My last work trip and a PR

I've been gone for a while and I have so much to tell you.  I still haven't even posted about my last day in Vermont, which I still want to do.  Maybe you aren't that interested but I want the memory written down.  However, today I am going to give you a quick recap of my trip to Los Angeles, which is where I was for the past week-ish.

But first, my exciting PR news.

Yesterday I ran a neighborhood 5k.  I'd been doing some speed work and signed up for this race specifically to see whether I could improve my speed.  My previous PR had been 23:49 back when I was 21 years old and I was hoping to beat that.  And I did!!!  Not by much, but my new PR is 23:46 - a whole 3 seconds faster.  However, I am definitely NOT 21 anymore so I was excited that I actually got a new PR.  I came in 19th place overall (out of 376 people) and 3rd place for my age group.  Excitement people!

And now, a quick recap of my trip to LA.

Every year I organize HIV testing for a big national conference.  This year the conference was in Los Angeles so my co-worker and I headed out there.  With Evan (because he hasn't missed a work trip yet) and my Aunt Pam (who was nice enough to come hang out with Evan while I was working).
 

This conference is huge and stressful and I am pretty much stressed from May until I get back into the office and have paid all of the bills and our boxes are returned.  The thing about this event is something, or many things, always goes wrong.  It's a huge exercise in problem solving.  This year was no different.  All kinds of crazy things went wrong, but luckily it was a huge success on the outside.  No one but us knew the internal drama and disasters that were going on behind the scenes.

I'm not going to describe them all because I am sure my work is not the most interesting thing to read about, but I will describe one.  Like how we brought in a mobile testing unit this year and the unit ran on a diesel generator and we couldn't run it inside the convention center.  That meant that our entire testing unit had to be run on the battery...the lights, the refrigerator that held the tests, etc.,  and there was no air conditioner so the temperature kept rising and the tests become unstable in temps higher than 86 degrees.  Nice.  So we ended up having to run to an auto parts store, buy a 12-volt battery, and plug it into the wall.  This actually didn't solve the problem because it still wasn't enough power and although the fridge was working, we could only turn the lights on in one testing room.  Ahhh!!  These are some of the problems I dealt with.  Fun stuff.  It made for a very long trip with anxiety as to what disaster we were gong to be faced with each day.

However, we did squeeze in a bit of fun.  My aunt and I made it out to the Santa Monica beach!

As you can see - I made another tragic weather assumption.  I thought Los Angeles was going to be HOT so I brought a bunch of shorts and t-shirts for Evan and me.  Nope.  It was chilly.  Evan had to wear my sweater when we went to the beach because it was so chilly.  Next time we go anywhere I'm just going to bring a bunch of sweaters and pants no matter what the temperature is supposed to be because I sure can't seem to figure it out!

We walked along the promenade (I think that is what they called it).  The houses right on the beach were beautiful. I was wishing I could go for a run along the promenade, but obviously that was not going to happen!  Plus it was downright cold so I would have wanted long pants and a long sleeved shirt, which of course I didn't bring.

And the pier was fun too.  A bit crowded for me, but it was fun people-watching for a while. 

We walked around long enough to see the sunset, which was beautiful.

I think this was the first time I'd seen the sunset over the beach.  On the east coast we usually have to get up really early to watch the sunrise, but never the sunset.  It was beautiful.  Actually, I changed my mind.  I think I've seen the sunset on the Pacific coast when I was in Acapulco like ten years ago.  But usually I think of sunrises on the beach and not sunsets.  Both are equally stunning and beautiful.  And really, can you see those people in the water??!!  It was freezing out!! 

