Sleeping in Seattle: Weather, spoiled and day light savings

Happy Sunday and happy longer days means more time, time. I'm thrilled that today we got to spring ahead but not thrilled about the time lost today. Today has been rough. I choose to lose my hour today instead of last night because we went to Brian's birthday party last night and after I got home felt I needed to clean up after Walter and the baby sitter instead of going to bed. I waited for Evan to get home because it snowed AGAIN yesterday and I wanted to make sure the boys were safe ( I left early to get home and let the babysitter go home, Evan decided to stay and bargained for a ride home. I'm not sure what he gave up but I'm guessing it's probably a ride home back to the East Side some night in the future). I also decided that I needed a 2 hour nap, not sure what is wrong with me, so in total I lost 3 hours of my day today. UGH. All of this is still good though because of the day light we get to enjoy after work. I think it will be a less than ideal week working Walter through the time change but it'll be worth it! (edit: this was written earlier; tonight he didn't want to go to bed until 8:30, which is about an hour later than his normal bed time. We could be in for a rough week for him) Evan and I have been very spoiled in our lives for many reasons but particularily over the last 5 years, each of which was marked by something significant in our lives: Getting married, graduation, new jobs, moving, having a baby, buying a house and so so much traveling. We've been so used to having something exciting to mark our year that I was having a hard time accepting the fact that 2009 would come to be looked back on as the year the economy went to garbage and we spent most of the year stressed out. So I'm on a mission to make this year memorable for some other reason. I decided to have this be the year that friends and family come visit us! Nana and Pappa were first in January but that was cheating becaue we asked them to come help us out. We rewarded them with an entire weekend to spend with their grandson, just them. Allison is the next person to take us up on this offer and the weekend of June 25th she will spend 5 glorious days at Casa De Keibler. (who's going to be next???) In honor of her visit I've decided to accompany her to the starting line, and hopefully meet her at the finish line (in Lord willing less than 4 hours) Of the Seattle Rock N Roll marathon. This is a some what official decision; I'm 3 weeks into the training and I've already coughed up the cash to register for the race so there is no turning back now! Lord willing the next 16 weeks I'll remain injury free and be able to continue on this 'project'. I'm on a more advanded training program than I was last time so I feel a little like I've been thrown into the thick of it 27-30 miles a week already. Previously I just wanted to finish but now I have a time goal so I'm training a little harder. I run 5 days a week, do yoga or some weight training Fridays and rest Mondays. I do 1 mid week run that's either hills or speed work out. So far I've done 10 miles twice and surprisingly finished OK. But this morning my legs were pretty tired. I had a hard week since Sunday didn't work out I made up my long day on Tuesday and then resumed the rest of the workouts and I haven't had a day off since Monday so I'm looking forward to that tomorrow. The worst part of this training is the weekends, and it's mostly weather related. I generaly wait until I feel comfortable with the weather before heading outside and then get surprised during the weather change. This has been the first of the 3 weeks that I actualy finished a long run on Sunday. And today we got caught in some sort of frozen precipitaiton resembling snow but actualy might have been closer to hail. Then it was bright and sunny then we got dumped on again. Yet Walter continues to want to come with me, he gets his coat and Casey's leash when I start to get dressed and gets excited to be in his stroller. I do think he loves to be outside, he loves to stop at the park at the end and he loves to be with Casey (not me, just Casey) even though we get caught in cold wet weather he still enjoys it. But I am very anxious for the weather to get decidedely better and to stay that way for good. Just when I think we've seen the worst of it we get one more day of snow, or hail, or below feezing temps (which is unheard of here) or maybe all of that in one day! Right now the temp says 47 degrees and I'm watching snow fall and the sun is shining. I even checked the radar before I went after last week's disaster. Somehow I missed the giant grey cloud that is hanging over a very small defined portion of Bellevue. I need to go pick up some more pants, or increase my laundry frequency. I don't have enough running clothes. Tops are fine but pants get soaked and destroyed by mud and nasty, so I need to have a pair for each run, or wash in between. Saturday I went up to a park I found on my long run last week, because I wanted to try the hill trails in the day light hours. This park is only about 400 ft above sea level, so about a 300 foot elevation gain from us. They had an inch and a half of snow, we had none that stuck. It was another miserable run because of the wet cold feet and the slopping through slush. I'm convinced I would have done better if the slush was not there, better footing and better control of my legs. Anyone remember last weeks hill attempt at the mountain? I'm not having luck with these hills! We tried to go to the Childrens museum today but the hours I lost set me back and Walter's nap interfered with those plans. Thursday I tried to take him to another museum after I got off work and I was so confused becasue the place was closed. We shopped for shoes instead and got 2 pair that don't fit him. He's got really tall feet, so these shoes will have to go back. I'm 0 for 2 on the trying to do something fun once a week goal. we have some major making up to do this week I guess! So the rest of the weekend was very uneventful. Next week we are going to go tubing if the snow we accumulated this week sticks around (in the mountains). We completed our first home improvement project this weekend. It took 2 days. We removed some shelves the owners left up and replaced with the shelves Kraig and Amy gave us. After weeks of trying to decide how to arrange them, on which wall ect... we made a decision. Day 1 was filling holes and sanding, day 2 was painting and attaching. I screwed up where I wanted them and we realized after it was too late that 1 shelf, the shelf designed to hold 6 wine bottles, was going to go where the old shelf was and therefore would require us to redrill where we just filled. Luckily we found out that the shelf will not hold 6 bottles of wine before we put any wine on them, so the shelf currently sits empty as we decide what to do with it. 2nd project is not complete, we are making a little play corner for Walter. It's started but requires some furniture that we are not ready to purchase yet. It took some convincing but I finally agreed that we can wait a few months to start spending any non essential money. Aren't we being responsible? I don't like it but I agreed to do it. (I'm not going to mention how much cheaper our tickets to Pittsburgh are today from when we purchased them, but it was a gamble I was willing to take. At least we have the tickets and that's all that matters). So here are some pictures from the weekend.

Walter's little craft nook. Doesn't look like much but I hung some pictures and a display wire. And I decided I'm going to make some overstuffed pillows. See it's a start!