A Birthday and Spring

What a crazy few weeks we have had!  Between a week and a half of passing the stomach flu around the house and a very quick (36 hours!) solo trip to Florida for my grandma's funeral, I haven't gotten around to catching up on our events at home.  I am back, we are all healthy, and the sun is shining, so it's time to get back to normal life...or as normal as possible, anyway.  Little Man turned 3 a couple of weeks ago.  THREE!  How did that happen?! His Grandma was here to visit, and we managed a trip to the zoo and a bowling birthday party before the sickness struck.

It seems like this has been an endless winter.  While most of our trees are still bare, the daffodils and ticks are out in full force, so it must be spring.  We have a favorite field full of daffodils near the nature center in Mystic that we visit each year to take photos.  This year I got to try out my fancy new camera, and have finally graduated to using it in the full manual mode.  Not too shabby...

We are quickly counting down our weeks left in Connecticut.  Only five weeks and 2 days until we hit the road.  Yikes!  We managed to secure a house in Homer that will be ready to move into right when we arrive (whew!). Now we are just biding our time and finishing up the big clean-out of our extra stuff, hoping that the office that arranges our move picks up the pace so we get scheduled with the movers in a timely manner.  In true government fashion, we have to take the long route.  We can't contact movers directly.  Instead, we submit our information through a website, then an office at the Navy base downloads the info, verifies it all, and then submits it to the movers, making a task that should take one day stretch over several weeks.  Even better, the website (move.mil, if you're interested) does not work on Macs, or even on many PCs.  The LT has to play musical computers at work each time we have to add more information just to find one that will work with the site (we have MacBooks at home).

Half-Marathon in New York City- Check!

Back in January, I needed a new goal to keep me on track.  After the last half-marathon I ran back in October, I said that it had been fun but I wouldn't be doing that again anytime soon.  I suppose distance races must be like child birth (for me, anyway).  The difficulty fades away over time and you get suckered into having a repeat performance.  I signed up for the MORE/Fitness Women's Half Marathon, mainly because it was the only one that fit into our pre-moving schedule.  I joined a training group on Saturday mornings, which was the best thing I could have done.  They pushed me to run faster and further than I would have on my own.  Yesterday was the big day...and with all of the stress of the move and house hunt, I ended up with a cold.  Most of the race, I was able to run with one of my training buddies.  The course was two complete loops of Central Park, which was amazing!  Until, of course, I got to Harlem Hill for the second time.  That's when the cold got the better of me.  With 3.5 miles to go, I had to stop and walk several times.  I actually wasn't even sure I was going to finish.  But I did!  And I even met my goal- to beat my previous time of 2:18:30- by one minute.  Had I not been sick and taken walk breaks, I think I would have finished in about 2:12, but oh well.  I'm so glad it's over, and it was an awesome experience.  And looking at the official numbers made me feel better-I was at the 47% for my age group, which is great.  Even better, I was the 3753rd to finish, which means there were about 4000 people behind me. I'm definitely never going to win any races, but beating my own time is good enough for me!

 At the start

 The corrals stretched out over at least a quarter of a mile...SO many women!

DONE!