That night we ate at Seasons 52.  I had never heard of it, although I guess there is one in northern Virginia (and I just looked at the website and one is opening near me soon).  The name means something like 4 seasons (they have a different menu each season) and 52 weeks in a year.  And everything on the menu is less than 475 calories - however, that doesn't mean you can't order an appetizer for 475 calories and then a meal for 475 calories, and then a dessert for 475 calories.  I got the Summer Vegetarian Tasting which was sooooo good.  It had a quinoa-citrus salad, soft taco, seasonal vegetables, and cedar-roasted tofu with a tropical salsa.  It was delicious.  Evan got the kiddie flat bread pizza and LOVED it.  He loves pizza these days.  I try to make it at home with whole wheat pita so that it is a bit healthier than Papa Johns.

The rest of the trip was pretty much taken up with work, work, work, and dinner.  We ate at the Yard House twice (both times I got the 5oz burger - for some reason I was really craving burgers), George's Greek Grill, The Farm of Beverly Hills,(for breakfast and dinner), and The Original Pantry Cafe (a historic cafe that's been open since 1924 - and actually opened since that day, it's never closed because it's 24/7 and they say they've been opened and had a least one customer since then).  I'm not sure why I think you're interested in where we ate every day, but I guess since all I did was eat and work, I figured I'd share.  If you are ever in downtown LA, these were all good restuarants.

We stayed at the JW Marriott LA Live, which was right next to the Staples Center.  Lady Gaga played there the last night we were there.  It was VERY interesting to see what people were wearing (or not wearing...lots of skin showing) to the concert. 

The hotel was beautiful and Evan loved hanging out by the window looking at the pool.

Luckily my aunt was nice enough to take him to the pool a few times.  He LOVES the pool and literally spent hours looking at it from our room and saying "agua" over and over again.  It was adorable, until the 900th time.

At the conference I got the pleasure of meeting Dora and her new friends, Kate and Pablo.

I wrote a little sign for my niece that said, "Good luck in kindergarten Peyton, Love Dora" and I was SOOOO excited to show her the photo.  She starts kindergarten this year and I thought that she'd be really excited to get this little picture from Dora.  I posted it on Facebook and my sister said she was really excited.

The only other experience was the 5 hour non-stop flight with Evan, by myself.  Evan's come on all my work trips so I am used to traveling with him alone.  However, before this trip, the longest we'd been cramped on a plane was 4 hours.  Not that an hour is that much more, but in toddler hours - it is FOREVER.  Plus, the plane was completely full so there was no space.  Evan and I were jammed into one seat by the window.  Surprisingly, he was an angel both there and back.

That's not a very flattering photo of either of us, but it was hard to get one.  He was so good on the way there that TWO people complimented me on how well-behaved he was.  Now, I did come prepared with books, toys, one or two iPad apps (he is not allowed on the iPad anymore due to a few breakdowns when I took the iPad away from him...it was great for the plane and for the trip, but definitely not ready for an iPad-addicted toddler), and lots of patience.  I really think the key was staying calm myself and pretending we were at home and not on a small, confined plane with a large audience.  The way back he slept for 2/3 of the flight (amazing) and so that was a small blessing.  I still nurse him on take-off and landing (even when we are jammed super close to our seatmates and it's a bit uncomfortable), so that works like a charm.  And it calms him down when he starts getting antsy, which is nice.

So, that was my trip.  I got back on Tuesday night but I took the rest of the week off because my sister was out of town and so we didn't have any daycare.  And plus, we needed all that time to readjust to East Coast time!  We just hung around, met up with friends, and played.

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Sunsets or sunrises at the beach?

Your saving grace for long plane rides?

Favorite restaurant??

Disney Trip Part Three

Somehow I survived the first day at work after daylight saving time.  The irony of it is that I drank a cup of regular coffee, instead of decaf, and so at 10:30pm when I crawled into bed I was wide awake.  Yes, a cup of coffee at 8am will keep me awake at 10:30pm - I don't have caffeine very often.  So, I was still up late again, just this time I was in bed.  I am trying a new method where I make a slow cooker meal or cook the night before in hopes of reducing dinner prep time.  It was a complete success yesterday.  Evan and I played for a while when I got home and we still sat down to eat at around 7:30pm and all I had to do was microwave a few things and dinner was ready.  I'm not sure how long it will last though.

