Spring Break 2013

Spring break was fun filled with several hikes and runs and a visit from my sister.  I had a long deserved 4 day weekend, which was extremely relaxing.  Pretty much an awesome spring break.

The kids had fun with their friends, with a hike on up in the Briones with the Berhens.  The weather has been perfect, with the hills in beautiful emerald green and mustard yellow.

One of the highlights of the Briones for the kids are the salamanders and newts.  This hike was no exception, with the hills alive with the amphibians.  Of course they found the typical California newts; however, they also came across tiger salamanders, which have florescent green eyes.

Our rain pattern here for the last few weeks has been one day of rain a week.  For the Briones, this means some pretty muddy trails.  The Berehens wanted to have our kids see some pretty awesome single track trails that were created for some mountain bikes.  Needless to say, they had a pretty hard time keeping upright, but they certainly had fun playing in the mud.

On Wednesday, the kids went for a hike with a family in our hall, the Hash's.  They are new to the area (from Ohio) and we have been showing them of the fun things we like to do.  A couple of weeks ago we took them through Castle Rock Regional Park.  This time, Beth met them at the Lafayette Reservoir.   The kids had a great time on the loop, which ends at the awesome play area.

On Thursday, my sister Melissa flew in for a visit with her friend Lisa in Napa.  We picked her up at the Oakland Airport and took the long way around to Napa.  First stop was at Ghiradelli for coffee and hot cocoa.  Next, we took a trip across the Golden Gate Bridge to have lunch in Sausilito.  There is a nice deli we discovered a couple years back and they have awesome sandwiches.  Melissa also bought some Smarties (the English style M&M's) and I was tempted to buy some Coffee Crisp but resisted.

After Sausilito, with a brief stop at a new running store where we bought some bread (longer story here) in Mill Valley, we drove up to Sonoma.  Emma had visited the mission here for 4th grade California state history, but Beth and I have never been.   It is a really nice town, and I can say that I prefer it much better than Napa.

All people prior to the 1900's were this tall! Except Abe Lincoln and Wyatt Erpp, no one believed me!

We visited some of the historical buildings, like the mission, the barracks, and looked at some of the shops.  It is a really quaint town and worth a trip up.  

After Sonoma, we dropped my sister in Napa with her friend Lisa.  Thank you Lisa for arranging this for her.  It really means a lot, giving her some time to decompress.  Thanks again.

I took a pretty good face-plant, good times.

After Thursday, we spent some time up on Mt. Diablo.  On Friday, Beth and I took a run on a segment of the 50K we will be running in a couple of weeks, off of Camino Tassajara.  With the rain we received on Thursday, it was pretty slick but a good run.  There was a lot of poison oak showing up by now, but somehow we made it through the run incident free.  This is beautiful country, and very jungle like. 

On Saturday, after field service, we took the kids on a hike nearby up to Eagle Peak.  After hiking through the meadows of Clayton and past a new pond we discovered, we begin our climb up through the pine and the chaparral.  This is a single track that leads up along to the ridge that overlooks Mitchell Canyon, Back Creek Canyon, and Clayton and Concord.  It is a beautiful hike.



Once we got to the top, we decided to come down the Mitchell Peak trail, which was pretty awesome.  For the kids any hike up a mountain means running down, and this was definitely a fun trail to run down.  

The wild flowers are in full bloom on the mountain, with reds, purples, oranges, yellows popping everywhere.   The meadows are so green, contrasted by the flowers, and topped off by the red rock.  It is certainly awesome country.

Once we got home, we watched Old Yeller.  Emma recently finished reading it and I had told her about the movie.  It has been nice that free -on-demand have been adding some of the old classics.  It was also fun to see how much of the country shown in the movie looked exactly like what we had just hiked through.

The kids made it through tear free, and I removed myself from the climax of the movie.  Oh well.

What an awesome spring break, now back to school and work!

What more can I say...It is November

So as most of you know, I have always had a psychological block when it came to the month of November.  It goes back to living in the Pacific Northwest and finding November to be one of the gloomiest months of the year.

In California, the month is typically bright and sunny; however is busy.  Typically work is winding up the year, continued changes afoot there. The weather has been unseasonable cold and we have had a bit of rain; however, not enough to turn the hills emerald green but that should be coming soon. 

We made the most of the weather.  The kids even had fun making s'mores in the fireplace.

I say this because I have always focused these blogs on the positive and not the negative.  And through this outlet, I can maintain a positive outlook on things instead of becoming overwhelmed by the negative things that try to derail us.  We have been counseled so much the last couple of years at meeting to never allow the stresses and uncertainty of this system to revert back to our old personality, justifying that it is OK to be bitter or angry just because we have hit a roadblock (or wall). 

Yes, he is a big boy!!!

I say this all as an apology for not blogging in November.  Not to say we didn't do a lot.  We did.   This is the summary of the accomplishments.

The month began with our third marathon of the year (4 in a 12 month period) in Fresno.  Why Fresno?  Well it wasn't for the excellent Mexican food, even though we found an really good restaurant.

No the reason we chose this race was that majority of the course is pretty much flat and it is a first run event.  In Fresno? Yep.  Everything about this marathon was done first class.  At the end  of the race we even got sweatshirts, sundaes, full breakfast (not necessarily in that order), fresh fruit, great medals, and messages.

That said, this was not our best marathon.  We beat our San Francisco (a much harder marathon with all of the hills) time by only seconds.  What this marathon helped us understand while we have been using marathons as what we have been using to keep on track health wise, our bodies is showing the wear and tear of doing 4 marathons in a 12 month period.  We will continue to do marathons, however, only two a year.  We will follow it up with more half-marathons and trail runs (the girls love these).

Beth and I ran 26.2 miles for a sundae?

Me, just in a bit of pain.

 

The weeks after the race were pretty much recovery.  I cut back on my baking, with only 2 pumpkin pies made during that time.  

So another accomplishment for the month is that Sophie can now ride her bike.   This was a long process, letting her decide when she was ready.  But once she was ready, she took on to it within 10 minutes.  The next day she road 3 miles, then 5 miles, then yesterday 8 miles.  She has become a professional bicycle rider (her words).

We also got up early for Black Friday.  This has become a tradition for the kids, so while we didn't spend much (the kids got Toy Story, I got my first meeting shoes in six years, and Beth got a couple of tops on clearance), the kids got to say that they got up early. 

We also went on a hike with the Behren's in the Brionnes Regional Park.   This was a nice hike with friends, finding salamanders, and seeing a very beautify view of the Diablo Valley.  The kids loved it, especially since they could spend time with their friends.  I think Emma and Sophie took the trails as a trail run because they never stopped running.

 

Another thing we did was build a headboard for Sophie. Sophie had designed this headboard on her own and asked us to build it.  It was definitely a family affair.   I was a bit apprehensive building it, not really feeling confident in my skills at building it from scratch and not wanting to let her down.  However, it came together nicely.

So the month was pretty eventful.  December is proving to be as much as a roller coaster as November, but I will write about that later.