I'm kinda slow.......

I've been doing yoga at home for over 4 months now.  I do it almost every day.  We don't have a lot of extra empty space in which to do it, but I have been using our bedroom.  After 4 months, I finally realized that if I moved the blanket box from the bottom of the bed, I would have so much more room.....DUH!!!!

I remember when I bought the props I would need to do yoga at home.  It was when Amazon wasn't able to fulfill orders in two days.  I thought "by the time they arrive, I'll be back at work".  Foolish thought

Random things in June

We have survived another month working from home.  Ben and Maggie are both out of school now and getting a chance to relax.  They went down to Little Rock at the beginning of June and had a great time.  Maggie and I both had COVID birthdays in June-they were very low key events as you can imagine. 

We have been saving money on getting coffee from Crave or Starbucks, but drinking more at home, so Sam decided we justified a new coffee machine (our old one leaked) and we did a significant upgrade.  Sam has really figured this one out and it helps us get through the day working from home

I made my second Baby Yoda-this one was made using the recommended yarns and I think it came out much better.  I may just have to keep him!!!!!

Nature is fighting back.  The gym equipment at Tilles has been roped off for quite a few weeks now and these little redbuds are taking root and reclaiming the land

It's been pretty hot in June, but we've had a couple of deluges.  Our neighbor had some work done along the side of his garage and dammed up our flow of water in the rain garden.  Now it floods the yard when we get a heavy rain-good for washing the feet, I suppose

It also results in immediate lakes in Tilles!!!!

Tilles Park

Tilles Park was closed for quite a few weeks in April/beginning of May, but opened up again in the middle of May.  It is so much nicer to walk through there than fight the traffic (much less) and walkers (much more) in the neighbourhood.  I started walking and/or running every morning before it gets too hot.

We have had a lot of rain this Spring, and the park has a set of areas where "lakes" appear and disappear constantly!!!!!

I love it when the mist rises from the water early in the morning, it really reminds me of being in England

Nice wildflowers along the creek bed

Now, that's how to do a 5K!!!!!

This is the first year I have done the Komen Race for a Cure.  I am usually out of town, but had told Ratna last year that I would do it with her in 2017.  Ratna doesn't run, but was willing to walk it with me.  I had no idea walking one of these could be so much fun.  We just talked the whole way round.  There was a huge number of people walking, so we didn't feel out of place at all.
SLU had a team and so we were able to get a shuttle from the SLU garage to the start of the race, which was huge because we didn't have to pay to park and fight the traffic to get downtown.
I got a rare picture of the hard-core runners at the start (usually I'm waiting somewhere at the back of this pack)

Selfie before the start!!!!

Here they go.....

SLU had these balloon arches over the road by the parking garage, so cool!!!!

We found the Billiken!!!!

And, we were done in about 1 hour and 15 mins.  Not bad for hanging out for photos, going into the arena and strolling along......

Busy weekend

The kids had a 4 day weekend for Presidents' Day, so I stayed home with them on Friday.  We had beautiful weather the whole time.  I had to take my car to Honda and so we were stuck at home on Friday.  The kids made the most of the sunshine-Ben sat on the new steps

Maggie played dead on the patio.....

We met Caroline for lunch.  This was the first time we had seen her this year!!!!  I had this Cobb salad for lunch since we went to Half and Half and I was avoiding all the starchy goodies!!!!

Sam and I went to Leeny's party on Friday night to celebrate the end of the Paleo Challenge

Lazy Saturday morning-cats love it when we are just sitting around

We went to St Charles with June and Maddie on Saturday afternoon and had a great time wandering around the new shops.  They have had quite a turnover since we were last there
We went to the SLU women's basketball game on Saturday night.  Jan and Julie came with us

I felt like we were running around all weekend.  I told Sam it's because we actually had a life and went out on both Friday and Saturday nights!!!!

Sam does the Crossfit competition

Sam did the Crossfit St Louis competition on Sunday morning. It's amazing to see all those folks competing, they are so strong.....

Look at that great form!!!!!

Fantastic!!!!

Sam is so cool....