Ok, onto Disney!  It's the last Disney post in case you are tired of hearing about the "happiest place on Earth"!

The Disney Princess Half Marathon

The half marathon was the sole reason we had even embarked on a ridiculously expensive vacation to Disney World in the first place.  My sister had wanted to run a half marathon for her 30th birthday and I agreed to do it with her (so she wasn't doing it alone).  She chose the Disney Princess because it sounded fun and not as serious as a regular half marathon.  And people dressed up as Disney Princesses and she thought it would be fun to dress up (it was fun actually).  So, we paid the outrageous entry fee of $165 back in June and there was no turning back.  I was a bit skeptical about paying so much money because it's not like you got free entry to the park or something.  You got nothing extra actually - just the same old stuff like a t-shirt and a medal.  I'm not quite sure why the race is so pricey, but it was fun.

On race day I woke up at 2:30am to catch a shuttle to the race start.  The first shuttle left at 3am and I knew I wanted to be at the start with plenty of time to spare.  Mission accomplished - I was one of about 50 people there!  I had my costume on that my sister had made and I walked around, used the potty, and stretched a bit while waiting for my sister to arrive.  There was not a lot going on, but they did have a DJ and he was playing some motivating tunes, so I was jamming along by myself.  Finally my sister showed up!

First things first - getting our picture taken.  As you may or may not know from our costumes, we were Anna and Elsa from Frozen.  My sister made our costumes, which you can see a little better in the pictures we took when it finally got light out.  Remember, it's only 4am right now so it's still plenty dark!

We eventually headed over to our corral, F, to start stretching and get ready for the 5:30am start.  My sister was a bit nervous because she hadn't trained that well and was worried about finishing, but I figured we'd be just fine.  I was initially put in corral C but decided to run with my sister so ended up just going to F (just in case you're not race savvy, you can usually move down corrals but you are not supposed to move up corrals because the front corrals are for faster people).  While waiting for the race to start we find Olaf!

We didn't actually know that guy at all, but it was fun getting our picture taken with him.  And do you see that cape I'm wearing?  That was actually my niece's cape and I had to run with it the entire time.  My mom had made a shorter cape for me to run with but it got lost in the mail and didn't arrive in time, so instead I borrowed my niece's cape and ran in that instead.  I can tell you - it was a bit hot!!  And it occassionally pulled at my neck.  However, it worked fine and everyone was able to recognize that I was Anna, so that was a huge positive.

We started out the race running like a normal race.  My sister was puffing a bit beside me so I kind of figured we wouldn't be keeping that pace the entire time, but we started out strong.  The beginning part of the race was just along highways and through parking lots.  We started in the parking lot of Epcot and had to run to Magic Kingdom, so that was a good bit of distance.  We finally hit Magic Kingdom about the time the sun was coming up!

There's the lit-up castle behind me!  All the pictures are a bit blurry because they were from my sister's iPhone, but they are better than nothing.  And way better than paying $100 for race photos!  Here's a closer picture when we ran through the castle:

As you can see (on the left of my sister's head), the castle was under construction a bit and the person who took this photo of us didn't think to crop our bodies out for more of the castle.  Oh well.

 

From about this point on we started stopping to take pictures all the time.  Disney had a bunch of characters out on the sides of the race where you could get photo-ops and so it was fun to stop  and get pictures taken.  Especially since during Disney hours you have to wait for hours and hours for a photo with a character!  Don't get me wrong, the lines were really long at times but I think the longest we waited was 15 minutes for Mickey and Minnie mouse.

But it was worth it!

I think my sister enjoyed the pictures because she got a chance to relax, take a break while waiting in line, and look forward to the next character coming up!!  So, we got a lot of character photos.

 

The White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland:

Mary Poppins and Bert, from Mary Poppins:

The Genie from Aladdin:

 

 

On the side of the road there was this sign:

 

"Let it Go" is one of the main songs from Frozen so we had to get our picture taken with it.

