December extras

I went with sports theme for our Christmas letter and cards this year, because basically our life revolved around church and sports this year.  I carted the kids around to practices and games - 7 cross country practices and 4 meets, 60 soccer practices and 27 games, 33 basketball practices and 113 high school practices, 52 basketball games, 8 soccer games refereed, and 45 runs with the kids in the morning. Alex forked out the money for all the sports, and I was the primary cheerleader and bus driver!  Luckily, Nathan walks to and from most of his practices, except the ones during the summer that were at another high school.  We had lots of basketball during December, but I'll save that for a later post.  

It took several tries to get a suitable picture.  The outtakes are pretty funny, although not too funny at the time, being out there for an hour trying to get one good picture.  

Speaking of running though... here is my morning running crew two mornings a week.  The other mornings it's just Alex, the dog, and me.  They don't like the cold mornings much, but at least it's getting lighter again.  Sometimes we started in the dark.  They have been getting up on Monday (or Tuesday) and Friday mornings to run at 6:30am.  The one who is ALWAYS excited is the dog!  She loves her morning outings.    

I added a new thing to my schedule - once a month, I'm doing a catering job at lunchtime for 3 days.  We set up, serve, and clean up lunch for a local business.  I've only done it twice - it's easy and hard at the same time.  Lots of time on my feet, re-filling and lifting heavy things full of food, but easy when you're just standing there serving the food.  I think the thing I like the least about it is interacting with the people though... I guess I'm not much of a people person!  It's not too bad of pay for 12 hours a month - the little extra money is nice, but I mostly said "yes" to doing the job because my catering friend asked if I could help out.  Alex and the kids are excited about my work days, because I have been bringing home yummy leftover food for dinner.      

 Some pictures from one of Jared's hikes.  

We celebrated New Year's with friends (at their place - we weren't the host).  I only took a picture of the balloons - having too much fun to take pictures... we had yummy Chinese food, lots of desserts, and Martinelli's.  Fun times!