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On Friday, it snowed. And snowed. And snowed.  In fact, it was more snow than I have ever seen in Georgia.

When I was about 6, we had a little snowfall and had to use cardboard to slide down the hills in our neighborhood.  My grandmother was determined that I would not be sliding on cardboard anymore!  So for Christmas that year, my sister and I were given these awesome sleds from the JCPenney catalog.  Then they sat in storage for 25 years, waiting on the next great snowfall . . .

This is one time that being a pack-rat paid off!  Those sleds were worth the wait!

It was a fabulous weekend!  Sledding was finally conquered and multiple snowmen were built (pieces of some still remain). I’m probably the only person in central Georgia who owns real sleds!

(BTW, I totally stole the title of this post from Kristi F)

Two weeks ago, we signed Tristan up for t-ball.  Then we bought him a glove and a ball.  Basically, we dropped $130 on baseball, but my child can’t throw, can’t catch, and can’t hit.  It really was stepping out for me to sign Tristan up for something like this.  I hate committments, so I’m not looking forward to sitting at practice or the ball field several nights a week.  But I also thought it might be good for him to be part of a team.

Yesterday was tryout day. We were concerned that we wouldn’t know anyone, but we ended up knowing four others:

Tristan’s best friend from his old day care (who he hardly sees anymore)
Tristan’s best friend from his current day care (who no longer goes there)
A classmate from Tristan’s preschool
A classmate from Tristan’s current kindergarten class

And to make it even better, we know (or have met) their parents as well.  Let’s just hope he ends up with one or more of them on his team!

This past weekend was Walt Disney World Marathon Weekend.  This is the second year that I’ve participated.  On Thursday, we checked the kids out of school early and headed down to the Wide World of Sports for the expo and packet-pick up.

The Expo

Friday morning I ran the Up and Away Family Fun Run 5K.  I didn’t really have any time goals for this race.  My current 5K PR is around 24 minutes and I knew I wouldn’t come close to that.  With 5000 runners in a race, it’s nearly impossible to run for a time goal.  Besides, I wanted to save my energy for the Half-Marathon on Saturday.  It was around 40 degrees at the beginning of the 5K, which I thought was pretty cold at the time.  Little did I know. 

The 5K was a nice run around and through a pre-dawn Epcot. I finished in a little over 26 minutes.

UP house at the 5K start

5K Start at Epcot

On Saturday came the race I’ve been waiting for.  The Half-Marathon.  This was the race I had trained for.  I thought the 5K was cold, but on Saturday it was in the very low 30s with a wind chill in the 20s.  And sleet . . . in Central Florida.  Lots of sleet and rain for the entire 13.1 miles.  Nevertheless, the family came out and cheered for me.  We had previously made signs and shirts and Kimberlie committed to getting up at 3:30 in the morning and chasing me around Walt Disney World.

My family at 3:30 in the morning

Me and an army man before the start

Tristan with his sign

The race started and I felt really good at first, but then the heel pain started creeping on. My time goal was 2 hours, but it ended up taking me 2 hours and 14 minutes. Of course, part of that was stopping to take pictures with characters, part of it was the sleet (and ice in my eyes) and the rest can be attributed to heal pain.  By 8:00 am, it was over and we were back in the hotel.  It took my body until well after noon to heat up and stop shivvering.

Princess Tiana along the course

Daisy with the family after the half-marathon

On Sunday morning, my feet were killing me.  Unfortunately, I had to get out of bed at 3:30 and run 26.2 miles before sitting in the car for a six hour ride home.  How was I going to do it?  On marathon morning, it was 26 degrees with a wind chill in the teens.  Brrrrr.

Starting Line	Characters at the Start	Pluto at Epcot
Hot air balloon	Reindeer in the cold	Dopey

It was so cold, that the course was icy. The powerade was slushy. The bananas were frozen solid. People dressed in layers and shed them as they ran. Disney collected the clothing, laundered them, and donated them to charity — over 30,000 pieces.

Somehow, I was able to finish. Over 8,000 of the 24,000+ marathoners did not finish.  Although it took over 6 hours.  At the time, I didn’t think I had ever been in that much pain before, but now I can’t remember — sort of like when a female goes through childbirth.  In fact, I plan on registering for all of the races again next year.

This photo made it worth all of the time, energy, effort and expense.

