Expert running tips. Oh yeah.

I've been a runner for about 11 months now, and by "runner" I mean "person who owns sneakers and moves marginally faster than a walker in them." 

Said sneakers

Anyhoo, since I'm such an experienced runner now, I thought I'd share a few tips on how to have a suuuuuuper great run.  Just a little knowledge I picked up today on my run.

Step 1.  Eat very large bowl of fiber-rich lentil soup.  With cheese.

(Any actual runners who are reading this are already shaking their heads.)

Step 2.  Don't wait long enough before deciding to go to the gym.

Step 3.  Start running.  Start cramping up.  Keep running.

Step 4.  Walk it out.  Run.  Bathroom.

Repeat steps 3 and 4 several times.  Feel stupid for lentils.

Step 5. Finally hit stride around mile three.  Worry about snow outside.

Step 5.1.  Take selfie on treadmill.

Step 6.  Run, run, run. Stare at nail hole in opposite wall. Run, run, run.

Step 7.  Think about friends facing serious health challenges.  Feel grateful for working legs.

Step 8.  Finish strong but don't look at time or pace.  Doesn't matter.  It's done.

Get your Welsh on

So, it's surprisingly hard getting back into the blogging swing of things.  Among the things I am reacquainting myself with: typing on a regular, full-sized keyboard rather than a tiny iPod or a tablet. Our last laptop bit the dust many months ago and this new (to us) laptop is taking a little bit of adjusting on my part.  I've gotten awfully used to autocorrect...

These photos are a little over a week old, but worthy of posting.  It's my mother in a really funny hat!  Check her out!

The deal with the outfit is this:  March 1 is St. David's Day, which is a day for Welsh people to celebrate being Welsh, just like St. Patrick's Day is for the Irish.  Only with less green beer, I suppose.  Anyway, mom is dressed in a traditional Welsh outfit, complete with Abe Lincoln hat.  Seriously, look:

For the last few years, my mom and I have been going into the kids' school for St. David's Day to talk a little bit about our Welsh heritage (mom's mother was a Welsh immigrant and her father was the son of Welsh immigrants) and to make a little Welsh treat, Welsh griddle cakes.   

  

I blogged about St. David's Day a few years ago and posted the recipe for griddle cakes here. 

We have good time and the kids seem to like it.

See?  Don't they look riveted?

Ha!  No, they actually do seem to like the presentation.  My mom puts on a good show, singing the Welsh national anthem for them (in Welsh) and wearing her fun getup, and they also get to help make and cut out the griddle cakes. That's pretty fun when you're seven.

Happy Belated St. David's Day!

Oh, hi there.

Yep.  I'm back.
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Sorry about that whole "I missed the entirety of 2013" thing.  Heh.

I'll see what I can do later about posting some photos from that year. That entire year.

Soooo.  Anyway.  Diving back in where we are, because that's the only way this thing is going to work.

It's been a snowy, snowy winter.  Lucky for us, we don't mind the snow so much (said the woman who does not operate a snowblower - ahem).  There's skiing and tubing and hot chocolate and a warm house, so what's to complain about? 

And double lucky for us, we live a mere seven minutes away from Black Mountain of Maine, which is about the friendliest family ski mountain you could hope for.  Unbelievably cheap downhill skiing ($15 lift tickets!) and world-class Nordic ski trails.  And tubing!  Scary/fun tubing, which was all free this past Thursday, so I packed some sandwiches for dinner and we headed up to the mountain.




Glow necklaces! So fun!

 




Annie and Betty playing in the tubes. 
They were really too little to go down the mountain.

  And, of course, the camera battery died, so this is all we have of that night (plus a few videos I can't figure out how to upload to the blog). But so fun!  It seemed like half the town was there and we tubed until it was just tooooo cold and then one by one (Annie and I were first) we trickled into the lodge to eat our sandwiches and apples and carrots and the free lollipops that Franklin Savings Bank was passing out.

Man, we love living so close to the mountain!