a larger scale. There was a place to climb up and then you could put a ball in the top of the run and it would go all the way around the room. Next we spent some time in the noodles. No, not pasta. Those big, foam "pool noodles". There were tons of them suspended from the ceiling that the kids could walk through. On the other side was a big slab of rock and some pans of water so they could paint with water. Phew! Fun times!

We headed outside for lunch, and I actually think that is where Sierra and Sydney had the most fun of all. Yes, they definately enjoyed all the fun stuff in the museum, but it seems Sydney is as much of an outdoor baby as Sierra and they were running around, chasing pigeons and having a grand time.

Sierra fell asleep almost as soon as she was strapped into her carseat and since she slept for the 30 minutes drive back, I didn't think she would take a nap. I'm glad I was so wrong. She slept for another hour and I even got a nap myself. Hooray!

Race Report: Rock 'n' Roll Arizona 1/2 Marathon

First the stats for the 1/2 Marathon:
21,462 Finishers
13,490 were Female (considerably more females than males finished the 1/2 marathon. I wonder why this is. The marathon had more male finishers.)
2216 in my division (F 30-34)

My chip time was 1:42:16, an average pace of 7:48/mile over the course of the 13.1 mile race.

I finished 1123 overall (Top 5.23%), 250 out of the female finishers (Top 1.85%), and 45 in my division (Top 2.03%).

As I mentioned at the end of my previous post, I was undertrained for this race. I knew this going into the race and I mention it because even though I ran well, I can't help but compare this race with my new "A Standard," the Rockford 1/2 Marathon that I finished in 1:32:32 last May. The fact of the matter is that I simply didn't make training a priority this fall and winter. Additionally, I stopped lifting weights and I think that really affected my performance in the later miles.

I've alway heard that the most important night of sleep is two nights before an event. This is obviously because the night before you are nervous and sleep poorly. Unfortunately, Sierra did not sleep well two night before the race, which meant, neither did I. Sierra slept rather wonderfully the night previous to the race, but as expected, I did not. My alarm was set for 5am, but I didn't make it that long. I nursed Sierra around 4:30 and gave up and got out of bed shortly after that. After eating some breakfast, I headed out to the race finish to park my car.

Let me just say, the race organizers do not get a good grade in signage for parking. The roads around the finish were all blocked off and there was no way to turn to get to where the map said the parking was. I finally found a parking spot after driving around in circles for 20 or 30 minutes. Sheesh! Then, I got on a school bus with 48 other runners to ride to the start. How long has it been since I've been on a school bus?! My brain was clearly not all fired up yet as I pondered if the bus would drop us back of in the same place ... then I realized we would all be running back!

By the time I got to the start line the marathon had already started (they started at 7:40, the 1/2 began at 8:30). There was an exceedingly long line of port-a-potties and it still wasn't enough because I really had to pee and the line seemed to be taking for-ev-er. Seriously! What are some people doing in the port-a-potty that takes them so long?! I don't understand!

Then I headed over to the exceedingly long line of UPS trucks who were there to take our gear back to the finish line for us. It was chilly without my sweatshirt, but I knew that wouldn't last long. I was in the first starting corral because of my predicted finish line I walked past blocks and blocks of runners heading to the front of the line. It's really amazing to see 21,000+ people lined up in the middle of the street. It always seems a touch crazy to me when I wake up before dawn to go pound the pavement, but it makes me feel better when I see there are so many other crazies out there!

The weather was lovely for the race. Cool and sunny and never getting too hot. The race started in downtown Phoenix and ran east, through Scottsdales and ending up in Tempe on the campus of ASU. There were lots of mountain views to enjoy and only a couple gradual hills. I saw two girls running in fluffy tu-tus and I also saw at least two people cutting the course. They came out of parking lots or between buildings, cleary cutting corners and definately not cool. I mean, they were near me in the pack, so it's not like they were going to set any records. They're only cheating themselves. What's the point?

