Back to Real Life

I have to say, I was a little sad this morning to see my family head off.  I'm that mom who wishes the kids could stay home one more day/week/month....I hate waking them up and telling them to get ready for school after they've been home on a break.  They get up and are cold (heater is broke), snuggly, gloomy...and it's raining.  I wish I could just bundle them up and keep them home one more day!

Lots of Pictures!

 Let's start with Sophie and I getting up on the mountain to see Brian during his 13.1er

 Here he came...and there he went!

 And then he finished!

Below, a field trip with Myles class to the Oakland Zoo.

 And a few from our family hike last weekend.  A trail the kids had not been on, Black Point Trail out of Mitchel Canyon on Diablo.

 This short green grass was a burned area just a few months back.

 Basically....you go up, and then you go down.

 You are looking at the trail.  It's right there....you don't see it?? It's pretty overgrown at the top of the back side...and known for ticks. 

 The above pic tells you this trail does not get much traffic, it's covered in grass.  The view make it worth the hike, though.

 You can spot Emma and Brian coming down through the brush.  Emma's have a patella tracking issue, so her knee is pretty testy.

 You can see both down the front, and back of the mountain at times.  It's really beautiful.

  The down hills are steep, and dry, loose dirt.  Below, Emma took a sliding tumble.

 

 

 hog print-

 cat print -

Happy Monday!

Black Point Trail, Mt Diablo

November 12, 2016

Time

 Time is flying, as always.  Lots going on.  Brian ran a half marathon. I think his longest training run was a flat 5? He got about 2 trail runs in before hand, so there were a limited about of hills thrown in there before.  This was a tough half, on Diablo.  I was grateful that he didn't make the cutoff to continue on and finish the 30k.  Not sure if that makes me unsupportive, or realistic, but I absolutely knew that doing the 30k was not a wise choice.  Sophie and I were waiting at the aid station that had the cutoff, and once it came and went, I breathed a sigh of relief knowing he'd be aimed back down hill toward the finish, and not allowed to continue up to the summit.   At the end of the day, he was ok with the results and happy he did it, so that's what mattered. 

Football season was a blast.  Regular season has ended, but thankfully our Ugly Eagles have made the playoffs.  They won their division title in a very odd game.  The other team didn't like that we were ahead, and coach left in his starters. So, they just stopped playing. They false started over and over, advancing us to the end zone 5 yards at a time, and then stepped aside and let us run it in for a touch down, and then the 2 point conversion. Odd way to protest, but hey, we'll take it.  Our next game is against De La Salle.Yep, that De La Salle.

  Kind of scary, but we'll see what happens.  It'll be a fun game.

All the kids have been various degrees of sick.  One of those years where I think one of us will be sick all winter.  Emma also has a bum knee, and Sophie sprained her ankle.  Myles has the usual every 2 weeks and once a month dr appointments he'll have for life.  I tell you what though, these kids are going to kill us with medical bills.  Add to that my heart appointments earlier this year....man. Let's not even get started on all the monthly prescriptions.  We drive 45 minutes away to a hole in the wall pharmacy to get one of Myles meds because that's the cheapest pharmacy we could find it for.  Gr. 

Ok, on to happier things.  Below are some finished pictures of our last family project.  Girls half is on the left, boys on the right.  There are a lot of little details that are hard to spot, and I won't bore you with, but it was a fun little project!  Tonight we have all picked a character to dress up as and the rest of the family has to guess who we are.  Tonight's home made treat is fudge.

 Lastly, a surprise trip to this place is coming up.  If you haven't been in a while, you may not know where that is : )