Not much going on, apparently

If I was honest, my work week last week was so busy that nothing got done at home.  I worked late every single day and even worked 14 hours on Thursday!!!!  Hopefully that's just a one-off week.  I had our department research week, interviewing MD-PhD students, teaching, a seminar presentation, meetings for the dean search and AOA student poster session.  Plus, I had 2 grant deadlines!!!!
Anyway, on Saturday I ran the #4 race in the Snowball Series-a 6K run in Creve Coeur Park.  I had to run it on my own because Sam was working this weekend.  We ran past the Dripping Springs waterfall, it was mostly frozen

This picture of the cats pretty much sums up our lives since we went back to work, everyone has been very mellow!!!!

One of the faculty in my department used to own a flower shop and is really good at arranging.  She did these for research week and we snagged them after the meeting for our break room.

It inspired me to try to do better with my flowers.  This was my first attempt!!!!  Apparently I need more filler!!!!

Stan Musial Bridge 6K run

We ran the Stan Musial Bridge run on Saturday morning. It was a 6K run because his Cardinals number was 6. The bridge was officially opened to traffic yesterday, so they had a run, bike time trial and opened the bridge to the public on Saturday afternoon.  It had snowed (yet again) on Friday night and we were very close to not doing the run, but it would have been a missed opportunity to be on the bridge and we have done many runs in awful weather this Winter.  I am so glad we decided to just go ahead and do the run, the weather wasn't anything like as bad as I thought it might be.  Even though it was cold, it wasn't windy at all and they had done a pretty good job of clearing the streets, it was pretty slushy in some places, but not much ice anywhere.  We timed getting to the race perfectly, as we walked up they started the timer, so we just got in line and ran with everyone else.  It was great because we didn't have to stand around in the cold at all.  We just had time to take out "before race" picture.

I took a couple of photos when I was on the bridge, but didn't want to stop for too long.  This was taken from the East side of the bridge, you can see the ice on the river.

I took this picture of the runners, really just so I could get a picture of the bridge

People standing around at the Start/Finish line....

We look just as happy at the end as we did at the beginning.  It was a great run

My time was pretty good for a 6K run.  My time was a little better on the way back than on the way out, there was a short part of the run where you had to run uphill to get onto the bridge, it must have made the difference in the time.  I'm really not very good at running up any kind of an incline.

My goal for 2014 is to do a run every month.  January and February are out of the way, now I just need to find a run in March.

Go! St. Louis 2013

We all ran in the Go! St. Louis Halloween yesterday. It was brutally cruel to have to wake the kids up at 5:00 am for a 7:00 am start on a Sunday morning.  Everyone was pretty happy once we got down town

Ben was ready to go

Sam was warming up doing squats with Maggie on his shoulders!!!!

Sam ran on his own, but Ben, Maggie and I ran together most of the way.  Ben has brilliant running form, but then he's trained to run right in gymnastics.  They spend a long time optimizing their running form for the vault.  As a result, even though he says he hates running and rarely runs, his form is spectacular.  He keeps his body perfectly steady and moves his arms enough to propel him along.  All his energy is going into his legs and so he just runs along barely breathing deeply and runs back and forth while I am almost dying!!!  Maggie is completely the opposite and her form is very bad.  Her breathing was awful and we had to stop and walk several times as I was worried she was going to keel over!!  At the end of the race, she just lay on the floor and would not get up-poor Maggie.  I really need to take her out running with me a lot more often.

Ben was very happy to get his medal, and his banana, and his bar of chocolate, and his chocolate milk.....

Sam doesn't even look like he's run at all!!!!

Sam had Maggie squatting to try to help her legs....

We can still summon a smile.....

Our life without Maggie

This post should really be entitled "Our life without Maggie and Ben", but we did see Ben for a brief while.  The house has been extremely quiet without the around!!!  Maggie went camping with Jan and Julie on Wednesday night and we are doing the child swap Friday night so Ben spends a couple of days with them too.  Ben had gymnastics on Wednesday evening and then went to the Webster Groves fair with his friends, so we barely saw him-we were in bed when he came home at 11:30!!!!

We got up early on Thursday morning and went downtown to do the Freedom 4 mile run.  The sun was still coming up over the arch

We took a picture before the run

It was a great route to run, completely different to any other run we have done there.  We ran past the arch at the beginning

We ran past Busch stadium

and past the City Garden

We were still smiling at the end.  We did the run in 42:38, not bad but I did walk some of it, just couldn't keep going

We went to pick peaches at Eckerts.  Was the easiest trip we have done out there, got straight on a wagon going out and coming back.  Was very strange to do it just on our own, but we had a very nice day together