Thanksgiving Weekend

Thanksgiving, what a great holiday! You get a nice four day weekend, time with friends and family, and most importantly you get to stuff your face and nobody judges you for it! :-) Last year we went out to Arizona to spend Thanksgiving with my mom, so this year we spent the holiday in Cleveland with Chris's family.

We left Wednesday around noon when Jake got done with school, he had morning class on Monday and Wednesday the week of Thanksgiving. The car ride went pretty good for about 30 minutes and then there was a lot of crying from Rylan and a lot of "Are we in Cleveland, yet?" from the boys. I have to say after the trip down there and back, a minivan is starting to look a bit more appealing! Anyway, we all managed to survive the ride down and we did manage some silly time as well:

We spent Wednesday playing with Grandma, Grandman, Aunt Meredith, Dylan, and Jim. The boys were happy to be in Cleveland and Chris and I were happy to get away from Michigan and work. Rylan is just happy no matter where she is because she's a baby :-)

Thursday was Thanksgiving, in case you didn't already know. Grandman took the boys in the morning to go swimming at his 24 hour fitness center. Apparently they had to work the lifeguard a bit since it wasn't supposed to be open for kids that day. Grandman told the lifeguard that he would have to tell the boys they couldn't swim. After looking at those sweet faces, the lifeguard decided it would be easier to break the rules for an hour while his supervisor was gone than to break the hearts of two boys. Those kids really do know how to work people! While the boys were gone Ginger started cooking, Chris napped, and I tried to be helpful, but really just took care of Rylan, watched football, and chatted with Ginger. It was nice and quiet and the house smelled Delicious!

Family started coming over around 4pm. There was Me, Chris, Jake, Brenden, Rylan, Grandma (Ginger), Grandman (Pete), (Aunt) Meredith, Dylan, (Uncle)Todd, Todd's Mom and Grandma, Billy, (Aunt) Susie, Bridget, Matt, Leo and his new wife Carrie and her two kids Matthew and Lauren. And Frank, Jamie, Frankie, and Conor came over after dinner. It was really a great time. The adults ate, drank, watched football, and had a great time while the the kids all ran rampant around the house, just the way Thanksgiving is supposed to be! The food was fabulous and a good time was had by all - at least I had a good time and I will proclaim that everyone else did too! And here are a few pictures to prove it:

Jake and Brenden playing racing games on Grandman's iphone

Brenden too cool for a picture

Rylan in her Thanksgiving outfit (she looks like an elf in the first picture - hehe)

Finally a picture of the whole family where I have my clothes on - the only other ones we have are from when Rylan was born

Rylan and Daddy

My boys

Me and my girl

Todd with the boys - Jake, Brenden, and Dylan

After such a wonderful holiday we needed the rest of the trip to lay around and relax. We spent all of Friday and Saturday laying around, watching football, playing dominos, coloring, eating leftovers, and generally doing nothing that would require any amount of energy - it was fabulous!

Brenden and Grandman coloring in the Awesome Dry Erase Super Hero's book

Ryaln testing out the Bumbo for the first time


The end of a long day of doing nothing :-)

Sunday Chris went to the Brown's game with his dad and uncle and the women and children stayed home and cleaned - yeah right! Ginger, the kids, and I spent the day watching football, playing outside, more coloring and dominos, and packing up for the trip home. We had a good last day together.

It was so nice to get away and I know the kids had a great time as did Chris and I. And the Browns won the game to cap off a great weekend! Looking forward to many more holidays like this one!

Practice at Pioneer

Since Rylan was a mere 13 days old she has been coming to Pioneer with me almost everyday for practice. That's generally Monday through Friday from 2-4:30pm with the occasional day home with dad or someone else. She has been VERY good for me. In the beginning she basically slept the entire time. As the season has gone on she has slept less and played more.

With season winding down, less than 2 weeks to go, I have less divers to watch. This means I have some more time in between dives to really watch Rylan. She has been quite the character I must say. She laughs, smiles, makes faces, and does lots of talking with me or the elephant hanging from her car seat.

Yesterday I was able to capture some great pictures while coaching, and no I didn't miss a dive even though my divers were giving me a hard time about taking lots of pictures :-) She's been having a lot of fun with her monkey blanket - lots of chewing and hugs - and making lots of faces at me trying to get my attention. I also got a video to give you an idea of what she has to listen to while I'm coaching. You'll also notice she's got no clothes on, the weather has been unseasonably warm and thus EXTREMELY hot in the pool area so I thought I'd let her skin feel the air while it can, before the real Michigan weather shows up!

I can run a mile.

I can run a mile. I can do it without stopping. I can do it without slowing down to walk. Most people would say what's the big deal? The big deal is that this used to seem like one of the hardest things for me to do. It used to feel like some one was stabbing me in the back with every stride. I could only go a few yards, maybe a quarter mile on a good day, before breaking down in tears from the pain. And now? Now, I can run a mile with no tears. I can run for two or three miles if I really feel like it, and I'm starting to feel more like it every time I go for a run.

So for those of you that are a little lost, here's the back story. Back when I was a diver, I was in great shape. I had six pack abs and could bench press my weight. I was strong and you could see it by looking at me. What you couldn't see was how weak my back was. About 18 years ago - wow I'm getting old - I injured my back diving platform. And instead of letting it heal properly I continued to dive platform until it got to the point that I was in tears on a daily basis and the physical therapist told me I had to stop because I had a partially torn muscle in my lower back. I took the time off and healed, but never fully recovered. My back was weak.

When I returned to diving I was still strong, maybe even stronger, in my arms, legs, stomach, but not my back. The doctors told me everything was fine it was just going to hurt until I was able to strengthen the muscles in my back again. I worked to get it stronger, but I still had pain. It was much more manageable, but it was still pain. And the doctors said that was how it was going to be, keep trying to strengthen it, but I'd probably always have to live with some degree of pain. Fun right? Not so much.

So until about 5-6 years ago I had pain, it was so much better than before, but I still couldn't run a full mile without stopping. And you ask what happened 5-6 years ago? I got pregnant with Jake. And I had TERRIBLE back pain throughout the pregnancy. I got massages every other week to help manage the pain. My back felt almost as bad as it had when I had the torn muscle. But something funny happened after I gave birth to Jake, my back felt better. It felt stronger. Now I don't have anything to back this up, but my theory is that for the first time since injuring my back, and maybe the first time in my life, my stomach muscles couldn't pick up the slack for my weak back. My back HAD to get stronger. And with each pregnancy my back hurt a little less during and felt a little stronger after.

And so now here we are, three kids later, and I'm able to run a mile. I'm still a terrible runner, a 10 minute mile seems fast to me, but I AM a runner. I was actually able to run almost all the way through my pregnancy with Rylan. I started running again a few weeks ago. I'm only doing it a few days a week at most for right now. And when I am able to, I am running 2 or 3 miles at a time and doing a total workout of 4-5 miles. I'm starting to do sprint workouts as well to hopefully improve my speed. I have to say that I'm really enjoying it and feel bad when I don't have time or am just too tired to get in a workout. Who would have thought? Its amazing how much more enjoyable running is now that I don't have pain.

So running a mile might not seem like that big a deal, but to me it means a lot!