'Twas The Night Before Christmas

We celebrated Christmas Eve with the kids giving each other their gifts.  They draw names every year to see who is giving to who. 

Here's how it ended up this year (I almost need a spreadsheet to keep up with it every year!).  Austin picked Lauren and gave her a Webkinz penguin.

Mackenzie drew Nick's name and bought him a Domo.

Lauren got Tech Decks for Austin.

And Nick bought Mackenzie a Puffle.

Somehow I got a present, too.  Even though our trip to Hawaii was supposed to be our only present.  But I got an A&M hook from Marty.  Gig 'em!

And then Marty made cookies for Santa.  Actually we only left Santa two and we all ate the rest.  :)

Now we're headed up to watch a Christmas show or two and then settle in for a long winters' nap.  Merry Christmas to all!  And here's my favorite Christmas carol ... Little Drummer Boy.  This is a good version sung by Bing Crosby and David Bowie.

'Tis the season for Christmas concerts!

What a wonderful time of year!  All of the kids have worked hard on their programs and we got to see them all perform.  And the great news for you is that I took lots of video!  I KNOW you're excited about that.  So I'll just go in chronological order.

Tuesday, December 1st

Lauren and Mackenzie and the entire 4th grade perform "Crazy Carols."

Saturday, December 5th

Nick plays in the All-Region Band Christmas concert.

We are so proud of Nick for his accomplishments in band this year.  Not only is he 1st chair clarinet in Honors Band at his school, but he also auditioned for and made all-district and all-region!  I snuck up by the stage and took his picture before most of the other kids took their seats.  And I also snapped one of the other kids while we waited for the performance to start and Daddy was in the lobby buying a t-shirt for Nick.

And we took some pictures of the man of the hour with me and Marty and his brothers.  (Lauren had already headed out to  friend's house as usual.)  I was kinda dorky and wore clothes that matched Nick's. But I guess that's just what band moms do!

Friday, December 11th

6:00pm:  Austin performs his school band concert.

7:15pm:  Nick performs his school band concert.

Austin plays the euphonium.  I know ... I had never heard of it either.  It's like a small tuba.  It's in the low brass family.  Austin has fun playing it.  But it's a pain for him to lug back and forth to school on the bus because it's so big.

I took two videos so you could hear just the low brass instruments and then the full band.  The low brass section is in the back of the band so you can't really see Austin at all.

And now for Nick's concert.  Since it was in the same gym as Austin's concert, we snagged seats in the front row when the other band parents left so we got to sit right in front of Nick.  Pretty cool!

Well that's it!  I hope you enjoy the performances!  No music video for you today because there is nothing better than hearing my kids perform!!  :D

Half Marathon

I ran my first-ever race on November 1st.  I'm training for a marathon and wanted to see what a race was like so I decided a half would be good practice.  It was and I learned a lot of things that will and won't work for the marathon.  And most of all, I found out that races are a lot of fun ... and they make me push myself harder than I do in regular training runs.  Not sure if that is a good or bad thing.  But I knew my normal pace so before the race I decided that I would be happy with anything under 2 hours, 30 minutes and if I could get 2:15, I would be super-excited!

The first piece of advice anyone always gives you in a long race is to start slow so you don't wear yourself out and you'll have enough energy to finish strong. Well I knew this was true but I also didn't want to go too slow.  It was a race after all!  But I really had no choice but to go slow the first mile.  It's really crowded at the starting line and you have to kind of wait for the crowd to thin out and that took a good half mile.  So when I finished the first mile at a 10:36 pace I was a little nervous. But things picked up and everything went well.  Here are some pictures from the day.

I woke up at about 4am and drove over to my mom's house.  She took a picture of me with my bib number on.

Then my mom and stepdad drove me to the train station.  The train arrived at about 5:45am.

I got on way in South Dallas and had to go all the way through downtown so I was on the train awhile.  Got bored and took a picture of the timing chip in my shoe.  :)

Finally arrived at the train station and then got on a bus that took me to the race.  It was cold and I was worried that I would freeze during the race but once the sun came out it started warming up.  Lines for the port-o-potties were really long.  After I waited through that I looked around some of the vendor tents while I waited for racetime.

Finally it was time to head to the starting line.  The amount of people was pretty amazing.  And I stopped thinking about how cold I was.

