Weekend Update

Friday was a busy day, so I didn't have time to write. I did have time to go to hot yoga in the morning, then spinning at noon and I ran for 15 minutes right afterwards. So it was a solid workout day.

Yesterday was a ski day, although the conditions were good enough to snowboard. In the morning, I brought The Girl (age 3 1/2) up to the mountain. She was really happy on the magic carpet, but not excited about the lift. We went up a beginner lift four times - she got off successfully with my help the first three, but the last one she decided to squeeze her arms as tight as she could around the pole in the center (it was a double chair), so I had to pry her off to get off the lift and in doing so, we both fell but I was able to hold her on top of me so I broke the fall.

Skiing with her was a ton of work, too - I had to ski in a deep squat and basically keep her upright. So my legs were BURNING after those four runs.

Then we went back to the magic carpet, where she decided she could ski independently and went down the (much more shallow) grade by herself. After watching both of my kids learn to ski, I've decided less is more when it comes to instruction. I like to stand below them and just say "Ski to me!" and they figure out intuitively how to turn. When it comes to stopping, in the beginning I just let them slam into me, and that way I can give them hugs and kisses before they continue down. Eventually, I use the "pizza" and "french fries" analogies.

My mother-in-law picked her up at noon - after she scarfed down half of a HUGE cheeseburger - and John and I skied together until Gabriel's afternoon snowboard lesson was over, then we skied with the Boy a bit (he just got new skis, so he had to get used to 20 centimeters more!).

Then, as it was the first weekend of the month, it was time to walk all over the Microsoft campus and put flyers on all the kitchen bulletin boards for my husband's business. It's incredibly effective, and it only costs us color copies and five hours of our lives each month. I wore my heart rate monitor just to see how many calories I'd burn - it was around 800 for the four hours, 4o minutes we were going (199 flyers, 46 buildings). But man, I was EXHAUSTED by the time we were done!

I woke up really stiff and sore this morning, so I'm dreaming of hot yoga, but it's not meant to be. Instead I attached a trailer to my aluminum hybrid bike, put the Girl in it, and took the Boy and his best friend for a 9 mile ride on a trail. It wasn't a ton of work for me to pull the Girl, but more work than just cruising. Gabriel can go around 12 mph pretty comfortably, but his friend is a little slower, so we ended up staying around 10 or so. Which is fabulous for a couple of six-year-olds, no?

The last thing I did before I crashed was clean the garage. It was SO DISGUSTING - and in cleaning it, we found all kinds of useful things, like John's cycling gloves and two unused bicycle tubes. But now John and I are disagreeing about what belongs in a garage. He says cars belong there. I want a bike rack, the kind you see outside stores or offices. I want to have easy access this summer to any of the three bikes I'll be riding (Mommy bike, road bike, tri bike). He thinks the bikes should go on the ceiling or something - but then I won't be able to easily reach them. Don't I make much more sense? :-)