The Disney Princes!

Notice how my sister is flexing her muscle but if you look closely at me you'll see that I am carrying her water bottle.  Yup, that's what older sisters are for - when the little sis gets tired the big sis carries her water bottle.  So I actually had my water bottle in one hand and her's in another.

Princess Dot from A Bug's Life:

As you can see from the photo above, it was very hazy and foggy out during the race.  It was great actually because it wasn't too hot but it wasn't cold either.  We were perfectly comfortable the entire time.  It got really sunny and warm after the race ended but it was nice that the weather stayed cooler for the race (of course we finished a little after 8:30am so it was still early).

 

 About mile 10 there was a decent sized hill and about half way up the hill they had this green army man yelling at everyone to keep running and do push-ups!  It was cute, so we snapped a picture.  It was a little sad because there were no lines to get your picture with him - I guess princess racers aren't interested in army men!

 

Towards the end of the race they had this big set-up with Jack Sparrow and the ship from Pirates of the Caribbean.  Too bad it wasn't Johnny Depp!!!  

 

In Epcot, within the last mile of the race we found Sofia the First!  My nieces love her (she was their favorite until Frozen came out), so we had to snap our picture.  We were hoping Elsa and Anna would be on the course, but they were not.  Actually, there were hardly any princesses on the course - just Snow White, Princess Dot, and Sofia the First.  What happened to Belle and Pocahontas and Aurora and Ariel and all the others???  I think I remember Princess Tiana from The Princess and the Frog, but I hadn't ever seen that so I didn't know who she was until my sister mentioned it.

And then we were done!!!  13.1 miles and 3 hours later!!  Yup, it took us THREE HOURS - it was the longest half marathon of my life!!!  I guess that's what happens when you wait in a million lines for photos with Disney characters....

I had a ton of fun though - it was fun running with my sister, not caring about the time, stopping to get fun photos all the time, and just relaxing through the entire thing.  And we didn't do too badly, I think we were in the 9000 out of more than 24,000 runners so we finished before more than half of the people out there (scary thought, huh).  Plus, I wasn't out of breath or tired after the race and I wasn't even sore the next day.  It was like I had dreamed the entire thing!

 

All in all the race was really fun and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a fun race, especially if you don't care as much about your time.  I'm not sure it would have been worth the money if I had just run straight through and hadn't taken any photos - what made it worth it were the fun photos and the actual experience.  I was disappointed that more of the race wasn't through the parks though.  We only ended up doing about a mile through Magic Kingdom and then a mile through Epcot - but the race was 13.1 miles - so that means more than ten miles were just on highways and through parking lots.  Not that exciting.  Sure, they tried to make it more exciting by having the characters along the highway, but the park and characters together would have been way better.  We could have looped through Hollywood Studies and Animal Kingdom if they needed more space.  Not sure why they limit the park part so much.

After the race I took the shuttle back to the hotel, showered, packed, and we checked out.  Our resort was nice enough to give me a late check-out so we didn't have to be out until 1pm.  Then our friends from Tampa (they used to live in near us and are Evan's godparents) came and picked us up and we spent the rest of Sunday and all day Monday hanging out with them.

They had giant legos at the entrance to the hotel so evan had a blast playing with them while we waited for our friends to arrive and figure out how to pack all our luggage into their car.

We had a lot of fun staying with them - Ivan really loved it because he went golfing Sunday afternoon, fishing Monday morning, and golfing Monday afternoon again!  Evan and I hung out at the condo, took a nice walk along the mangroves, and went to the beach Monday afternoon.

Evan looks SOOOOO old in this photo.  Where is my baby???

Evan thought the best thing in the world was their screened-in porch.  He loved hanging out there and looking at everything (they were on the 6th floor and looked out to the water).