Everything went well.  I ran the race and I finished a lot faster than I thought I could.  Probably a little too fast because I was really having trouble maintaining my pace the last 2 miles.  Was awful!  But here is my unofficial time (official time ended up being 3 seconds faster).

And after the race I walked over to see my family.  I was so glad they had come out!  After we left, we went to one of my favorite Mexican restaurants.  It was a good day!

And now I'm just ready to run my marathon this Sunday.  Seems like I've been training forever.  I went on my last training run this morning so no more running before the race.  Seems so weird!

And how about some running music.  Here is my absolute favorite song to run to.  Marilyn Manson: The Beautiful People.  (How strange that I have played MM two posts in a row.)

Halloween Fun!

Told ya I was going to have to play catch up! So here we go. I'm taking you back to October 31st. I wasn't sure if all of the kids would still want to dress up this year because they are getting older but they did. Here are my kids plus two extras that went trick-or-treating with us. Mine are the first 4 in the front row. Left to right: Austin is an Emo Kid (notice the "cutting" scars on his arms ... nice!), Mackenzie is Jason, Nick is the guy from Scream and Lauren is a devil witch. What happened to the cute costumes they used to wear?

And here's just our family.  Lauren's friend took the picture for us and this is the best one we got.  It's a little blurry.  I was dressed as a Little Gym football player.  So original (same costume as last year).  But I was sad because I couldn't find my tattoo sleeve and that totally completed the outfit.  Marty decided to dress as Marty this year.  :D  He was probably the only smart one of the bunch!

We trick-or-treated around the neighborhood.  And then we got to the spooky house with the coffin.  The kids loved it!  But Austin was a little scared of it.  I took a quick video ... "Don't be greedy now!"  Cracks me up!

After I shot the video, the guy that owned the house insisted that we all get in the coffin so he could take our picture (Austin opted to not get in so I took a different picture of him).

And then we went home and the kids sorted their candy.  It's funny because none of them really love candy that much (Nick doesn't even like it at all except the suckers) but they love to get as much as they can!

And then they all had a bath.  I had to take off Lauren and Austin's make-up which was difficult.  Then I also had to help Lauren wash her hair.  She made me take a picture of the bath water when she was done.  She had a LOT of red color in her hair!

And we need some music to finish this.  Here's a good one - Marilyn Manson: This Is Halloween.

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas!

Whoa!  I think this may be a record for longest time between blog posts.  Sooo ... I guess I'll start with the most recent stuff first then try to catch you up over the next week or so on what's been going on over the last 3 months since I've blogged.

Yesterday we dragged everything out of the attic and decorated the house.  I decided that I wanted to put the tree in the living room this year instead of by the stairs.  I thought it seemed more cozy and you could see it from the street.  In theory, this doesn't seem like a big deal.  However, the living room just was not arranged for a tree to fit by the window so I ended up moving all of the furniture around and hauling the rocking chair up to the attic.  It turned into an all-day endeavor.  But I am so happy with the end result.

The kids get so excited about decorating the tree.  However, it was a challenge because we had to round them up before we could put the ornaments on the tree.  Nick and Austin were here but Lauren and Mackenzie were both at a friend's house.  But at about 4pm, we found everyone and all had fun putting the ornaments on as a family.  Here are some pictures of our day.  Austin and Nick helped spread the branches on the tree.

Ugh!  Look at all of those boxes that need to be unloaded (and that's not all of them!).  And all I'm thinking as we're unpacking the boxes is that in a few weeks we're gonna have to pack everything back up.  I'm somewhat of a Christmas scrooge that way.

But now on to the fun stuff!  This is my favorite part every year ... the kids putting on the ornaments.  My job is to take the ornaments out of their boxes and the kids line up and I hand them an ornament.  Marty helps them with the glass or heavy ones.  It's fun!

Here's the line-up from my perspective.  These kids are very impatient!  I can't get the ornaments out of the box fast enough!  They're like a swarm!!!

And here are some action shots!  (That's Nick first and Austin second.)

Ta da!  All done.  Here's my super cool family by the tree.

Oh we need some music.  How about Kenny Chesney: All I Want For Christmas Is A Real Good Tan.  (Did I mention that we're headed to Hawaii the week before Christmas?  :)