Vacation, Part Deux

The week back after taking vacation is usually pretty bad work-wise. Mine was no exception. Lots of stuff going on, things falling apart, the threat of city-leveling explosion... you know, all in a crappy day's work. I survived, but the stress of it all made me not want to do pretty much anything.

Back to the Vacation story.... where was I? Oh yes, we had landed in Seattle, and nothing bad had happened. It was almost lunch time Seattle time, and WAY past lunch time Duluth time, and so the first order of business was lunch. At IHOP. Which I hadn't had since I was in college oh so long ago. The Boy inhaled his food, and some of Aaron's food, and then some of Grandpa's food. I am no looking forward to when he's a teenager. Once we were all full and no longer grumpy, we made our way to Grandma and Grandpa Abramson's house.

The grandparents live in North Bend, which is where the TV show Twin Peaks was filmed. Which is pretty cool. The two older boys instantly named one of the two mountains near North Bend Buttcrack Mountain. That joke never got old for them. I wish I would have gotten a picture of it, but it never occurred to me to do that.

My first impressions of the Seattle area:

• It was warm. But not oppressive warm. When you got out of the sun for the most part it was quite pleasant.
• The trees are HUGE. Like insanely huge. Didn't know trees could get that big. And the ones I saw on the first day weren't even that big.
• The scenery was nothing like anything I had ever experienced, even in the Northwoods. I was in awe.

That first day Grandpa had gotten us tickets to the Day out with Thomas in the next town over. Which was cool, because boys love trains. And, well, it's Thomas. They had all done it in Duluth, but this one was way better. Albeit hotter. Some pictorial evidence:

 With Sir Topham Hatt

 Riding on Thomas

The view out the window at one point

The train ride itself wasn't too long, but the views were so amazing. Definitely worth it.

After doing the whole Thomas thing, we went to get ice cream at the local equivalent to Dairy Queen and then back to the grandparents house. I can't recall if it was an early evening or not, as we were all exhausted from getting up so early, the plane ride, and all the activity of the day. But we had some awesome pizza for dinner and it was really nice to get out of town. And Day Two of the Seattle adventure was yet to come...

The Rest of the Week's Runs

Running has been a lot harder than I feel it should be after taking not that long off. I don't know if it's the humidity, or running so early in the morning, or what. It's a bit disappointing to be going SO SLOWLY, but I need to cut myself some slack and just keep on going - eventually it will not be so hard. On Wednesday I ran 3.04 miles in 29:52, for an average pace of 9:49. On Saturday I got a bit lost (stupid dead end roads) and ran 3.95 miles in 40:09, for an average pace of 10:11. Here's to a new week and the change to improve! 

Miss Me? Also, Vacation Part 1

I know, I know. It's been almost a month since I've posted anything. I guess I needed a break from running AND from blogging. But that break is now over, and that means I need to find things to write about. Which shouldn't be too terribly hard.

One of the big things that happened over the past month's blogging hiatus is the hubby and I took a week's vacation out to the Seattle area. With all three monsters. No, we are not insane. Well, mostly not insane. I guess this blog is as good a place as any to chronicle the adventure...

In reality, the adventure that is the Vacation started about a week before we actually went anywhere for said Vacation. The weekend prior, Aaron and I went down to the Cities for his work and took my car since it has working A/C. Which means that it just had to break. The trunk decided that it just didn't want to open anymore, and the awesome engineers at Ford decided that a person doesn't really need to get in their trunk if the fob, dash button and key don't work. And the dealership couldn't get me in until the Friday we were leaving, at which point they said it wouldn't be fixed until the next week. So my car had a vacation at the dealership, and we all rode down to the Cities in a car with no A/C.

So, Friday was finish packing, eat dinner, load up the car and head down to a hotel near the airport so that we could catch a 7 AM flight. At the airport by 5 AM. Up at 4 AM. I think we were all a bit cranky, but very excited. The two youngest had never been on a plane before so it was all exciting and new. Our flight was delayed a half hour, which wasn't too bad. And once the plane was in the air, Aaron's two yahoos promptly fell asleep, and The Boy entertained himself for all but 45 minutes by reading books. He did end up sleeping for about 45 minutes of the 3 hour flight.

Notice the looks of exhaustion.

 

We flew Sun Country, which was surprisingly very nice. I felt like I had way more room than on pretty much any other flight I've taken (except for Midwest Express flights - does that airline even exist anymore? Those seats were SO HUGE!). And you got free soda/juice; they had snacks to purchase. The Boy got beef jerky. Those three hours flew by, even though it was a big more turbulent than I care for.

 

This is getting pretty long, so I'll end here. Don't want to bore you too much...

 

Yesterday's Run

After exactly a month off, I went for a short run on Monday morning. And, boy was it HARD! I didn't think I got that out of shape. Maybe the heat and humidity at the butt crack of dawn made things even harder than they should have been. But I got out, so that counts I guess. Yesterday I ran 2.51 miles in 24:29, for an average pace of 9:45. I just have to keep things going now...