Christmas Pics

Just some random pics of Christmas this year.

Evil Genius is so cute just sitting in a chair!

and doing the sprinkler dance....

Friday night we got together with Kelley's dad's family in Biscoe NC (it's right next to Troy and Starr, NC if you've never heard of Biscoe)

They got new pajamas on Christmas Eve.

Santa dropped a load on our living room overnight! The girls were thrilled.


Bigun, Kelley, her dad Mickey, his wife Eleanor. They came over Christmas morning to check out santa claus with the girls. Kelley took a lot of time to put together these fantastic picture books (hardcover with digitally printed pics) at www.lulu.com, they came out really clean. Fantastic product. Everyone is reading the book she put together for Mickey.

Who turned out the lights? Both girls got new bike helmets, Bigun got a new bike, and they both got razor scooters.

Hanging with some of their favorite presents

Saturday afternoon we drove to Greenville SC to be with my mom's family.

My mom's mom, brother Morgan, Aunt Becky

Michael is ROCKING that 'stache! With his wife Summer.

We gave Morgan that hat. Too funny!

Sunday we all had brunch with my parents. That's quite a table spread! And I made the piece of furniture in the back corner when I was in college. That was a really cool design for a corner cabinet.

Greenville got SNOW! It was the first white christmas since the 1920's.

Mom and Bigun

Morgan, Michael, dad, his mom (she's 90 and still awesome), mom, me. Isn't it appropriate that I wore a red race t-shirt to christmas?

Natalie (Morgan's girlfriend who recently passed the SC bar exam and is now officially a lawyer), Morgan, Summer, Michael, Gigi, me, Evil Genius, Kelley, Bigun.

The four of us

Sunday night we went to visit Kelley's mom in Prosperity SC. Bigun loves her Michael Phelps book and funny hat.

I swiped a page from that hat book too.

EG also got this incredible sweater!

Took us 7 hours to drive home from Prosperity (normally 4 hours). We came home to snow in Raleigh! What a white christmas!

A snowman with broccoli eyes and hair? bitch please.

We all had a good holiday. I've got this whole week off as a vacation. It's my first "whole week" vacation since 2000 and I am so freaking excited. Thanks to the holidays (and having the office closed next monday for New Years) and weekend days, I burned 4 days of PTO and get 11 days in a row without having to go into the office! loving it!

Still to come: a 2010 year in review, and the 2011 kickoff schedule and goals post.

Free Week

We got lucky this last week. Kelleys mom kept the kids. At her house.

FOR THE WHOLE WEEK.

Let me repeat that in case you missed it. For the first time since Bigun was born (5 and half years ago) someone else took both girls home with them for the whole week. The entire week. We had no kids in our house from last monday afternoon until today. TODAY!! No kids. It was good to see the kids when they get back today. It was also good to stay out past 8 pm while they were at nana's.

We went out to dinner. a lot.

We saw the new TRON movie in IMax 3d. It kicked ass. very cool. I loved the old Tron as a kid, so this one was a lot of fun.

Sunday was Kelley's birthday. It was epic. Fantastic.

I did not workout thursday or friday, or Sunday or Monday for that matter. I did however get in a run on Saturday. We both got to go to the same gym at the same time. People can do that! I knew I was due for a long run. So I got on the treadmill and went for it. I ended up feeling good and holding a 9 minute pace. In fact, I did that for the first 10 miles, then I felt ok so I bumped the speed up to 8:34 for the last 5k. I ran 13.1 miles on the treadmill in 1:56:00. That's my first time breaking 2 hours in the half distance! I've got to find a race.

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Found one! We signed up to run the half marathon at Myrtle Beach in February. Yes, Kelley did the full marathon there a few years ago. But we're looking for a half, have a ton of friends running the half, and until I finish the weight loss I'm not going to do anything longer than a half.

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Today I got in a good run over lunch. 4 miles total in 32:21 including a warm up and cool down. Between the warm up and cool down was a 5k run at an 8.0 speed (7:30 per mile). That would be a 23:18 5k time if it was a race. Dang it, got to find a 5k race. I'm starting to line up a 2011 schedule.
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MMNW:

This week: 188.8 lbs, 22.5% body fat

Last week: 189.8 lbs, 22.7% body fat
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I lost 1 stinking pound during my free week, and 0.2% body fat. This is ok. I can live with it. I didn't work out very hard or often, and while I did eat ok, I let the portion sizes slide and we ate out in restaurants a lot more. I still maintained the vegetarian diet, and tried to pick healthier things on the menu's. I could have done much worse than only losing one pound.

Finally, the epic conclusion. Saturday Raleigh got some snow so there wasn't too many people outside. My first target when I started putting together a weight loss plan was to cross 190. Once I got on the other side of 190, the reward was a new tattoo that I had been thinking about getting for a long time now.

