the other night while i was making dinner, i was listening to the girls play together. i noticed that they put their baby in time-out! they even put her in our time-out chair :)
poor baby!
jillian showing a little attitude during breakfast! 
sturgis stingrays are ready for their home meet today!
jillian cheers on her brothers while mommy and helen take a class at the gym.
what's that bright light in the left-hand corner? - it's the SUN! (reflecting off the freshly fallen snow outside!)
handing in their time cards - getting ready to swim an event
jayden getting ready to swim butterfly
we're exactly 0.67741935487097 of the way through january.... january is a very long month for me and february is not much shorter this year due to the leap year. thankfully we haven't had much snow - but the snow we've had seems to cancel school (ugh!) and make the parking lots all sloppy and slippery. i've been scheduling a few races to set some goals to get me through the next few months. i'm thinking about doing a half-marathon in Toledo in mid-April - that will be my first race of the spring... either that or the Lansing half-marathon the same weekend in April. then i'm running the Kenosha half-marathon the first week in May. i just registered for the Sunburst half-marathon for the first weekend in June and then i'm going to do the Ann Arbor Marathon in mid-june. i think it's the first year for the Ann Arbor Marathon and they only allow 2,500 runners for the marathon and 5,000 runners for the half. after battling the crowds in Berlin and Disney, I'm looking forward to a smaller race! i finazlied my plans for my trip to Portland, OR for the marathon in early October. unfortunately i won't be able to spend more than 2 full days out there running and exploring - but i'm excited to at least have the chance to run out there. THEN while doing some internet surfing for races to run over the next year, i actually found out that my Disney half-marathon times puts me pre-qualified for the New York City Marathon (the first weekend in November). Like the Boston Marathon, so many people seem to be achieving the qualifying times that they (NYC) are tightening the pre-qualifying standards by 10 minutes next year (and i thought the 5 minute reduced time for Boston was tough!). so i applied for NYC and i'm anxiously awaiting my letter of acceptance (it could take up to 3 weeks - ugh). you can also submit your name for the NYC marathon lottery - but if history is any indicator of our future.... i have no idea where we will be living over the next couple years... so i think the lottery is out for me.
i recently joined a mom's club here in sturgis (it's the same format at the MOPS group i belonged to in Kenosha - Mother's of Preschoolers - but in Sturgis there are no membership fees and you can be a member of the group until your children are 12 years old). they had a speaker on depression last week and she had a lot of good points in her speech. she also said that in order to fight of depression you should increase the protein in your diet, get some natural sunlight (also vitamin D if sunlight is not an option), exercise, and get pleanty of rest. i thought some of her points were very good reminders. she also said that it helps to plan small trips or events for you (the mom or dad) and the family. when we moved overseas, i found it very helpful in our adjustment to plan little trips and have something to look forward to - it lifted my spirits during some of the rough days ... they don't have to be big trips but a little something - perhaps a trip to a museum or an excursion to get ice cream with the family after a nice walk or bike ride. we have started to plan a few trips here with our family and i think it really helps not only me but the family to have something to look foward to. adjusting to our life here hasn't been as easy as i thought it would be - i constantly struggle with my feelings that coming "home" is just not "home" to me anymore.
here's some video of the boy's swim meet this morning.... i'm so proud of them! the continue to achieve Personal Records in their events and we will be traveling to Detroit at the end of February for their State Meet. They are practicing 3 times a week now - ugh! But they really seem to enjoy it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5Ep9YU4eLc (oops! - graham gets disqualified for swimming freestyle in the breaststroke event)
1 comment:
Hi Sara! I thought about you the other day when we did our lesson on The Netherlands at school. :) David just started training for his first half-marathon. He's using Hal Higdon's method. I'm sorry you're having a tough time getting settled. Where would "home" be for you?
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