Give them wings to fly

This weekend has been a nice long one.  And we took full advantage of the kids being off school all week.  For Thanksgiving, we decided to make an entire turkey instead of just the turkey breast that we had discussed, after we saw the very cheap prices for whole birds! (50 cents a pound??  Sold!)  I have made several whole turkeys before, but this year I decided to be super simple with no stuffing inside, brining, fresh herbs or anything of that other “fancy” stuff I saw on Pinterest.  Guess what?  My family said it was my best turkey yet!!  Yep, I just smothered it with butter and a few spices I had in my kitchen following the recipe on the oven bag website.  I’ll definitely do that again.

On Friday we did not go shopping.  We decorated the house for Christmas, which leaves us with two days of boxes and tubs stacked around.  To take a break from the craziness of decorating, we had some exercise – trampolining!  We went to a local indoor trampoline park and spent an hour jumping.  It was awesome as usual and my husband and I got into the fun.  My husband and I even did flips on our trampolines!  Good times!!  We worked up quite a sweat, which was good because we had a lot of Thanksgiving dinner leftovers to consume still 🙂

Friday night we indulged in some holiday arts and tradition and went to a performance of the Nutcracker.  The theater we went to is really old, and every seat is good.  It was especially fun this year because both of my kids knew classmates who were performing.

Saturday morning we rolled out of bed in pain.  Whoa!  – who would have thought all of that jumping could make our whole body ache like that!!!!  That would explain why we were the only 40+ year olds who were trying to master flips.  Too funny!!  We got the rest of the decorations put up and cleaned up the house.  Ah, peace on Earth again.  Or at least in my great room!  We have had to pull our kitten out of the tree several times now.  Naughty kitten!!!

Saturday night was another annual tradition for us – the Holiday Hustle 5K.  Each year we come up with something a little different to decorate ourselves with.  This year I stuck a huge stocking on my front in addition to our super bright lights.  I love those lights!  The picture doesn’t really convey how bright they are.  Don’t ask me why my husband has that huge stocking…

At the start line we discussed just running together as a family, but that quickly fell apart as we were separated after the gun went off.  I ended up running with Sydney, and Alan was with Zachary.

Sydney and I were keeping up a pretty good pace, which I could only tell by feel because my Garmin was all whacked out!!  On the way to the race, the band popped off in the car.  Nothing major, just the pin that holds the watch to the band, and that has happened before.  But as I was putting it back together, I pressed the buttons on it and I heard it beep several times.  That somehow made the touch screen locked and it wouldn’t take my responses!  Ever since we got back from that summer trip to Punta Cana, the touch screen has not worked properly.  It was in my suitcase all day with a damp watchband and it messed up the touch screen functionality.  I have to get the watch to a screen that says “Shut down?” “Yes” “No” and then press No to make the watch start up.  Well, now I could not answer yes or no, so I had to look at that screen for the entire race.  Oddly, the functionality still worked on it, and it tracked my run, but I had no idea what the distance was, or my pace.  Pretty worthless.  Boo!!!

Sydney did inform me periodicaly of our pace.  Around 1.5 miles I assessed the situation.  I was running pretty hard and panting, (as one does in a 5K race!), but I noticed my daughter was just cruising.  I told her – “This is pretty easy for you, isn’t it?  I won’t be mad at all if you want to go ahead.  Go on!”  She replied – “yeah, it is pretty easy.  I’ll just run my own pace.”  And with that she was off.  She had lights around her waist so I could see her slowly weaving through the people ahead of us, and making her way on at her faster pace.  Within less than half a mile I had lost sight of her.  It was a defining moment for me.  My daughter had become the runner I’d always hoped she would be.  Powerfully running faster than me, which is how it should be.  My Jr High cross country star *should* be able to run faster than her 47 year old mom.  She was flying on those wings we gave her 🙂  Proud Mommy moment!!

Around mile 2 I was wishing I had some tunes to give me some energy, but the cheers from the crowd kept me entertained (“Nice lights!!!!”).  Around 3 miles we turned down the main street of our town which was newly lit up with Christmas lights all along our finish.  My time: 25:44.  Not too bad!  Sydney finished in 25:13, good enough to get her 4th place in her age group!  My son and husband finished together in 29:43 and 29:44 (finish line sprint from Zachary!).

I’m getting a little irked every time I see a “25” in front of my 5K time now, because I really want to get under 25 mins again!  I did it once in the Spring, but that was it.  On a positive note, without knowing my paces I did actually end up running this race with negative splits!  Woohoo to that!

My kids decided we should enter the “most illuminated” contest, so we got up on stage after the race.  Not surprising, we didn’t win!  But it was fun.

[Wow, that was a long post.  Glad you made it to the end!!!!]

**********************************************************

Q: Did you make a turkey for Thanksgiving – or were in charge of something else?

When we first got married I was always in charge of bringing a veggie tray.  My family had no idea I had skills obviously!!

Q: Have you ever run a race in a costume, and was it longer than a 5K?

Q: Have you decorated for Christmas?  Real tree or artificial?

Always artificial now.  We used to have a real one every year, but between the cat knocking the watering system over, and me getting a rash from the pine needles scratching and prickling me during decoration time, I gave up on that!!