I came up with the concept and meaning about 7 or 8 months ago. It took me that long to convince myself to get it. It's a tree. I liked the design idea of having the tree grow up my right shoulder. The tree is a metaphor for life. You have to know your roots; where you came from. That also helps point where you are going. You have to have a strong core. Values and beliefs that are strong and living like the trunk of a tree. And it is also very important to be open minded, and be willing to branch out in many different directions. I would not have been able to extend my comfort zone into marathons or triathlons or parenthood without being willing to branch out in different directions. So that was my concept for the tree tattoo. Roots that surround my arm, the trunk going up to the top of my shoulder, and branches on all sides (chest, top, and back) that extend out of a normal comfort zone. I wanted to put some red blooms on the tree just to get some color on the tattoo. They are also a reminder of how short life can be (tree flowers fall off after a short amount of time).

This guy hurt. The "Balance" tattoo I got on my chest was really a primer to see if I could take the pain for this one. This one bled. There was lots of pain and lots of bleeding that did not occur with the first tat. At one point I got pretty light headed. But then I drank a Coke (that was huge, I stopped drinking sodas in college but this time I needed the sugar), and thought I was going to puke once too. While that used to be typical Saturday night behavior, it's a pretty unusual side effect now.

The same tattoo shop I went to before was open and had the time to draw out the design. Tony came up with an amazing stencil. Then after the stencil was on my shoulder he filled in the rest of the design by hand. So this is a completely custom design. Ready to see how it turned out? scroll on down. These pictures aren't going on facebook.

No Regrets is a really cool shop. Lots of fun stuff there. And this is the last chance to see the bare shoulder. Ever. you know these things are permanent?

Finishing the design...


The final design is stenciled on.

Still smiling. He hasn't started yet. That's the face of a dumbass.

He's getting started. Turns out, this part of the body hurts a lot more than the "Balance" area on my chest. a lot more.

Yowsers that one must have really hurt! That's a pain face right there.

OUCH!! That one really hurt. That was by far the worst part, when he was up on the top part of the shoulder. Some of that is right on my collar bone!


The smeared ink on this one makes it look like a different tree. Pretty neat effect.



Shading the roots

The artist was hilarious! We both really enjoyed hanging out with him while he was working my shoulder.





Almost finished with the shading!


That's not blood (although I did bleed plenty!). It's red ink while he was filling in the flowers.

This is the best shot we could get of the whole thing.


I even had the girls names put on a couple of the branches. Pretty neat huh?

I hope you all have a great Christmas! We're going nuts around here.

Fun Christmas Times

First, the MMNW:

This week: 189.8 lbs, 22.7% body fat
Last week: 191.8 lbs, 23.2% body fat

It is SOOO NICE to finally be under 190 officially. I haven't seen numbers that low since 2005 at least. maybe 2003. To do the math, it's 19 lbs total. 208.8 starting weight at 28.5% body fat means I was carrying around 59.45 lbs of fat. 189.8 at 22.7% = 43.08 lbs of body fat. That's a difference of 16.37 lbs (out of 19 total) of body fat lost. Getting to my goal of 9% body fat would put the remaining body fat at about 15 lbs = I still have 28 lbs of body fat to get rid of. I can live with the extra 2.7 lbs of "other" loss. But after 8 weeks on the Racing Weight plan, I'm blowing through fat with very little muscle loss. That is the goal. Yes, 160 is still a long way off, but I like this direction. Every week I'm showing a loss both in pounds and body fat percentage. Crossing the 190 threshold is very promising.


We got some snow in Raleigh! I got some good shots of the kids playing around trying to catch snowflakes on their tongues.







Friday I did something unheard of. Got to meet up with another blogger and got absolutely no pictures of us!!! Sarah the Sun Runner came to Charlotte to run the Thunder Road marathon. I got to hang out with her some the day before as a social call. South Carolina was one of only three states that she has never visited, and it was only a few miles away. Plenty of people live in SC and work in Charlotte. So we headed down to my home state for some good southern hospitality. I got to tell her all about BBQ, the difference between y'all and you'uns, why we need the world's largest fireworks store (to blow shit up year 'round of course), and why we like giant peaches. Of course the next day she kicked some ass in the marathon, but you'll have to wait on her race report for that. I can only tell you that she is absolutely fantastic in person and I wish I had more time to spend with her. Blogger meetups are the best!

My mom came up saturday to spend the weekend with us. It's always fun when she comes to visit. Next weekend is Kelley's birthday. So mom got the kids to make crowns and cupcakes and we threw her a surprise party. It came out pretty good!


Evil Genius looks like she's ready to go out robbing banks in Kelley's new face mask for running outside as cold as it's been lately.

We actually dressed up for my company's christmas party this year! The party was great. Everyone had a good time. Several people got really drunk, and we enjoyed laughing at them. We got pretty trashed too, but not that bad. Good times, I tell you.

Evil Genius had her first kindergarten Christmas program this morning. What do you with an Evil Genius in church? Every song had little breaks in it where she (and only she) called out very loudly "Hey Mommy! Hey Daddy! Hey Grandparents (all of them)". It was fantastic. so cute. My mom was there, so were Kelley's mom and Gene, and her dad and Eleanor were able to make it too. So we took up an entire pew in the church. it was fantastic.

She got to show us around her school too. She loved it!

Have a great week! Weight loss doesn't take holidays off. Stay strong and fast out there.