I started out running between 7:35-7:40 pace and I was feeling pretty good. I tried to stay relaxed and smooth in my stride. During mile 5 I walked through a water stop and ate an energy gel and ended up around 7:55. I missed several mile markers after that, but ran 31:27 for miles 6-10, so just over 7:50 pace for those miles. At 10 miles, there's just a 5K left and that's when I should have really been able to crank down and bring it home but naturally that's where I really felt my lack of time in the gym. The final 3 miles were all over 8:00, falling around 8:10-8:20. Even though I definately felt some fatigue in my legs and I knew I was falling off my pace, I was happy when I saw my time. I would call this race a success. I felt good through the majority of the race, finished well overall and ended up with my 3rd best 1/2 marathon time (out of 7, and edging out my St. Louis '06 time by just 4 seconds).

Full Days

We've been busy.

After a couple very low-key days when we arrived, we've been filling the weekend with lots of activity.

Friday, I wanted to get out away from houses and neighborhoods, so I suggested Monica and I take the girls to White Tank Mountain Regional Park, which is actually rather near Mark and Monica's house. Sierra and I took our trip to the local park in the morning and gave Monica some space and then that afternoon we headed out to the White Tanks and went on a couple short hikes. It was a really interesting place, unlike anything I've seen anywhere else I've been. That's what you get when you're in the desert, I suppose. The landscape is just so bizare in the context of what is "usual" for me. You look out toward these low mountains and the ground is scattered with those tall sanguaro cacti, those with the "arms" that I think most people think of when they picture a desert cactus. There were spiney trees and some other types of cacti as well and little chipmunks running about.

I saw a cactus that had little baby cactus balls all around it and the botanist in me supposed that it was a reproductive method. The cactus drops the mini cacti and they grow into big ones. I wanted to see if they were rooting into the ground so I very, very gingerly picked up one of the baby cacti. Yes, I know it's a cactus, and I hardly put any pressure on it when I picked it up (I just wanted to look!) but that sticker jammed right into my finger and I couldn't release my hand. Well, I of course didn't want to put any more pressure on the spines, so I used my other hand and grabbed the very base of the thing to pull it out. It worked but then I had a bunch of these little fiberglass like spines in the tips of two fingers. They came out pretty easily, but sheesh!!

As Monica and I walked around one of the trails, there were self-guided signed and I later learned that that tricky thing that got me was a teddy bear cholla cactus. Nice cuddly name, right? Ha! Not so much. Definately learned my lesson on that one!!

Saturday morning, Monica, Mark, Abbie, Sierra and I headed down to the Health and Fitness Expo for the race. Wow! Insanity! There were so many people there! It's a good thing we agreed on a time and place to meet because once we got in there, I didn't see Mark and Monica again for the entire time. I picked up my race packet and then Sierra and I wandered around the booths, checking out the vendors and sampling apples, energy bars, and Odwalls drinks. Good stuff.

Mark and Monica then dropped me off at the airport so I could pick up the rental car I'll have for the rest of the week. I didn't want to make Monica take me to the race at super-early-o'clock Sunday morning nor the airport at also-way-too-early-thirty when we leave. Picking up a rental car seems like a fairly straight-forward task so I have no idea why it took so insanely long. Consequently, I was late to our next activity and my cell phone batter died! Ugh! Luckily, I was able to call my friend Nicola with the very last bit of power that I had.

So rental car procured, car seat installed, Sierra and I headed to Tempe, near the campus of Arizona State where Nicola lives. We had a lunch at an Ethiopian place which was fantastic and I was really, really glad Nicola had suggested it as I had never had African food before then. So, Ethiopian food ...

We ordered two main dishes, a spicey beef and some creamy shrimp curry. Each came with 2 or 3 vegetable sides, we had a lentil something, collard greens (which surprised me how delicious it was), something with potato, and a few others. The distinguishing feature of Ethiopian food is that you do not eat it with silverwear. It comes with rolled up pieces of bread which you tear off and use to pick up bits of your meal. But the bread is not similar to bread that I'm used to. It's sort of like a really large flat pancake, very thin, but with a bit of a squishy or spongey texture. Sierra loved lunch too, especially dipping the bread into the creamy shrimp curry.

