A second (smaller) winter snow

After our large snow storm in December, we had a smaller one in January that only kept us in for a day or so, and luckily it hit over the weekend so it didn't impact life too much! On Saturday morning, Natalie and I took a walk, trying to beat the snow before it started. We walked from the Downtown Mall to the Corner and back, and definitely saw some snow flurries along the way!

 

By the time we arrived home, the snow was definitely coming down, so we hunkered down for the rest of the day.

Sunday dawned cold, sunny, and covered in snow!

We weren't super snowed in, as it wasn't enough for that, but it was enough to let the kids sled again.

And enjoy another session in the hot tub to warm up afterwards!

Now that it's spring, we are enjoying our house even more - I like snow, but our neighborhood is so lovely now that it's in bloom, and I don't mind the warmer weather!

Exploring Charlottesville - family walks

So, we got to Charlottesville ok, but needed to start exploring our new town! Of course, Evan and I know it quite well already, but it's one thing to remember locations from nearly 20 years ago, or from visiting for a day or two here and there since then - it's another thing to now live here! Plus, the kids don't know C'ville nearly as well as we do, so we wanted to take them on some local walks so they could really get to enjoy their new home.

We ventured to Walnut Creek Park, which is only a few miles south of our house. I'm always on the lookout for new places to walk, and it has a ton of trails. It turns out that, like a lot of the places I've found to walk in C'ville, these trails are actual woods trails, not paved, which is tough with all of the rain we've had (hello, mud!). But...when it dries out this summer (we hope!) they'll be fun to explore more.

We drove through Walnut Creek and explored a few of the paths, and also found the lake beach area that will be really fun to enjoy this summer!

Of course, you can't live in C'ville without walking around Grounds. UVa has perfect places to walk (when the sidewalks aren't overrun with students, that is), and the kids have really enjoyed our walks there (mostly because of getting Starbucks drinks from the Corner, I'm betting). The Lawn is just beautiful pretty much any time of day. This first sunset walk was a real stunner!

I've taken a lot of walks on Grounds in the past 4 months (it's probably my favorite place to walk so far). Mornings, evenings, even some mid-day...it's just a great place to walk, especially on the weekend when I can park for free on Grounds. And it does make for some stunning photos.

And don't worry - when we do these family excursions, we always bring Lucy with us! It's not always easy to keep her from getting too muddy/dirty, given all of the rain we've had, but she loves exploring with us.

In fact, I have a whole folder of photos on my computer now labeled "UVa" and the vast majority of those photos include Lucy. I'll have to do a post on those soon!

Inaugural half-marathon

After I cut my hair, and had some new head shots taken, I had one more new thing to do - walk a half marathon! I set this as a goal for myself after really stepping up my weekly walks during the first half of 2018. Why not try to go from my regular 4-6 miles to do a full half marathon? I can train for that! Since I don't like the heat, I didn't want to do this during the summer, so I set a date in October (also because October is the best month, as we all know!). I found a recommended training schedule for runners who are doing a half marathon, and was able to stick to it (mostly) for the 7 weeks before my scheduled walk.

I decided to walk from the end of the W&OD trail in Purcellville back home to Leesburg. Because I wanted the walk to be novel, I never trained on that part of the trail, sticking instead to my normal routes through Leesburg (but varying them up some to keep it interesting). The longest training walk I did was 10 miles (as I missed the week I was supposed to do a 12 mile walk), but I felt good about my ability to go 13.1.

Evan and the kids took me out to Purcellville to the end of the trail, so I could start there!

I was ready to go with my arm band, my headphones, and some snacks in my belt pouch.

Oh yeah, and we brought Lucy too! We also stopped at Starbucks so I could get my usual refresher for the first part of the walk... and then it was time to start!

I did take selfies at each mile, but I'm not going to post them all here. Just a few to show progress... oh, and some pretty sites I saw along the way.

Mile 2

Before mile 3:

During Mile 4:

Mile 6 - it's getting warmer out there!

During mile 6, I walked the trail underpass at the Route 9 intersection in Hamilton. Turns out that just past there is this great old bridge that you walk through!