On Monday I made a huge boo-boo that ended our trip on a high-panic note.  I thought our flight left at 8:45pm so we were about to leave the condo (at 6:15pm) and I checked to make sure and our flight actually left at 7:45pm!!!!  Yikes!!!!  It took at least 45 minutes to get to the airport and we weren't sure we'd make it.  We decided to try because we didn't have a lot of options (changing flights would have cost a small fortune).  We got to the airport at 7:15pm and by the time we got our luggage out, put the car seat in its travel bag, and made our way to the check-in it was 7:20pm!!!  The woman was doubtful we'd make it but she said we could try if we wanted.  So we checked our bags, raced through security, and made it to the gate!!!  They had even printed out our gate-check tags already!  Plus, we weren't the last ones on the flight - two people came on after us.

It was a bit hectic and crazy, but I was so happy we had made it.  

And just like that we got home and I went to work the next day.  

 

Disney?  Done.  

 

Half marathon?  Done.  

 

Bank account?  DONE!!

 

The End.

A Birthday Weekend!

Before I get into the birthday celebration, I want to cry about the fact that it is dark and a bit chilly at the bus stop these days.  I hate to admit it but I think fall is coming, and after that...winter.  How did summer go so fast??  I only made it to the pool once.  We only BBQed once.  Sad how fast time goes.

And talking about time flying...how is my baby one year old already???  I cannot believe that an entire year has already gone by.  To relive the moment, I read through all my birth story posts (here, here, and here) and hubs and I walked through his birth day in memories.  It is still crazy to think it was a year ago that he was born.  It seems both a lifetime ago and yesterday that it happened.  I have to say, Evan came into this world and stole our hearts.  I love every minute I spend with him.  

We didn't have a huge birthday party for him.  It was hard to resist societal pressure to not go overboard and have a huge party with invitations, decorations, gift bags, games, etc.  There are so many cute ideas and themes and so many other people go all out for their kids' birthdays that a few times I felt a bit neglectful.  However, instead of a party I wanted to spend the money on family pictures.  I wanted to have a nice memory and I thought family photos would be a great idea.  I think it was.  The photographer was amazing and she did such a fantastic job getting Evan to smile and pay attention.  I can't wait to get the pics back (don't worry, I'll post a few here).

My parents did come down to celebrate Evan's first birthday, so that was super fun and the best present ever.  They came on Thursday night, so we pretty much spent the entire weekend at my sister's house.  I took Friday off so that I could spend some time with my birthday boy.  We headed over to my sister's and hung out there all day.  We made Evan's birthday cake and played around with the kids.

How do you like my rainbow cake!!!

He's eating so fast you can't see his hand...he loves cake, just like his momma!

My friend Andrea came over with her two kids in the afternoon for cake.  After Evan was born she came over ever week for my entire maternity leave.  Her visits were a life saver.  She really helped me out and answered so many of my questions and made me feel so relaxed.  So, I really wanted her to come celebrate Evan's first birthday.  We opened some presents and hung out and then headed to my brother's in law football game.

Evan loves his new truck!

On Saturday I had The First Tee in the morning (new fall season - lots of new girls) and then we hung out at my sister's again.  Yesterday morning my sister and I had a 5k race.  

Before the race - hanging out!

It was my first 5k in years...like over ten years!  We signed up and then I happily realized that my parents were in town and could easily watch the kiddos while my sister and I ran.  Perfect!  I had been hoping to PR in the race but never really got a chance to train much.  I had only been running once a week for a month and before that I had probably run 5 times in the previous three months.  Definitely nothing to brag about.  However, I think I did pretty well.  I ran it in under 25 minutes, which was exciting for me.  So maybe not a PR, but not a snail walk either.

That was pretty much the weekend.  Today's my husbands bday and I have nothing for him.  It's sad.  I have to run out today and see what I can find.  It's hard having two birthdays in one weekend - hard on me and hard on the bank!  Plus, Ivan usually has the car these days so it's extra hard for me to get somewhere to buy something.

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Are you ready for the fall?

What did you do this weekend?