My bling bling: UP medal, Donald medal, Mickey medal and Goofy medal

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that we attended part of the taping for the Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade.  I also included a few of the 500 pictures I snapped and one of the videos I shot.  Here is a tilt-shift video, created by Disney of the Christmas parade.

As you can see, tilt-shift is a cool technology.  I consider it analogous to HDR photography, but even cooler.  Here are links to two other tilt-shift videos with short explanations by Disney if you are interested in the technology:

Magic Kingdom Tilt-shift
Epcot Tilt-shift
Tilt-shift Explanation

Here are some screen shots from the video, so that you can see where to find us in the parade.  It airs tomorrow, Christmas Day, at 10:00 AM on your local ABC channel.

Last night, Mackenzie’s preschool had an open house.  There were finger foods and the kids sang three songs.  Mackenzie actually sang this year!  Unfortunately, my video camera battery was dead, so no video today.

Mackenzie singing

Mackenzie with two friends: Rosie and Ryan

Mackenzie and her teacher Mrs. Beverly

Something did take place last night, that makes me want to rant, but I’ll create a new post for that.

No family blog is complete without a photo of the kids with Santa, so here we go.

I’m not exactly sure how the birth of Christ translates into Santa or Black Friday Sales or the Jonas Brothers or messy cookie-making kids, but it sure is fun, so we’ll take it!

Today was Christmas Cookie Day at Tristan’s kindergarten.  Kimberlie and I, along with other parents helped about 120 kindergarteners make cookies.  Just imagine the biggest possible mess and multiply it by 100.  Kimberlie was covered in flour and had to return home and change before going to work.  I was a little more careful, since I had the fancy camera and all.

Enjoy the pictures.

Mackenzie went on her first field trip yesterday to see Santa at “The Fish Store”, better known as Bass Pro Shops.  Due to a light day at work, I was able to flex my lunch break around and meet them there.  Of course, I took the law school’s 50D with me.  When folks see you show up with a camera like that, you end up becoming the offical photographer.  I did photos of all of the children individually with Santa and class photos with Santa . . . all on a lunch break!

I created a photoshop template of a 5 x 7  Christmas card and included for each child their individual print, class print, and school name, teacher name, and date. I also did 8 x 10 class prints for the teachers.  Sam’s printed them for about 40 cents each and I just donated them to the preschool.  In hindsight, I should have printed photo packages to sell to parents at next week’s Christmas Open House.  Preschool parents will pay anything for Christmas photos.  Oh well, I’ll get them next year!

Below are a few of Mackenzie:

Stay tuned . . . Tristan’s kindergarten class is making Christmas cookies tomorrow and the D50 will be there to capture the action!

For the second time in my life, I was able to take part in the taping of a very popular Christmas special.  In 2007, Kimberlie and I were a part of “Oprah’s Favorite Things” and were showered with overpriced merchandise by a television diva.  Other than that, there is only one other holiday television special that I would love to be a part of, and somehow I managed to pull it off this year.

This past weekend, we were invited to be part of the taping of the Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade.  Basically, they entice you to come be a part of the crowd with free entry into the Magic Kingdom for the day.  We were unable to make the Kris Allen (American Idol) taping on Thursday or the Celine Dion taping on Friday due to work and school schedules, so we decided to go down for the Jonas Brothers on Saturday. 

The Jonas Brothers sang a three minute song called Summertime Anthem, but it took us four hours to shoot the performance.  The director made them sing it no less than 10 times.  Part of that was teaching the 5000 member audience to break out into a flash-mob style dance routine towards the end of the song.  It was awesome!  By shear luck, we ended up at the very front of the stage!

The parade taping was another grueling six hours, because performers had to perform over and over and over for the perfect camera angles.  Steve Rushton (singer) and the Santa Buddies (dogs from a new Disney Christmas movie) were there and all of it was hosted by Kelly Ripa.  No Regis this year due to surgery!  And by shear accident, we ended up on center street, where the performers performed.

Of course I shot over 500 pictures and 3 videos.  Here is a small sample:

Check out the video to see how close we were to the action!

Be sure to watch the parade Christmas morning on ABC.  There is no possible way that they can show the parade without including some very good shots of us.  You should definitely watch for the shot of  Tristan and me dancing (above) during the “Move it, Shake it, Celebrate it” portion of the parade.

This weekend, we celebrated Tristan’s 6th birthday with a final trip to the Disney theme parks (for a long time).

I can’t believe I have a SIX year old!