Mile 7, during pee break #3 (yep that refresher went right through me! Luckily the trail was pretty deserted) and stretch break #1

Mile 8 - where I also took stretch break #2. And yep, definitely warmer out at this point!

Mile 10 - I'm back in "civilization!" This was on the outskirts of Leesburg.

At Mile 11, I left the trail at the kids' school to head back towards my house. The final 2 miles were not on the trail. Mile 12 photo: just past the bridge over Rte 15 bypass on Sycolin Rd.

And finally...Mile 13.1! Right in front of my house. I did it!

All in all, I walked the whole thing in just over 3 and a half hours. Average pace was the highest I've EVER done on a walk - the trail is such an amazing place to walk! I love how the Fitbit app tracked everything - really fantastic to see my progress.

In fact, looking at the mile times, it's even more obvious how much easier it is to walk on the trail - the last two miles were by far my slowest, and they were once I had left the trail.

Overall, I have to say I am really proud that I did that, and I want to do another one! Unfortunately there is not a great trail like the W&OD in Charlottesville (I really miss that thing), but I'm sure I can figure out something. I haven't gone longer than about 5 miles since we moved, so I need to step up the training as it gets warmer and try to do this again! 

Also, a big thank you to everyone who donated, as I did this as a fundraiser for St. Jude's (Natalie chose the charity). It really meant a lot to me.

Walking Lucy in March

In my previous post, I mentioned how in the first month or so we had Lucy, she wasn't able to go 3 miles with us. Well, I can say that now that she's 4 months old, she's definitely there! She routinely goes 3 miles with me (and sometimes the family); her longest to date has been just under 3.5 miles. My goal is to get her up to my full almost 5 mile route that I do through town; as soon as it gets warmer again (wasn't that nice this past weekend?), I plan to start working on that with her!

Anyway, the fact that she couldn't go 3 miles didn't mean we couldn't work on walking on a leash for shorter distances. One of the things I love about working from home is that when the weather is nice I can take her for a good mile or two walk after the kids get on the bus, but before I start working. Or, I can take her mid-day at lunch...or at the end of the day! Or all 3! It's just nice to have options :)

Sometimes we walk just around our neighborhood (particularly first thing in the morning), but other times I pop her in the van and we walk somewhere else in town. This accomplishes two things: first, it works at getting her over her dislike of the car (she's just about settled down on car rides, but it's still not her favorite thing), and second, it gets her walking in new areas (again, hitting that "one new place each week" goal).

Lucy took some getting used to being on the leash; for the first 6-7 weeks we had her, there was a lot of fighting us when she first got on the leash. "Fighting" meaning: we get out the door, or the back gate, she pees, then sits her butt down and doesn't want to move. I can say she's just about over that, which is great, but it took some work! Now she walks pretty well (although we are still working on her not pulling too much, or trying to bite her leash), and fortunately in addition to loving going on walks, she also is pretty darn good at posing for me during our walks. All of these were taken in March, when Lucy was 3 months old.

Taken on a small bridge in Raflo Park near downtown Leesburg.

Taken behind my house, on the other side of the pond (our house is one of those in the background).

Taken on the walking path and fields at Ida Lee, near the playground.

Taken on the sidewalk near our house, across from the K2M building at sunset.

Not pictured in this post are the MANY photos where she looked away suddenly, or got up and moved (as she has a tendency to do when I crouch down to take her photo). I know it looks like she sits there calmly as I snap away (and she is pretty good, especially for 3 months old!), but she's quite active. Lots of patience required!

Weekend morning walks

As soon as we got Lucy, we started taking her for walks (more on that shortly). However, the nice long walks that I (and sometimes my family) like to take, particularly on the weekends, were a bit much for a 10 week old puppy - I was worried at her ability to go 3-ish miles with us. So, on a nice early March Sunday morning, we left Lucy at home and headed to Starbucks just the 4 of us.

Here we all are almost back to the house. Round trip it's almost 3 miles, and again, that seemed like a lot for the pup. Plus, it was nice to go just the 4 of us, as it had been too cold for the kids to want to go for a while, and I like spending this time all together.

