Thanksgiving 2008

The morning was cold and as the boys and I were preparing for our second annual family 5K at the Charlottesville Track Club Turkey Trot held at the beautiful Boar’s Head Inn, the thermometer was reading a hearty 28 degrees.  We dressed a little warmly, knowing that while it was cold, the course is extremely challenging due to its big hills and we would quickly warm up.  Last year’s race was my first hill run and it cost me about 5 minutes added to my typically slow time for a 5K!   Here we are getting ready to go.

Tristan loves his ipod and new cap.

Yes that is a nascent mustache on Jamie.  Yikes!

  Me with my ski headband on to protect my frozen ears!

It was a beautiful day despite the initial cold.  This 5K is a family affair, and we ran into a number of families we knew.  Tristan set out to run with his 4th grade buddies, and Jamie was reluctantly going to run with them “to avoid being bored running out front all by myself.”   I was hoping to keep them in sight, but last year they’d beat me by 9 minutes (Jamie) and 5 minutes (Tristan).  The gun went off, we all took off, and I could see J’s LSU Santa cap way ahead!  I trotted up to catch up but didn’t catch Tristan til about a mile.  when he’d pulled over with a stomach cramp.  I had to pull him, uphill, for about the next mile, so I gave up on beating last year’s time.   Still it was fun to be together and when we got to the 2 mile mark, when the rest of the race is downhill or flat, he took off and I could never catch him.  Again, I brought up the rear lagging him by about 4 minutes.  I beat last year’s time by about 20 seconds.  This year the course was reversed, so that after 1/2 mile, the course is uphill until the 2 mile point–wow was that painful! 

Later we all relaxed, I cooked, and here’s a peaceful moment or two in parenting history as the boys played backyard sports/baseball on the computer and watched a little TV.  Check out J’s short haircut.  He wanted this, volunteered to get rid of the rock star hair, and is still wildly popular with the girls.  T has a beautiful smile but braces are in his future too!

It was a lovely and quiet Holiday….some of my favorite moments were my phone conversations with loved ones, and a nice relaxed talk with my mom while the boys played quietly on the computer.

November 2008 highlights

Crazily, our research group decided very late to go for a large multifaceted grant application, and I had a few of the beleaguered participants over for a little respite November 9th. 

 Your hostess for the evening 

     Tim and the lovely Heather    

  Brad, Posie, and Michelle

I also had Maya one weekend and she and the boys had lots of fun, although she was excluded from fort building for obvious reasons!

Tristan, Mr. Recycle, eating ice cream in November!

 

Maya and chocolate ice cream bar

 

Fort building near our house

 I also worked quite a bit on two book chapters this month, but not enough….   The month seemed oddly brief and then we slammed into Thanksgiving! 

Grant writing essentially took over our lives for about 5 weeks, so everything else I was to have finished before the new year took a backseat and I’m paying for it now in workload overload!