Christmas 2010

We had a great Christmas this year.  We started out with just our family in the morning opening presents and spending time together.  In terms of gifts there were a few highlights…

Dave got a new favorite hoodie and a hat that says “the boss”

Jen got some chocolates

Andrew got a much wanted Wah Wah pedal for his guitar:

And Brianna got a new iPod

Andrew got some skinny jeans for Christmas, but they were too skinny.

Later on in the day we went to Annie and Chris’ house and had a great time hanging out with their family.  They had a Kinect with a dance game.  The kids were hilarious with it.

Best Christmas Decorating Ever

We had just about as much fun decorating for Christmas this year as we ever have.  It was a ton of fun. 

We went with a live tree again this year, but a little bit smaller than we have in years past.

The kids were a lot of help, now that they’re entering teen ages they can be a lot more participative and the tree went up in no time.

Every year we take a family picture in front of the tree.  This year as we were getting one of the shots going I didn’t quite make it back to the tree in time for the timer and we got a pretty funny picture of my butt.

Luckily, we kept at it and got to a good shot. 

Thanksgiving 2010

Okay, so it’s been a year since I’ve posted anything here.  It’s understandable when I think about it because it’s been a crazy year.  This year I was busy working on the smart meter project at PGE.  I went back to college to begin the process of finishing my bachelor’s degree – I took 8 classes and was on the dean’s list 3 times, albeit at a community college, but still…  Kids got older and life generally zoomed by. 

For a year I also had the pleasure of no publishing dozens of spam comments to the blog.  Thanks to all those who showed interest and I apologize that I couldn’t accommodate more information about hot stock tips, commerce in foreign countries, or viagra, which I hear is great. 

I thought it was appropriate that a year later I follow up my last post, which was about Thanksgiving 2009, with a post about Thanksgiving 2010.

Similar to last year, we spent the holiday with Jen’s sister Annie and her family – Chris and Jasmine.  This year they came over to our house.  Overall it was a very laid back time, with a minimum of fuss.  We forgot that football games were even on.  Instead, we had a nice dinner and talked a lot.  After dinner we watched “Eight Crazy Nights” by Adam Sandler, which is borderline appropriate for kids.  While we were watching the movie Andrew got out every lego he owned and went to town with Chris making all kinds of things.

Thanksgiving '09

For Thanksgiving this year we spent the evening with Jen's sister Annie, her boyfriend Chris, and his mom Rhonda.  We had a great meal, we brought salmon for me and made mashed potatoes, apple pie, green bean casserole, and we brought hummus and crackers.  Annie took care of the turkey, which was gigantic, and made pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, and salad.  I'm sure there was more, but that's what I can remember right now.  The kids enjoyed themselves and it was great for everyone to have a chance to hang out.

 

The next day we went to Fort Stevens for some yurt camping.  We brought along Annie's daughter Jasmine and Andrew's friend Frank.  The first night we got ourselves warm in the yurt and watched a movie.  Saturday we went swimming at the Astoria Aquatic Center and the kids played a lot of tag with glowsticks we bought them.  Sunday we went to the Peter Iresdale shipwreck and stopped by the outlet mall at Seaside.  We had a great time and the kids did a great job.

 

The yurts typically have a set of bunk beds and a futon.  The kids slept on the bunk beds and we tried the futon.  Turns out that because of the way it gets folded up it had a huge ridge down the middle that made it impossible to sleep on.  The second night we folded it into a couch and slept a lot better.

Non-Working Sundays

I've gotten into a terrible habit of working over the weekend during the last few months and I'm trying to break myself of it.  Originally I was just trying to get a jump on the week but unfortunately I started to add work into that time-slot and as time went on it just ended up being a way that I could increase the time I had available to work.  Well, no more.

The only problem is that since I decided to stop working during the weekends I feel guilty Sunday nights, when I feel like I should be panicking.  So I've decided that instead I'm going to try to get into the habit of updating the blog and keeping in touch with my friends & family.

In terms of running I'm trying something a little different now.  My friend Adam let me borrow a book called Daniels' Running Formula.  Prior to this I'd been doing training off of Hal Higdon's website, but I'd like to increase my speed and I wasn't finding that simply jumping up from Novice programs to intermediate programs was really doing anything for me.  What I really hated was the speedwork in the Higdon program.

The great thing about the Daniels book is that he talks a lot about the physiological aspects of running, such as how the body systems respond to different training and why runners do different kinds of training.  He explains some running concepts that someone like me, who came to running as an adult, wouldn't have had an opportunity to learn.