The following weekend dawned warmer (no big puffy coats needed!), and one of our puppy kindergarten tasks (more on that soon too) is to take Lucy somewhere new every week. So, we loaded her up in the car and took her over to Ida Lee. She had a blast running, climbing, chewing, and exploring with the family.

When we got home, the lovely weather continued and so we took Lucy outside to play. Puppies have lots of energy! Turns out that, like my parents' cocker spaniel, Lucy is a big fan of chasing bubbles (Calla was never into that). So, we wore her out with some bubble chasing!

 

I then brought out her outside ball, and yeah, she was pretty much done. But you can't let the ball get too far away from you, as it might get taken!

 

Yep, sleepy puppy indeed.

 

Happy New Year 2015!

And suddenly, it's 2015! Crazy how things like that happen. 2014 was definitely a busy year, but also I think a really great one for us. I've done a bunch of "recaps" on here throughout the year, so I'm not really going to spend a bunch of time looking through last year's blog posts and writing my "stats" here. The one thing I will mention is that I was proud of myself for beating the 2013 total (139 in 2013, and 143 in 2014). Overall I suppose I did post more in 2013, if you include AbbeLynn Photography, as I hit 100 there in 2013, and only 85 in 2015. But this year was really busy! There were some months I just couldn't get posts up...and to be honest, every now and again I get sucked into cross stitching (as I am currently with my new project; pics on that soon), and then I do that in the evenings instead of posting. But overall, I'm happy I was able to get so much up at the end of 2014...particularly as I still have 10 posts from the fall/winter 2014 to still post! So hopefully January will continue to be post-prolific...especially since I don't travel for another 2 weeks (yes, I've been home for 4, and have two more with no travel - so exciting!).

Anyway, back to celebrating the New Year. We continued our "tradition" of hosting NYE (we've done it twice now, that makes it a tradition!) with a bunch of old college friends last night. It was a great time...albeit a bit different this year, since Natalie stayed up til midnight with us! So, we ended up playing a number of kid-friendly games, and never pulled out Cards Against Humanity at all! What is our group coming to? It didn't matter - we had a really great time!

We started the evening with Cinderella/Tangled Pop Up Game. Only 4 people can play at once, but Emily and Bryan were game to try it with Natalie and I, and we had a lot of fun! When you just join in, kids games are actually not half bad :)

Bryan was even a good enough sport to play Cinderella

 Natalie then went off to watch some TV by herself, so we did play adult board games (Ticket to Ride, Zombie Munchkin), while hanging out and eating. After she got bored, I attempted to convince her to go to bed, but she really wanted to stay up til midnight. So, it was time to find more kid-friendly games to entertain her. Plus, Amy wanted something very "mindless" to play, so we pulled out Tenzi for the first time. Natalie had gotten it for her birthday and we hadn't played yet. Thoroughly mindless yet incredibly fun! Each person gets 10 dice, and you roll and roll and roll until you have all 10 of your dice showing the same number - first person there wins. That entertained us for a LONG time!

 Natalie then pulled out princess Yahtzee, and Alex and Amy joined her and I for a couple  of games.

 At that point, it was just before midnight so we all headed to the living room to watch the countdown. Happy New Year!

 

Today our friends (Beth, Kathy and their families) stayed until about noon, and then we spent some time getting the house back in order. We played Tenzi again with both kids, and then I suggested we go for a walk. We headed over to Ida Lee, and unfortunately it was a bit colder out than I'd planned for; Natalie in particular was chilly, so we only went  about 1.6 miles, but it was still a fun family outing and really pretty!

 

Tomorrow I go back to the real world - I've been off work since December 18 (I've NEVER had a two week break, at home, that wasn't maternity-related since I started grad school over 10 years ago!), and so it's finally time to go into work tomorrow to get caught up before everyone returns next Monday. We've had a really great holiday break (about 3-4 posts on that coming up over the next few days to finish up the holiday reporting!), but I guess it's time to get back into the swing of things! Thanks to everyone who helped us kick off 2015, and here's hoping it's a wonderful year for everyone!