Ragnar Relay

Next week, April 19 & 20, I am participating in an event called the Ragnar Relay.

In a nutshell, it is a 200-mile, 12-person team, 2-day (36 hour) relay race from Huntington Beach to San Diego by way of Lake Elsinore.  Each member runs 3 legs and each leg varies in distance between 2 and 10 miles.

I got on board with this back in October and have been diligently training since then.  I have never done any running like this before and never enjoyed long distance running.  I don't know that I have the running "bug" as right now it just feels like disciplined "doing".  I think we'll see how much I still want to run once this is all over.  However, this training gets me so close to running a half marathon, that I did decide to sign up for the OC (half) Marathon on May 5 - two weeks after the Ragnar.

My team is called Sweatin' with Strangers since really no one on our team knows each other.  We're a mish-mash of people that just wanted to get on a team.  I met the captain once and that is it.  The team will be piled into 2 vans - running, eating, and sleeping (?) together for nearly 36 hours.  I expect it to be interesting and full of fun.

If you are interested in details, I've got a whole bunch for you below.

I am running leg 5.  I put the routes into my MapMyRun program and it has this cool fly-over feature where you can see the route.  So for fun, here they are if you want to see where I will be huffin' and puffin'.  (The video links occasionally get errors, but keep trying it will eventually work.)

My first route is up Nohl Ranch Road in Orange,  It's 2.5 miles and the first half is straight UP!  I've run it twice to practice and it's a killer.  I will likely start this run around 8:30 am on Friday.
 



My second route is near Fallbrook, is 5.8 miles of mostly downhill.  I'm hoping it's not too steep, but it will be a nice contrast to the uphill.  This leg is estimated to begin around 8:00 pm.




My third is in Del Mar, is 4.5 miles and is up and down for a while before coming down to the ocean.  This leg should begin around 7:00 am on Saturday.



If you want to keep up to speed with anything, just let me know I'll see how it works to keep information flowing to those interested.

My mom has jumped on-board too by becoming a volunteer.  On Friday afternoon she'll be working the exchange where my first leg ends on Nohl Ranch Rd.

Don't Flush Emily!

Emily has gotten to be big enough to share bath time with Josh.  To me, this is one of the great things about siblings - fun bath times.  And they really do enjoy it.

Typical practice has always been that when the bath is over, Josh pulls the handle to drain the tub.  And now that Emily joins him, we typically take her out of the tub first get her all squared away then Josh gets out. 

For whatever reason, one time Josh got out first and I pulled the drain while Emily was still in the bath.

Josh says: "Don't flush Emily!"

We're so lucky he looks out for her!

Pragmatic

Today's Word of the Day:

PRAGMATIC

Glamorous Life

Josh has started asking what songs mean.

This morning the radio was playing Glamorous Life by Sheila E (remember her??).  Josh asked what the song was about.  I said "glamor".  So then of course he asks what glamor means.  I said "being beautiful or pretty."

And this kid - this smartest kid in the world - says "like Mommy."

Awwww!!  I have raised him well (wink, wink).

Preschool Begins

Funny that I came to write this post and see that the last time I posted was about my search for a preschool.  So maybe it's obvious that things have been busy since.

We picked our school, got our last summer fun in and prepared for the new adventure.

I gathered some really good ideas from friends about how to make this time special.  As I Googled ideas, I saw a lot of creative things, so I just had to pick some of my top favorite ideas.



The first was to make a special breakfast of whatever Joshua would want - even if it was chicken nuggets.  His first request was peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but then he changed it to Mickey Mouse pancakes.  Voila!

I also have been seeing a friend post monthly pictures of her baby with the age written on a chalkboard.  I thought it was so cute and wanted to do that to mark school years.  And I was surprised to find tons of photos of kids with chalkboards (I guess I'm not so original).  After a frustrating search for the right chalkboard I realized I could make one.  Voila!

It was recommended to me that we pick a spot to take the school photos in every year.

Another friend talked about making a banner.  Voila!

He saw this when he came home.

We tried to get Joshua to crash through it, but he was too hesitant.  Jim helped him tear it down.

We did finally have the PBJ for lunch (and pizza is on the menu for tonight).

I also found a couple variations of asking your child specific questions each year to see how they change.  Here is today's interview:

Favorite color: Red
Favorite character on TV: Mickey Mouse
What do you want to be when you grow up? First answer: "Up to the sky."  Second answer: "Mickey Mouse."

As for school itself, it all went really well.  We had a visitation day last week for Josh to meet his teacher and see his classroom.  Today was a short introductory day from 10:00am - 11:45am.  Normal class time is 9:00am - 11:45am.  He will be going on Mondays/Wednesdays.

We've been talking about going to school and trying to get him excited.  He seemed fine going in, but as we started to say goodbye, his eyes started to tear up.  I was actually surprised and wonder if it was more reacting to someone else being upset.  But we gave him a hug and said goodbye and he seemed fine.  And he was perfectly fine when we picked him up.  And thankfully he's excited to go back.

We are now the parents of a preschooler.  It definitely felt weird walking up to the school along with all the other parents.  And the mom-mobile brigade makes me laugh every time we pull into the parking lot.  We're looking to get a minivan pretty soon so I'm going to really fit right in.