Happy Thanksgiving!!!

 

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Getting Ready :)

I love, love, love the holiday season. I am super-excited for all the plans we have to see friends and family - And I'm really pumped that we won't have to drive across the country to do so! So I was looking ahead to plans and the calendar and noticed Dec 1 is right after Thanksgiving. I mean, right after. Last year, I started the 25 days of Christmas activities and we had a lot of fun. But I knew I'd have to have all my ducks in a row if I was going to be ready to start on Dec 1 this year, especially with its close proximity to Thanksgiving, and also considering the fact I refuse to start Christmas celebrations before Thanksgiving. So I finished prepping our 25 activities today. Can't wait!!!!

 

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Some randoms...

I got the rest of the leaves raked this week at my parents lake house. It only took 11 hours... You can't really tell just how large this pile actually is.

Deer season is kinda a big deal around here!

Lindy just fell asleep while playing for the first time this week.

Cayle discovered the joy of headphones.

 

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Donut Thursday

I'm enjoying having a quality donut shop in town to enjoy with the kids. Daylight Donuts. We go once a week usually. The 2 ladies in there love Cayle and Lindy! And Cayle loves chatting with them and picking out a different donut every week. His current fave is cake with "sparkles" and Lindy likes donut holes or plain glazed? Maple long johns for me!

We enjoyed 3 of the 3,000 donuts they made that morning...

 

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First Illini game for the Kids

Sunday we took the kids to their first Illinois basketball game. The weather and tornadoes tried to prevent us from making the hour drive to Champaign, but luckily we still had plenty of time. It was however one of the more white knuckle drives I've experienced in IL because of the strength of the side wind. It was literally blowing over semis and campers in front of us. Crazy! Natalie compared it to driving over the Colorado passes in a blizzard... Pretty close. I said the only thing that would have made it more fun was if there was ice or snow on the road...

We were able to score a great deal on tickets by enrolling Cayle and Lindy in the Illini kids club. They are both now members till 8th grade and will get into 1 free men's basketball game each year and with the exception of football and basketball will get into every Varsity sport for free. They also get a t-shirt and an Illinois ID card. For the games that they get free tickets, we get $10 tickets.

 Cayle talks about coaching Illini basketball daily, so we knew this was going to be a big deal for him. I don't think we fully expected the result though. Once we were seated he kind of went into a trance for about 10 minutes or so. He was just staring at the court. After he came out of that trance he would yell "Go Illini, you are winning!" as loud as he could whenever they scored a basket... usually whenever the crowd around us was quiet... He loved it! Lindy on the other hand I don't think got as much out of it. She's not a fan of sitting still... :-)

Jr High Dance

There was a 7th/8th grade dance tonight at school.  I was gone last night for a basketball game and had missed some time with Cayle, so I thought he might enjoy going to the dance with me tonight.  He danced pretty hard for about 30 minutes, then his moves started getting a little slower, until he was finally just lying on the gym floor.  Then, he wanted me to hold him, and shortly thereafter he asked to go home and go to bed.  Here's some of his early dance moves :)   

Cayle Ride in the Park

ILL-INI

 Friday my brother scored some free tix to the Illini season opener! It wasn't a very close game, as the early ones usually aren't. It was just so awesome to be able to be at a game after just watching on TV for the past like 10 years. This was only the 2nd game I've ever been too, but plan on attending many more. I love college basketball and definitely enjoyed the game! I really want to take Cayle to a game. He would love it! The team is so young, it could be a trying year, but there is a ton of potential for future years!

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Relaxing Saturday

 

 

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Turkey Trot 5k

I was happy with my time (22:30ish) considering I've been running a week, had both kids, and hilly course. I also won a turkey in the raffle!

Natalie also ran and did an amazing job! Setting examples for our kids as to how important exercise is. Cayle ran in the parking lot after so he could get his exercise :-) It was a perfect fall day for it and now we have a turkey to take along to Natalie's parents for Thanksgiving!

 

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On the Slide

About 2 years ago, I read an article in a parenting magazine of some sort, and the article stated the most frequent playground injury occurs when parents go down a slide with their child. Ever since then, I have been an advocate for slide safety and will not allow our kids to go down the slide with Nick or I. Nick has always mocked this idea and I'm pretty sure he doesn't keep my safety standards when I'm not around.
This past Friday, Nick and the kids picked me up from school and we had a picnic lunch at a park by the school. I gave in to Nick's peer pressure and agreed to ride down the slide with Lindy. I sat at the top for quite a while and tucked her legs in the best way I could figure out how so that she did not become another playground injury statistic.

The 1.5 second ride went well, and a good time was had by all. Except me - I was terrified (see picture for evidence). Also, please note how Lindy's left leg ended up. This is why you should not go down the slide with your child :)

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Start of The BT Epic.

Crazy how many bike riders there are!

Fall!

Man I've missed fall in the Midwest! In Colorado, fall is just so short! Beautiful, with some of the most amazing drives on earth, but only really lasts a few weeks. Starts getting cool, leaves change, then it's consistently very cold and snowing. I don't miss that! Here it started about beginning to mid October, and will last a few more weeks yet. We are just now getting down below freezing at night. Leaves are still changing and falling. It's an amazing time of year here! The best!

 

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Off season?

My schedule was different this year. Started riding/training in February like normal, but really kept it going through October for the Berryman mountain bike race. I had several breaks in that time period, but it was a very long season! By the time my last race was completed, I was just ready to get off the bike and stay off the bike! No more structured training!!!

Eat what I want, when I want! Lay on the couch. Have Ice Cream. Doritos. Candy. High Fructose Corn Syrup. Ice Cream. Pizza. Ice Cream. All the things I don't allow myself to have when training and trying to make race weight. I really went crazy!

Normally (the last 5 years) after I finish my last race at the end of August, I would begin running for a month or so, to train for the Eagle Valley X-country 5k, then kind of have some down time. This year was different since my season went longer. I did nothing for 1 week. By the time day 4 of doing nothing rolled around, I was already itching to start doing something. To begin eating better, but I kind of "forced" myself to go at least 1 week.

I have now started running a few days a week. I want to run every day, but don't want to get burnt out, or feel too structured. I'll run for a few weeks, then start plyometrics, get some other cross training with indoor soccer or basketball or something.

I'll get back on the bike a couple days a week soon, I already got the itch. Just no structure. Ride if I want, no intervals. It's so important mentally for me to have at least a few months with that lack of structure. Been walking a lot so that Cayle can ride his bike around the park next to our house. He wants to ride every day! Go figure... He say's "Dad what day is it?" Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, etc. He say's, "Oh! I like to ride my bike on ______!" I say oh, ok, lets go for a ride then. :-)

The one thing I've kind of promised myself this off season is to try to not gain weight like I have in the past. I will allow myself about 8-10 pounds, but the last few years I have finished the season weighing about 162, and then by January I'm at 178... 16 pounds is hard to lose in a few months! It never happens as quickly as I'd like it to...

After eating like crap for a week and being bloated every day and night, and doing no exercise, I have an extremely difficult time understanding how people let themselves go so far as to find this normal/desired behavior??? It just doesn't make me feel good.

 

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Jack-o-lanterns

And I don't have a pic of Natalie's, but it had 3 wiener dogs on it.

 

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