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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)

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

Each Wednesday, Tristan brings home a folder from school.  It contains things like school work, behavior charts, PTA notices, notes from school, etc.  This past Wednesday, the folder included a request to “Help Light Someone’s Christmas”.  Basically, it’s the same concept as the Salvation Army’s angel tree: you sign up to purchase a gift for a specific amount and send the gift to the school.

Now we typically help various organizations, from giving in church to volunteering in various things, to sending canned goods to feed people who apparently only eat at Thanksgiving, to making donations, etc. Even with all of that, we have never received joy from giving.  In fact, we hate giving.  It’s like a chore.  We do it though for various reasons — whether political or religious or otherwise.  But because I love Heard Elementary School, I wanted to sign up immediately. 

Kimberlie tried to throttle me back.  We’re already room parents for Tristan’s class.  We donate classroom supplies and send paper money and sell wrapping paper and buy BBQ tickets and support the PTA, so I understood her concern. But being room parents, we’ve met all of Tristan’s classmates.  If there is someone in Tristan’s class, school, or our community who needs a token gift to improve their holiday season, I want to help.  I filled out the form and committed to purchasing a gift at the $15.00 level and returned the form. 

The next day, Kimberlie was picking up the kids from day care when Tristan handed her a paper light bulb.  It said “Jacket for a 6 year old girl, size 6/7″.  Her eyes teared up.  We don’t live in a wealthy community, but it is the suburbs and I never imagined that someone nearby might not even have a jacket.  We thought we were going to be purchasing a token gift for a child who might not have as many toys on Christmas morning as our kids, but instead, we were purchasing a necessity that in our household would never be considered a gift.  And so we were off — to find the perfect jacket!

Being the bargain-hunter than I am, we ended up with a $40.00 Old Navy jacket.  All of their outerwear was 50% off plus I used a 30% Stuff-n-Save discount to end up spending $14.00.  It could possibly end up being the nicest garment the unknown little girl owns.  Tristan’s birthday is coming up later this week and we actually enjoyed shopping for this unknown child more than we enjoyed shopping for our own child.  The jacket has already warmed our hearts — for the first time since I can remember, we feel good about giving.

Let’s hope the little girl can stay warm until Christmas!

The past few weeks have been so busy!

We enjoyed our trip to Colorado. While we were gone, temperatures in Macon reached 102 but in Boulder the high was only 75 on the same day. Boulder is the healthiest city in the country and bike and pedestrian trails were everywhere! If only Macon could do something similar.

We travelled to Rocky Mountain National Park — perhaps the most beautiful place that I’ve ever been to. We drove up Trail Ridge Road, which is the highest paved road in the country — 12,000 feet above sea-level. At that altitude — even in June — there was six feet of snow remaining on the ground. The wind was blowing 40 mph and the high temperature for that day and location was 48 — much better than the 102 that Macon was experiencing! Of course, none of us had ever seen six feet of snow, so we stopped for a while to play around in it. As usual I had sandals on and couldn’t really feel my toes after a few seconds but it was a blast!

We also visited Columbine High School and Jon Benet Ramsey’s final home. Morbid? Perhaps, but I won’t digress into the “American history or pop-culture” argument that I had with a co-worker.

When I returned to work the following week, we basically were given a blank check to purchase whatever technology we wanted. You just have to love that end-of-the-year spending! The kids had a week of vacation bible school and then two weeks of swimming lessons. Mackenzie celebrated her third birthday. And I neglected to blog about any of it. I’ll add some photos over the next few days of Colorado, swimming, the birthday, etc.

I’ve also had two freelance web projects in the past few weeks, one of which I’m wrapping up today. After doing web stuff all day for pay, blogging hasn’t really appealed to me.

I’ve also come up with an ingenious hustle. I’ve been making about $100 bucks a month for doing pretty much nothing! This isn’t a work-at-home pyramid scheme, but more of a “Jonathan is outsmarting the system” scheme. Nothing illegal of course, but it certainly falls into the “It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission” category. I may blog more details soon, but I think that if too many people get in on it than there is less reward for me (not that anyone is reading this blog anymore anyway).

Tomorrow we head out again . . . this time to New Orleans, Louisiana. Kimberlie has NDT training at a hospital there and I plan to tag along and explore the city with the kids. That should be interesting considering that New Orleans is not exactly the most kid-friendly place around. I’m sure I’ll have some blogging time while I’m there.

Today was an extremely social Sunday for us.  After church (which in some ways is a social event itself), Kroger (a potential social event), and a quick lunch (but not a social one), we headed off to a party for a daycare classmate of my children.  It was certainly odd because we didn’t know ANYONE there, except ourselves.

Our kids certainly had a blast on the inflatables, including a really huge water slide and we met some new people, which is always fun.  It was EXTREMELY hot out there though.  I wish I had been the one going down the water slide!  Maybe next time.

This is only my 8th blog post this month.  Sad.

This month, my blog made $65.23.  That’s $141.68 since this blog began on July 15, 2008.  I’m a loooong way from being a professional blogger.  Thanks to whoever is clicking on my amazon links and purchasing stuff.  Also, thanks to those who are clicking on my adsense links.

I uploaded my final C# project tonight.  I am 1/10 of the way towards another masters degree.

I ran 37.2 miles this month, totaling 458.19 miles since I began running in February 2009.  That’s a pathetic average of 35 miles per month.

Hopefully, that chart will start to look more like an upward curve.  Then again, the summer heat is not a runner’s friend.

This fall, I plan to run 4 10Ks, a 13K, and a half marathon — all in preparation for the 2010 Goofy Race at Disney.

That’s enough math for tonight!

This has been a beautiful weekend!

Saturday, we were up bright and early so that I could run the 5K at the Dogwood Festival in Perry.  Last year, this was one of my favorite 5Ks, so I had to do it again.  And, at $10 per person, I put Kimberlie and Tristan in it too.  I nailed a personal record, shaving 30 seconds off of a race I did 2 weeks ago.

Afterwards, the kids went to a birthday party for one of Tristan’s classmates and then Kimberlie and the kids planted flowers while I got things done around the house (that’s code talk for checked facebook 9000 times and read email and blogs).

This weekend’s pictures are courteous of the law school’s new Canon 50D.  Back in November, I wrote about the law school’s new Canon 40D.  I waited over 2 years for the law school to budget for a nice camera for our building, and as soon as I got the 40D, WMG (worthless marketing guy) stole it from us.  After my complaints reached the right people, we were given permission to order a second camera.  Of course I chose a nicer one.  I love the 50D!

Today is my and Kimberlie’s 6 year anniversary.  After church, we had a nice meal and then came home and took a long nap.  It’s rare for the entire house to take a nap at the same time.

I’m not quite sure what happened today, but after enjoying a nice 70 degree day yesterday, we woke up to rain, sleet, and snow this morning . . . in Macon, Georgia of all places!  It has been years since we have seen this much snowfall.  The kids had a blast!  

Of course, the white blanket makes everything beautiful.  Here are some pictures:

Let’s hope it all freezes tonight and makes things hazard enough to cancel classes at Mercer tomorrow.  I sure could use another 3 day weekend.  I haven’t been to work on a Monday in over a month!