We then headed over to ASU and Nicola showed us around the campus. It was lovely and open and quiet with the students still away (they come back this week). We walked along the "palm walk" and went into the biology building to look at all the snakes. There are fruit trees all around campus and we picked kumquats and oranges off the trees and ate them right there. We wandered through the art museum where there were works by a couple different artists. I really enjoyed extra-large photo print-outs featuring life sized photographs of objects found by the artist on trail walks she's taken. We saw a building on campus designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and then Nicola took us to the "secret garden," which was a grassy area enclosed by buildings with banana trees and other trees and flowers. Sierra had a great time in there running from one end to the other and up the stairs and down. Nicola said Sierra is like a weeble-wooble; she looks like she is going to loose her balance and fall, and then she rights herself and keeps on running. Sierra chased the birds around the garden and we saw a humming bird.

We headed back to Nicola's place and Sierra met the cat, the guinea pig and Nicola's giant bunny, Chester. Sierra instantly sat down next to him, and patted him and then gave him a little kiss. When Chester decided that he no longer wanted to be near the 1-year-old and headed under the couch, Sierra went after him yelling, "Bunny! Bunny! BUNNY! BUNNN-NYYY!" We had some tee and got to Nicola and her hubby Jason's lovely yard and garden. More fruit trees. Nicola gave us some grapefruits which are wonderfully sweet and tender. You can eat them like an orange.

We headed back in time to have Monica's chicken parmesan, which was fantastic, though she insists it's really easy. Might have to try it myself ...

Sierra slept really well Saturday night, which would have been great since I had to be up early Sunday to head to the race, but I didn't sleep well. Figures. I finally just gave up and got out of bed a little before 5am. I left about 45 minutes later to head to ASU again, the finish line of the race, where I parked the car and then took a shuttle back to the start line. A little strange since most races I've done have the start and finsh lines in the same general area. This one started in downtown Phoenix and ended in Tempe near the Sun Devil stadium. I was in the first starting corral of the 1/2 marathon since my predicted time was 1:30:00 (I didn't run that fast!). The start was insane! There were so many people that the start was blocks and blocks long!!

Ryan Hall and Deena Kastor were both running the 1/2 marathon, and even though I didn't get a good look at them, it was cool to be running the same race with such famous American runners.

I was undertrained for this race, and I knew that going into it, but with that considered, I was happy with how things went. My benchmark race is the race I did last spring in Rockford, where at 8 miles, I felt great and really busted out some great times on those last five miles. This time around, my slower miles were in the end of the race, but I still ended up finishing in 1:42:something, under an 8:00/mile average. More on the race itself later.

Monica and Mark brought the girls down to the finish line and after we found each other, we tried to see if the entertainment was going on yet. It wasn't and we ended up getting stuck in the "family reunion area" because the race officials only had one tiny entrance/exit. We went to P.F. Chang's for lunch. I had never been, but it was really quite good. We had some chicken lettuce warps for an appetizer, and then Sierra and I had mandarin chicken with vegetable. Delicious. The sweetness of the mandarin balanced with a little spicy-ness.

After navigating our way through the roads around the race (HUGE pain) Mark and Monica finally made it back to drop me off at my car (well, a few blocks away since the road was closed) and we headed home. Late afternoon we headed to a plaza for some Cold Stone (mud pie mojo ... mmmmm) where there were two huge fountains that sprayed water up into the air from a ton of little spouts and the water movement was co-ordinated to music. Fun!

The opposite of overscheduled

Yesterday was another relaxing day with lots of time spent outside enjoying the Arizona winter weather. Monica tells me the summer is beyond miserable around here (and I believe her!) so now was definately the time to come.

This is just how a "winter break" should be. I haven't planned to be very busy (though there are a couple other friends I'm hoping/planning to see over the next several days) and I'm hoping to be refreshed and ready to head back to reality and winter by next Wenesday (though, truthfully, as far as winters go, Virginia is fairly mild compared to what I've been used to in the past).

Yesterday morning, Monica, Abbie, Sierra and I headed to a nearby park. Sierra had a great time. She's so funny, and so much fun lately. I can really see her developing into a "little girl" and it just seems so crazy that not all that long ago she was this tiny, immobile, completely dependent baby. Now she's running up the steps of the playground, sliding down the slide by herself, playing in the sand, climbing, jumping, chasing bubbles, giggling like crazy as I push on the swing and just generally being a very busy little girl.

