January
- New Year's Eve @ Myrtle Beach
- Dad Moving to South Carolina
- Idiot Run
- Myrtle Beach Half Maraton
March
- Cody's Job Offer
- AcroYoga Workshop
- Spartan Sprint
- Rugged Maniac
May
- Moving
- Cody's Surprise Birthday Dinner with Erika & Ryan
- Ali's Wedding
- Memorial Day Weekend Dirt Track Race
June
- Aerial Silk's Duet
- Microburst
- Grandma's Marathon
July
- Cody's Visit to Nebraska
- Andi's Visit to Charleston
- Baxter
The rest will be long-winded because this is the point I stopped blogging.
August
Vancouver
I did this trip decent justice in the Christmas Letter.
Birthday at the SCCoC Fundraiser
A few days before my birthday, the plant manager asked me if I'd be interested in representing my company at a local fundraiser. We had a blast. There was free wine and beer and finger foods. There was a silent auction (I won a 3-month YMCA membership), live auction and reverse raffle. A game where you tossed rings at wine bottles to win if you ringed it was where many of us spent a lot of time. I never won one, though. Afterwards, we tagged along with a coworker and his friends to a backyard fire.
September
September is the start of our busy season at work, so it was mostly a blur of long workdays and stress. We ran a race in mid-September out at Morrow Mountain called Run the Valley. Cody ran the 10K and placed in his age group (there weren't that many people running it) and I got third in my age group in the half marathon.
The last weekend in September, our wedding photographer agreed to drive down to take anniversary pictures. I love our tradition of taking pictures every year around our anniversary and they did a great job. Since we love our new town so much, we really enjoyed showing it off to them and they captured it beautifully.
October
We celebrated our anniversary with a weekend staycation at the lake. We were dogsitting for a fellow yogi and she let us stay at her lake house while she was gone. We relaxed and had a great time.
November
Tough Mudder
I ran the TM with my two work husbands and a team of people from our town. As advertised, it was tough although some of the obstacles were more mental than physical. The memorable obstacles were the ice bath (a dumpster full of ice water which was Lee's favorite), the warrior carry (carry a teammate and we have great pics of Lee & Jason teaming up for this one), the electric eel (a crawl through water with electric wires hitting you in the back, Jason was beside me in this one yelling expletives through the entire distance), the plunge (15 foot drop into muddy water hoping bottom is deep enough), everest (a quarter pipe where you jumped and hoped your teammates caught you) and the electroshock theraphy (hanging wires some lit up to 10KV which Jason hit and passed out from leading to a header into a haybale).
Mountain Getaway
After the stress of September & October, we decided on a small getaway to the mountains. We each took a day off and drove out to an extremely nice cabin in the woods. Since I was recovering from a sinus infection most likely brought on by splashing around in the mud in 60 degree weather the weekend before, we were pretty chill. We lit a fire, used the hot tub and read some much ignored books.
Thanksgiving
Another one covered in pretty decent detail in the Christmas Letter.
December
Memphis
Less than a week after returning from Thanksgiving, we were in the air again, this time headed to Memphis. The first night we arrived, we mainly slept. The second day we found a tour that would take us out to Graceland. I enjoyed the random trivia, although was less enthused with the listing of most major songs and shows. But the audio headsets were completely ridiculous...
In the gift shop, I found a little foodie guide to Memphis, a book we would follow religiously for the rest of the trip. As we were getting on the bus to return to our hotel, ice was starting to hit the roads. That evening, the St. Jude's Marathon Organizers chose to cancel the event, an outcome we were not in the least upset about. I was prepared to run the event but not excited about the temperature. Cody was not going to run due to an injury. Instead, we went around the corner to Beale Street.
Some dedicated runners ran all or some of the course in the morning, ice and course support be damned. We barely stumbled out of bed for the free breakfast they were offering. But once we got going, we hiked quite a bit that day in the cold. We went to a unique shopping district and visited Overton Park. We also visited Central BBQ for another requisite Memphis experience.
Another historical trivia visit was to Sun Studio, which, in addition to Elvis, recorded Johnny Cash, BB King and other notable names in music. It is even still a working recording studio. We hit more blues clubs on our last night in Memphis.
The following morning, our flight was scheduled to leave at noon but was delayed. At the airport, we rebooked a direct flight out of Memphis for the evening and rented a car for some more excursions, notably tracking down butter cookies called out in the foodie book (they were worth it, by the way).
Christmas
We hosted Christmas this year. We even had real mattresses in both guest bedrooms. I don't know why I even bothered buying presents, that should have been good enough. We cut a tree and visited a winery, made prime rib, decorated cookies, opened presents and played games. The boys went motorcycle shopping and golfing together. The time was relatively peaceful, although our puppy was defintiely suffering from too much excitement much of the time. Stump pretty much though Rob was the coolest person he'd ever seen and they had a little bromance going on their whole time here. Rob & Meredith were only able to stay through the weekend.
I worked most days that week, but on Christmas Day we cooked the turkey from work that's been in our freezer since Thanksgiving. My mother figures it was discount, because it was a bit tough. But it was good with potatoes and gravy and stuffing. On Friday, we went to the Book of Mormon Musical, a satirical spoof by the creators of South Park. They headed out on Saturday, managing to leave many of their presents behind. I guess we can ship or wait for a return visit.
New Year's
If I hadn't had to work, we would have been on a beach again for New Year's. However, with New Year's Day being my only non-working day (and I was still coming in that evening) we had to make local plans. We got tickets to a comedy show with a work friend and his wife. Since he's a non-drinker, he offered to drive. After a day at work, I came home and went for two shots of liquor. However, after a week with my family, there was barely any effect on me.
When we got to the comedy club, we had to stand outside for about half an hour while the last show ended and the people cleared out. We distracted ourselves from the cold by watching the women's outfits as they passed, in dresses so short you were waiting to get flashed and heels so high they leaned heavily on their boytoys to help them walk.
The comedy shows were quite good (except the MC) and the warmup act literally had us crying from one story. We rang in the New Year immediately after the show and headed home via a creative scenic route derived from several missed turns.
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