November 25: Turkey Trek 2010

This isn't so much a race report as a series of pictures of people standing around looking reeeeeeally cooooooold.

The whole gang bundled up and ready to go:

 Emilie taking the big group photo:

 Jeremy coming in for a landing with Nana and Gumpy (hidden):

 The crew at the finish line/check-in table:

 Plus James who took some time getting there.  We actually went looking for him, but he was fine and did the whole four miles (walking and running) all on his own!

Alan and I ran the four mile loop. 

Jeremy and the Gumps walked a shorter (2 mile?) loop, and

Madeline did the same loop with friends from church and their dogs.

I missed Jenn a lot and the whole idea of recreating last year's St. John's Moms picture didn't happen due to chaos and so few of us being there (although we thought maybe we'd include stay-at-home dad, Eric, if we did do it...).  I didn't bother with my mp3 figuring it would be more fun to be sociable but found myself totally alone for most of the way following the same forest path as at least a hundred other people.  What's up with that? Apparently my pace is totally unique--slower than the other runners, and faster than the walkers. 

On a baking note, this event also heralded my first attempt at homemade baklava.  I made something else first out of phyllo dough (purchased by accident and taking up space in the freezer) but it was a partial failure so I needed to pinch hit.  The baklava was pretty quick and easy thanks to the cooking spray-between-the-layers-instead-of-melted-butter method, but I learned the hard (or rather, sticky) way not to cook the syrup in the microwave.  Can you say "sugar volcano of doom?"  I knew you could.  Yeah, well, I needed to clean that really well before the dinner crowd arrived anyway. 

Emilie and Susan put on a great event and I'm just so glad we made it this year!!!  It really helped that we didn't do our dinner until Friday so we had the whole day to warm up, bake, and "chillax".  The kids watched the remainder of the Macy's Parade and played a bingo game I found online.  [Note to self: dvr it next year so we don't miss the rockettes.]  I had sworn that there would be no more housework on the actual holiday, but I made a liar of myself.  We still had quite a bit of picking up and cleaning to do Thursday and even Friday morning.   But it was so nice to enjoy spending time as a family and doing loads of food prep and decorating for our big holiday gathering.  It was a Good Day.