Playing blog catch up

My mom told me to just write a sentence or two about everything that's happened since the last time I posted. That's probably the best idea, but I don't think I'm capable of boiling each thing down to even two sentences so this will probably be a long post :) I promise I'll be better about blogging from now on... I won't make it my New Year's Resolution since that will doom it to certain failure but I'll do my best to update more :D

First things first... I'M OLD(ER)!! WAHH! I started out the birthday celebration with dinner on my actual birthday with Claudia and Jeanette. Although I had a party planned for the next Saturday, I couldn't just sit home and do nothing on my actual birthday so we did a little mellow celebrating. We had a yummy dinner at OI-C Bowl in WC and then headed across the street to 1515 for drinks and dessert. Lindsay was able to meet up with us there for a little bit. THANK YOU girls for making my real birthday a very enjoyable one!!!

The 2nd birthday celebration was on Saturday... I invited some friends over for dinner, drinks and some hanging out. Having a winter birthday means you don't have as many options when it comes to celebrating, especially because I don't really feel like fighting all the holiday crowds to go out to dinner. I cooked up some chili and a potato dish from The Pioneer Woman and Claudia brought me a super yummy cake with berries and pomegranate seeds on top! At the beginning part of the evening, I felt like I was at a high school dance... all the boys were in one room and the girls where in another. Once the food came out there was a little more mingling going on! Of course the evening ended with a couple rounds of my favorite new board game, Rigamarole!! THANK YOU to everyone who came over... I had a fantastic time celebrating with all of you!!

After all the birthday celebrating, it was time for Christmas! I went home to my parent's on Tuesday, picking up my brother at the airport in Sacramento on the way. It was a very relaxing week and weekend with the family... we visited some family and friends, did the whole Xmas thing, went to a couple of movies, ate a lot, and even had a party! Although I missed going to Maui like we have the past few years, it was nice to have a "cold" Xmas, and it definitely made it easier to get back into post-vacation mode when I came back to WC.

Pre-Christmas the running was going very well. We got in some hill training during our "track" workouts and ran a very hilly, but very gorgeous, 7 miles on the 19th. I usually hate hills and don't do very well on them but I've been very proud of myself... I haven't walked any of our hills during track, and only walked a couple of the really big hills during our Coached Run. I think it helped that our Coached Run was somewhere that I've never run before... usually our hilly run is a Lake Chabot, which I'm not a big fan of, but this time we ran at Redwood Regional Park up in the Oakland Hills. Although the first half of the run was almost entirely uphill (switching between mild inclines and steep sections), the gorgeous scenery distracted us, and we got to enjoy a very fast downhill run back!

Running up one of the hills during our hill workout.

The hardy Hill crew

Starting the Redwood Park run... no big hills yet but plenty of frost on the ground!

Post-Christmas the running has been non-existent! I brought my running stuff home with my but never actually went for a run. Tonight will be the first time I've run in over a week and then of course we don't have track this week because it's New Year's Day... but at least it will get me out there doing something, and I can pick back up with our regular schedule on Saturday!