.: bistan.net :.

This morning was Mackenzie’s awards day and program.  She received the “green team” award, for staying on “green” every day this year.  Basically, you start on green and progress to yellow (warning), red (note  home), and then blue (office visit).  My sweetheart never left green.

She also got an accelerated reader award.  Each kindergartener who earned 5 points received a certificate.  The student with the post points in each grade level wins a bicycle, donated by the local mason lodge.  Mackenzie won the bicycle with 57 points!

After the program and awards, we stuck around for a sack lunch picnic.

I spent the first few days this week in San Antonio, Texas in financial controls training.  While that sounds incredibly boring, it actually wasn’t bad.  Due to a social networking policy, that’s the extent that I’ll discuss the work-related aspects of the trip.

On the way out, I lucked up by having the row to myself.  There was plenty of room to spread out!

Flying to San Antonio all alone

This was the first trip I’ve been on without my family, so it was a little strange.  I really missed my kids, but I still had a great time.  Like other places I have been, I thought I would hate the city but now San Antonio is one of my favorite cities!

The Alamo!

The main event of the year, called Fiesta, just happened to be going on during my stay there.  The first night, there was a night parade on the cities beautiful riverwalk.  There were 62 floats like the one below.  It was one of the coolest parades I’ve ever seen and it even topped many of the Disney parades.  Clay Walker was the grand marshall.

The River Parade

The next night was NIOSA, which stands for Night In Old San Antonio.  It was the coolest thing I think I’ve ever been to. Basically you pay to get in and you purchase tickets.  There are hundreds of food booths where you trade your tickets for food or drinks.  Each area had a different theme.  For example, the “French Quarter” area had sausage on a stick, beignets, escargot, and various french drinks.  I had the beignets, the best churros I’ve ever tasted from the Mexican area, and some fabulous curly fries.

I was amazed at how many ways there were to fry up jalapenos.  I also bought some cascarones for the kids.  I’ll post pictures whenever they crack them over each other’s heads.  It was weird toting what appeared to be a dozen eggs literally half way across the country through two airports.

NIOSA!

I can hardly wait to return to San Antonio, but next time I’m taking the family!

I’m turning into a data entry whore.  It seems all I do lately is log my life.  This blog is just one example.  There’s also Facebook and twitter.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been logging everything I eat as well as calorie counts in an effort to eat more healthy.  I’m doing the physical exercise part, but until I start eating right I’ll never have the runner’s physique.  Five weeks ago, my average daily calorie count was 2901.  This past week, it was down to 2611.

Running is also a huge thing to log.  I’ve used mapmyrun.com to log my miles for the past 4 years.  They just forced me to use their new format and I hate it, but I would have to subscribe to export all of my data.  It sort of sucks.

After logging my miles, I have to enter it monthly into my running club website to participate in the “Challenge of the Miles”.

Here’s my current mileage chart:

I can tell you that my lifetime mileage is 2252.95 miles. January was the first month that I’ve ever passed 100 miles in a month.  My goal for 2012 is 1000 miles and so far I’m on track.

Also, my job participates in the Presidential Fitness Challenge and I’m supposed to log all of my physical activity there too.  I sort of dropped that, but to be eligible for prizes at work, I need to start back.  So, in addition to running, I’m suppose to log walking, outdoor work, t-ball, etc.

To take it even further, my health insurance carrier has a website where I can log physical activity, nutrition, and stats like blood pressure everyday to earn points redeemable for healthy rewards.

I also log my Coke points in mycokerewards.com to earn points for rewards.  I guess if I stopped drinking Cokes, I wouldn’t have to log those calories or Coke points.  That seems like a good plan.

Then, there’s disneymovierewards.com.  It’s a good thing we don’t buy many DVDs, but I have earned several Disney gift cards from this.

I haven’t mentioned the biggest: I use Quicken to log all of our financial transactions.  That’s the most time consuming, but also the most beneficial.

I’m probably missing some others as well.  I guess you see now why this blog suffers.

I used to maintain a clothing log, so that I didn’t accidentally wear the same shirt every Tuesday or the same pants several days in a row.  I gave up on that when I became a runner though. It’s not rare for me to change clothes several times a day: sleep clothes, running clothes, work clothes, casual clothes, etc.

So am I OCD? I don’t think so. Everything I log has a benefit.  The fitness and nutrition logs are helping me reach my goals. Today at Kroger, I didn’t buy a 450 calories/slice pie even though it was on sale because I thought of my log. If I wasn’t logging miles, I would have never come close to 100 in January.  Quicken helps me stay on track to reach short-term and long-term goals. And the others score me free stuff!

