The individual posts below are the abbreviated regurgitations of all the stuff we've been doing over the Christmas holidays, through our trip to Disney World. I've learned the wonders of posting all my photos to Flickr and then simply hitting a button that says "Blog This" and BAM, it posts to my blog! It's saved me time, but if you want to see all the MANY MORE pictures we've taken over the last several weeks, just go straight to my Flickr page by clicking on scrolling photos on the top right hand side of my blog.
Christmas was at my mom's house and was busy and fun. We actually took our yearly little family photos at Portrain Innovations before we left Austin like we did last year but I don't have the CD handy to post those right now. Remember I posted last year's photos, complete with out-takes. This year, she's a year older and amazingly, no funny out-takes. Anna-Marie hammed it up for every darned pose the photographer asked for. Sure made it easy this year but you have to admit, the out-takes can be hilarious. Anyway, I'll try to post those soon. Here's a fun little piece of trivia: Paul and I are wearing the same sweaters in both years' photos. And yes, we are aware of that. And it was partially on purpose.
We've been so much on the go over the past few months, now that we're home and things have slowed down, Anna always asks, "where are we going today?" when she wakes in the morning or after a nap. So it's not just me...
Disney was really great fun. She rode her first roller coaster, and since we love them ourselves, we were super proud of her. In fact she wanted to ride a second time. All the lines at Disney were so short we really didn't have but a 5-10 minute wait, and in some cases, no wait. Yes, it was darned cold. The highs that week were int he low 40's and lows in the 20's but we bundled up and toughed it out! We pretty much rode all of the Disney rides you'd go out there to ride, except for Everest, which always had too long of a wait for our opinion so that one we'll catch next year. And I have to add: "Soaring" was cool but heck I'm not quite sure that it deserves as much hype. I mean, eh.
Of all of the Disney characters, Anna hated Mickey the most and had to work up to even get in a picture with us after a few attempts. Her fave was Minnie and Chip and Dale (those chipmunks). She doesn't know who Chip and Dale really are on TV but she was obviously confusing them with Alvin and the Chipmunk movie she'd just seen. Regardless, everytime those bundles of fur came around, we had to derail our paths so she could snuggle into their soft coats for some love and cuddles. That was really too.danged.cute. She also hated Donald Duck. And I can't blame her. That's one potty-mouthed duck. And he's mean. Don't know how he got a girlfriend.
Anyway, the princess thing was REALLY played up here. So much so that towards the end of the trip, Anna donned her new "princess" nightgown my mom bought her and asked each Paul and I to pose with her separately for a photo. She was acting like the princesses who had posed with her earlier! She thinks she's a princess and now she must wear the nightgown every night. I think we must balance this out with the appropriate amount of space stuff. So it's forthcoming.
This was our second year for the Disney Half Marathon. It was cold. It was sleeting. It was crowded. My registration was lost so I bought one from Carrie on Craig's list. Turns out Carrie was a walker and registered her time such that it put is in the very LAST wave of runners to start. We could literally look behind us and see the lag vehicles. As a result, our run route was always crowded with walkers and we had a tough time just getting around them to maintain a decent pace. We also did alot of running on the sides of the roads since the walkers took up the entire width of most of the roads. The end result of it all was an end time of 2 hrs 47 minutes, which isn't bad, about a 12min 45 sec pace per mile, which is a little slower than what my training was. BUT we could have done even better if we'd have started with the runners that we would have otherwise started with if my registration had gone through. Ah well, it was still our best time ever, beating our previous time by 5 minutes overall. Next year will be even better.
As it turns out, running in the sleet and cold is part of showing to yourself what you're made of. In fact, the longer I ran the less cold I was. Even as the temperature dropped to 35 degrees by the end. 10 minutes after the finish, the chills came on and lasted the rest of the morning. Two things that helped: start time was about the same start time CENTRAL time zone as when I'd normally run with my 4am run group. And I had also run in 30-something-degree weather with my morning run group in the past. So it wasn't all soooo bad.
Notes to myself to remember for last year:
1) Leave no later than 4am for the start.
2) All roads to Epcot are closed off from our resort so pretend we're everyone else and go out to I-4 and just start from the beginning of the directions posted in the race instructions.
3) You can do this on 4 hours of sleep or less but it'd be great if Epcot would choose its Extra Magic hours the night AFTER our run.
Crap, now I forgot the other stuff I wanted to remind myself of at the time.
Anyway, another great time at Disney. A year ZOOMS by. We're registered to run again next year (and THIS TIME I HAVE PRINTED my confirmations and they're SOLID). Not sure how many more years we'll do this...probably just till Anna starts school. I was talking to a fellow mom at a birthday party this past weekend. They'd just returned from Disney. She said they weren't going to make it an annual thing because it seems like it would be "less magical" for the kids. They're probably going to space it out every 4 years or so. I can see that and appreciate her point. There are lots of reasons against making a Disney trip a regular yearly family trip. But for us, it's about more than just going for the magic of Disney. We aren't even huge Disney geeks and I've only seen a handful of Disney movies. Maybe. We don't even watch the Disney Channel at home. For us it's about a family event full of experiences. We all do the family runs as part of the reason we go out there, and as part of that, we earn a sense of achievement and pile a bunch of fun on top of it. Anna's still making little neural connections that allow her to build experiences and I do know she remembers these trips. Still these days when we eat squeeze cheese on crackers she says she remembers "this from Colorado!" (this summer's trip). And everytime she says she "remembers this" Paul and I get excited. Making memories is one of the best parts about being a parent.
That said, I do realize you don't have to go all out as far as Disney World every danged year to make those memories. But for us right now, it's fun (and yes, stressful too) and we'll do it until we think Time's Up. In fact, I took a moment while I was there to be proud of the fact that Paul and I have done well enough in our careers to be able to afford this kind of a family vacation in the first place. We've come a long way and we think this trip is fun. So that's what it is for us right now. That and making our best time on the next year's half marathon!
Teaching starts up again for me next week. And so does my little 4am running group. I figure if I'm going to make even better time next week I should stay on board. They just did the Houston Half marathon this past weekend but I haven't met with them yet to hear how they did.
In the week before the Disney trip, I was in Orlando attending an AIAA conference (the family came out to meet me there for the start of the Disney trip). Long story short, I am heading the committee on organizing next year's 25th Symposium on Gravity-Related Phenomena in Space Exploration, which is part of the AIAA conference. Again in Orlando, again the week before our Disney trip. This AIAA conference is a yearly conference our office attends and it's always in Orlando so it looks like this will be part of our January's for a few more years at least. Anyway, the conference was amazing. I learned so much and met so many ISS science investigators and commercial space developers. I got to stay at a really fantastic resort with a view out my window of Disney World fireworks every night. Not to mention some good food, including the crazy yummy crab cake sandwich...Now I have to crave it for another year. Planning the symposium is something brand new for me but it's all part of my desire to dabble in it a bit and my boss's fantastic intuition when it comes to career development.
So things here at work are AMAZINGLY COOL as usual. This past year has been a blur and in mid Feb, I'll have been at this job for a YEAR already. And I'm STILL a new kid. I've published some papers, attended conferences, traveled overseas, met nobel prize awardees, reviewed proposals, and done lots of outreach. My boss is the best mentor ever. The only thing missing from this job is a trip to space. Not sure that will ever happen, but for now, this will do ;)
WHAT A GREAT YEAR 2009 WAS! HERE'S TO 2010!!!
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