All that running about wore Sierra out because she went down for a nap earlier than usual, which meant she went to bed earlier than usual, after a bath. Normally, she just has a bath every-other-night, but even though she had one the previous night, yesterday involved putting sand in her hair in the morning, then putting peanut butter in her hair in the afternoon, then putting pasta sauce in her hair at dinner.

Speaking of dinner, I subjected Mark and Monica to my cooking last night (and plan to do so again tonight). I'm so grateful that they are letting us stay with them for a week and buying and making a couple dinners is the least I can do. Last night was pasta with turkey meatballs and tonight will be chicken quesadillas. Good stuff.

Worth it

Yesterday, Sierra and I departed at 11:00am EST for our journey, which ended at midnight (10:00pm MST) ... phew!

First up: 90 minute car ride to the airport (thanks to Daddy/Jason for making the round trip to get us safely there and himself back home).

Step 2: Flight from DC to Dallas. This is not a short flight, though it was made more bearable by the fact that Sierra and I had a entire row of 3 seats to ourselves. Yes! There was a guy sitting there with us, but the flight wasn't full, so he went to sit with his buddy. Probably better because Sierra spent most of the flight squirm and sitting and standing and leaning and rolling and squirming and wiggling and ... well ... you get the idea. She finally fell asleep for about the last 45 minutes (maybe it was closer to an hour?).

Step 3: Three hour lay-over in Dallas. Gah! Three hour lay-over! With a toddler. Oh, wait ... 3.5 hour layover because our flight was delayed. Booooo! We managed though. First we had to walk through the airport then take the people tranporter/train thing to another station, then walk more ... phew! Finally found our gate and went to get something more substantial to than cheddar bunnies and fruit snacks. We sat across from a woman, who (I guess) must have looked similar to my mother because Sierra said "Hi Nana" to her. She confirmed that she was, indeed, a nana and seemed amused with Sierra. Then, when the woman left Sierra called out, "Nana! Nana! NANA!" Funny. Clearly, we need to see Sierra's nanas more frequently!

Step 4: Another long-ish flight from Dallas to Phoenix. But, lightning does strike twice! Again, we had an entire row of seats to ourselves! Sierra slept most of the flight, not surprising since we didn't leave until after 8:00pm "our time."

Step 5: Drive to Monica's place. Not to bad, really, once we figured out how to navigate out of the airport and get on the right road. I was in dire need of a snack by the time we got to Monica's place and got to sample her home-made pizza. Wonderful! Then, to bed!

Not surprisingly, Sierra was up at 5:15am because of the time change (ugh!). I managed to coax her back to sleep by letting her nurse on and off for the next hour, but she finally went back to sleep.

But the long trip, and the crazy first night of sleep was totally worth it to be in Phoenix in January. This is the time to be here; it's lovely. We went to the park today with the girls (Monica has a daughter 11 months younger than Sierra) and Sierra had an awesome time on the slide. I started out going down with her, but she was too quick for me once and went down by herself. She's so little and the slide was steep enough that it just flung her off the bottom onto the ground. The ground is squishy, and though she looked shocked, she got right back up to do it again.

Back at Mark and Monica's, Abbie napped, then we had lunch, then Sierra napped, then Abbie had lunch ... two little ones on different schedules take up a lot of time napping in the afternoon. We managed a quick outing before Abbie's afternoon nap and then Sierra and I played outside while she slept. I went for a run with Mark this evening, which was fantastic. Such a nice change from the 20-30 degree weather I've been running in in Virginia! Probably a good idea to get myself acclimated before my race this weekend anyway.

I think Sierra has already adjusted to the time change because she went to sleep at a "normal" time this evening ... now, if she'll just stay asleep, we'll call it more-than-great day!

Good cold fun

I have some things to say ... Christmas, the trip home, a rather uneventful New Years, some other stuff ... but I'm tired and it's past 11 so, for now ... my little cutie enjoying the last of the 18-inches-or-snow that we completely missed!!