The Holiday Season Is Officially Underway

We are now 100% in the swing of things with the holidays. 

Yesterday we went to see Santa and made our gingerbread house. Today we woke up to a dusting of snow, I ran my Jingle Bell race on the beach, we went to get our Christmas tree, went to a tree lighting and fireworks show, and then out to dinner. 

It was an action-packed weekend, for sure. 

I'll have more to say about the race tomorrow, but the short version is that it really kind of sucked. I'd have to say that it was the least fun I've had at a race in a long, long time. It was nearly high tide, so there was very little hard packed sand to run on, and I'm fairly certain that the tide was still coming in, so in addition to weaving all over the place in search of good sand to run on, we were also dodging waves. And it was also really windy. 

At mile 2, I just wanted to be done. My time was 26:14 - the slowest 5k I've run in over a year, and a full 2 minutes slower than I ran the same race last year. I still managed to place third in my age group, but it was one of my worst race performances in a long time. 

But when I checked the results, I saw that the top finishers also ran about a full minute slower this year, so it definitely wasn't just me. It was a tough race.

The rest of the afternoon was fabulous, though. We picked out our tree - our selection was made VERY quickly, as the temperature has been steadily dropping and the wind has been steadily picking up throughout the day, so by the time we got there, it was getting pretty miserable. But we ended up with a great-looking tree. 

And from there we headed right over to the tree lighting, and got there only about 5 minutes before it started, which turned out to be a really good thing, since it was getting colder and windier by the minute. We bundled the boys up in the stroller and covered them with a big fleece blanket, and they seemed to be warm enough, but Scott and I were freezing!  

It was a really fun event, though. The tree was lit, and the fireworks started, and the boys were completely enthralled. 

We quickly got ourselves back to the car, and then took them out to dinner at a Japanese restaurant, and they loved watching the chef cook right in front of us. They both also did an amazing job eating their chicken tempura with chopsticks. I honestly don't know if I've ever seen Gabe exhibit as much patience with anything as he had with those chopsticks. 

And I know I've never seen Dante eat so slowly. I think maybe we should have them eat with chopsticks more often! 

Comments

[Julie Sayban]

The boys look so cold... and I'm complaining about the low in the 50's... which really is cold for us as our bodies are still used to the hundreds plus from summer.

PS - I love the new pic of the boys hugging on your sidebar.

Juls

[Wes]

Two little bundles of joy :-) LOL...

[shawn]

Darn...I missed that race...ha.
I am doing a 10k in Hyannis in February...now thats going to be cold!!!!!!!