With the help of the book I've identified that the purpose of my training now should be to be to build a base of weekly mileage that will help me get my cardiovascular systems improved and avoid injury later down the line when I start doing more challenging workouts.  At the moment I'm running about 16 miles per week.  I run 5 times a week, with a long run of 4 miles on Sunday and 3 mile runs Tues, Wed, Thurs, and Sat.  I'll be doing this for the next two weeks, after which I'll increase my mileage.  I've started to suss out my plan here if you're interested.

As far as Halloween goes the kids were both with their other parents this weekend so yesterday Jen and I headed down to the beach to have a date night.  We brought our new/old little dog Jack along with us and he was absolutely adorable on the beach - so cute.

We decided to spoil the dogs and picked up a bounty for them at Petco on the way home.  I am now officially the kind of person who has a dog that needs a coat.  And I don't care at all.

Christmas Tree Decorating

It's been almost two weeks ago now since we put up the Christmas tree, but I just now have a chance to share some of the pics.  We got a really great tree this year from a new favorite on Fremont St.  It's a family owned business that's super-friendly.  They have this device where you can put the stump of the tree into a shaker that gets all of the rain off the tree before you load it up to come home (a must have for Portland).   Once all the rain was off the tree they put it through a binder for you before you're ready to go.

Here's a shot of us with the tree pre-decoration:

 

As usual, Andrew helped me string the lights on the tree:

 

And the finished product:

As kind of a neat aside you can check out our Christmas tree pics from last year to see how much the kids have grown (and how much weight I've lost).

Thanksgiving

Well, Happy Turkey Day Everyone!

We had a great time - it was a small laid-back deal with just our
family and our friend Heather, who also spent Thanksgiving with us last
year.

The menu was:

• Salmon with creamy garlic sauce
• Roasted Potatos with fresh rosemary, garlic and olive oil
• Challah Bread (from our friend Gail)
• Green Bean Casserole
• Creamed Corn
• Salad
• Numerous Appetizers
• Snow White Cake with Cranberry filling
• Apple Pie

As usual, we went around the table and shared what we were thankful
for.  For Brianna it was: Family, Jen and I (for cooking good
food), and her pets.  For Andrew it was: Family, leftovers,
and his legos.  For Jen it was: Family, good food, and
friendships.  For Dave it was: family, not getting injured
during Marathon training, and our pets.

Halloween '08

We've had a bit of a tradition going on for the last few years where we head over to the Sauvie Island and pay a visit to the pumpkin patch.  It's quite well known and well attended in Portland.  They've got hay-rides, pumpkins, a corn maze, a haystack, and etc. 

Brianna was really happy about her pumpkin.

Andrew and Brianna playing on the haystack.

They have this thing called the cow ride that's pulled around by a tractor.  The kids were very impressed.

After Sauvie Island we carved pumpkins.

Andrew, Jen, and Brianna with the final result.

  

On the big day our friends Keagan and Kai came over to join us trick-or-treating.

Of course, we got a great haul candy-wise.  I've been trying hard to make sure I don't eat more of the candy than the kids do.  :)

White Christmas

I know it was a couple of weeks ago, but I wanted to mention that here in Portland we got a great Christmas gift - snow!  For those of you reading this from east of here that doesn't seem like a very big deal, but it only snows here once or twice a year - and usually just a tiny dusting.  Getting snow on Christmas was magical.

Here's a pic of our back yard:

 

And the front yard:

Of course, we had to get out there with some of the new gifts.  For Christmas Brianna got a scooter and Andrew got a ramp for his BMX bike so we headed out into the snow.

Also Andrew got some cool spikes to put in his helmet.

Of course, I'm no stranger to the scooter-jump myself.

Thanksgiving '07

We had a great Thanksgiving this year.  We did things a little differently, having more of a lunch than dinner so that Andrew could spend time both at our house and with his dad's family that night.  For dinner we had Salmon, potatoes, green bean casserole, homemade egg nog, salad, french bread, bruschetta, apple pie, and pumpkin pie.

Our friend Heather came over to spend thanksgiving with us and in the afternoon Jen, Heather and Brianna got some beading time in.

When we were eating we went around the table and did a little exercise where everyone took a turn saying what they were thankful for this year.  One thing that struck me is that both of our kids said that they were thankful for being born, and after I thought about it I realized that they say that almost every year.  It's amazing and encouraging that they know this - that they're very lucky to be born and to be alive.  How wonderful to know that.