So, what do you log?

Kindergarten Cookie Day is perhaps the best kindergarten activity of the year.  Two years ago, we went to Tristan’s cookie day and this year, we weren’t about to miss Mackenzie’s.  She didn’t let her injury prevent her from missing a bit of the fun.

It was so much fun, that afterwards, Kimberlie told me that “we should have another kid just so we can do cookie day again”.  I’m not so sure about that, but I do agree that it was fun.

Check out the cookies I made for the Christmas party at work:

They turned out really good!

Mackenzie’s preschool class has a class mascot: Monkey George.  If you have read my blog for very long, you know that Mackenzie knows how to take care of a monkey.  Each Friday, he goes home with one of the kids for the weekend.  He returns on Monday with a story and photos of his weekend adventures.  Mackenzie’s story is below.

George’s Weekend with Mackenzie

February 25 – 27, 2010

On Friday, George went home with Mackenzie.  That evening, they rode a long way to eat at Buckner’s with friends and family.  George met a really big chicken outside.  They ate so much that they came home and went right to bed!

On Saturday morning, George and Mackenzie woke up really early to go watch Mackenzie’s dad run a 5K race.  While he was running, Mackenzie and George met Chester the Frito Lay Cheetah.  He gave Mackenzie and George two bags of chips.  They also met the Chick-fil-A cow who told George to Eat More Chicken!

After coming home and taking a nap, Mackenzie’s family took George downtown, where they climbed onto the roof of one of the highest buildings.  George could see the whole city!

That evening, George put on his Mercer Bears shirt and went with Mackenzie’s family to watch the last Mercer basketball game of the year.  George even met a big bear, but he wasn’t scared.

George ate a hamburger before the game and that night, the Bears won!  Mackenzie and George even saw their classmate Jana at the basketball game! George was so happy!

On Sunday, Mackenzie and George played around the house, ate lunch and then went shopping.  Afterwards, they played outside with Mackenzie’s friend Chelsea.  They rode bikes and drew on the driveway with chalk.  Then, everyone walked to the park, where George got to swing.

That evening, George and Mackenzie talked all about the animals George got to meet: the chicken, the cheetah, the cow and the bear. George and Mackenzie had so much fun!

I thought the vegetable garden was done after summer was over, but we still had some green growth.  The growth didn’t have anything that appeared edible on it so I thought maybe it was just weeds.

Last week, I was outside so I decided to pull those weeds.  They were actually carrots!  I forgot that I even planted carrots!

Because, like most vegetables, we aren’t big carrot fans, I left them in the yard for the rabbits that live under the kid’s playhouse.  Look at the size of the carrots compared to my hand and feet.  They were huge!

Will Farmer Jonathan return next year?  Probably not.  We don’t even like vegetables and besides, Kroger is only a five minute drive from our house.  Maybe I’ll put flowers in the garden.  If you missed any of my Farmer Jonathan posts from the year, catch them below.

Past Farmer Jonathan Posts:

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

We had a wonderful quiet Christmas morning.  After opening gifts, we went to Waffle House, which is our normal Christmas tradition.

This morning, I had the opportunity to accompany Mackenzie’s class to the mall to see Santa.  Last year, they saw the jolly fat fellow at the local redneck store, which is appropriately named after a fish.  I did photo collages for them last year and was invited to photograph the class again this year.

I was amazed at how many stay-at-home-moms have nothing better to do than accompany their kids on preschool field trips.  The drive from the preschool to the mall was as long as a small funeral procession.  In an effort to stay on topic and not start ranting about how much I loathe stay-at-home-moms, that’s all I’ll say about them.

Mackenzie's class posing for the parent paparazzi

Mackenzie’s teacher had a special arrangement with Santa for me to take photos, but not in Santa’s usual chair.  Apparently, that would violate some mall contract or something.  The kids, however, didn’t seem to mind visiting Santa on a mall bench several feet away.

Mackenzie with the Mall Bench Santa

Mackenzie shares her Santa letter

Afterwards, the class walked down to the ice cream place formerly known as Baskin Robbins, which had promised to be open at 10:00 in the morning.  Unfortunately, the indian who runs the shop must have decided that nobody would care for ice cream that early in the morning when its 30 degrees outside, and decided not to open.  So down to the food court Wendy’s at the other end of the mall with 14 kids we went.  After all, a Frosty on a frosty morning makes perfect sense to a class of 4 year olds!

Mackenzie shows off her loot from Santa

A Frosty on a frosty morning