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| Girls celebrating Turkey Day! |
Yesterday, I loved. This year's Thanksgiving was quite possibly my favorite. No offense to Thanksgivings of past or family members with whom we did not share the holiday with this year. We missed you all and the day would have been that much better had you been present. My feelings for ranking yesterday as #1 all have to do with the place I am in at the moment, and that place is happy and thankful.
Leading up to Thanksgiving, I spent a lot of time talking to the girls about being thankful. Each night for the past month we have discussed the things for which we were most thankful. "I am thankful for everyone at the dinner table," Adara repeated nightly over dinner. "I am thankful for my brother and my sister," she wrote on her holiday placemat at school." "For friends and family and my baby kitty (stuffed)," said Cesia. The meaning of the season was really present for me for the first time I can ever remember. Thanksgiving this year was not about the food, or the cooking or prep work or the stress of making everything just right. It was purely about enjoying each other and sharing our love and gratitude for all that we have. It was perfect.
I wrote previously about keeping our day simple and celebrating with our own family of five this year. That was our plan and we were excited about it, until our wonderful neighbors Kathi and Clark stopped by one Thursday morning on their morning hike. "We would love for you to join us on Thanksgiving this year," Kathi started. That was all she had to say and we were in.
I first met Kathi and Clark while out pushing Adara in the stroller up on Mulholland. We said a quick hello, shared names, streets and smiles and they admired my new baby. Then we saw them the next day, and the next and nearly every day after on our daily morning neighborhood hike. How fortunate I am that our paths crossed - quite literally - and we got to know each other a little better with each passing. We have since become friends, Sunday school teachers together and serve on the Church and Nursery school advisory committees together. They are truly among the kindest, most giving people I know and the perfect model of a synchronous couple. We are so blessed to have them as role models and friends and to have shared the most delicious Thanksgiving meal with them and their loved ones last night. I wish I had pictures to share from the beautiful outdoor dinner but I was too busy enjoying my kids and being present in the moment. The moment was amazing.
Before Thanksgiving dinner we worked up our appetites by running the 1st Annual Downtown LA Turkey Trot. Good friend and Isaac's godmother, Ruth, had invited us a few weeks back. I convinced Alan that it would be a fun morning event and we registered online. I messaged a few other friends and they did the same. All sounded fun, until a couple days prior when we started to think about logistics. Suddenly waking up to an alarm at 5am, driving 30 miles downtown, finding parking and doing this all in the rain - as weather.com had been predicting all week - was not sounding quite so fun. But, we were all in this together and we had already forked up our $40/person for registration costs. I packed up the car Wednesday afternoon, included extra rain jackets and changes of clothes and blankets and enough food to last us a week just in case. When you go anywhere with kids, I have learned that you had better prepare for that just in case, unless you want it to end in disaster. And so Alan and I went to bed Wednesday night at 8pm both with sore throats and mild headaches and regretting our decision to have registered for this race.
Thursday morning, Thanksgiving morning, the alarm went off and I hit snooze. Twice. I don't think I have ever hit snooze in my entire life. Seriously, I was that tired. I had been up twice during the night to a crying Isaac and bathroom break Cesia. Finally it was 5:10 and I zombie-walked in the bathroom to put on my running clothes. I wasn't sure Alan would get up at all. We had discussed plans the night before and decided that if he didn't sleep and woke up feeling sick he would stay home. I knew he had been up half the night with his typical insomnia, so I was not going to wake him. Much like Clark Kent's magical telephone booth transformation, I came out of the bathroom wide eyed and ready to race. I saw my own Superman climbing out of bed. "Are you sure you want to do this? I can go alone" I offered one last time. "It's Thanksgiving," he replied matter-of-factly. We were all in this together. We ate a quick breakfast with Cesia who woke up soon after us, grabbed a sleeping Adara and Isaac out of their beds and loaded everyone into the minivan. 5:50am and were were off to pick up Ruth and make our way downtown.
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| Isaac caught some more shut eye on the drive down to the race. |
On our way downtown we were blessed with stunning sunrise displays that promised this was going to be a good day. Again I didn't take any pictures, just enjoying the moment and feeding Isaac banana and bread crumbs on our way. 6:45am and we had already made it downtown. I guess driving downtown on Thanksgiving morning really is the best time traffic-wise to make the trek! Alan pulled to the side of the road, Ruth and I hopped out as gracefully as possible with three kids and a triple stroller and a bunch of baggage and we made our way to the start line as he found parking.
Soon we met up with my best friend from collegiate cycling days, Erika, who would be running her first ever race, and one of my best new mama friends, Kristy, who was a seasoned runner and had completed a marathon a few years back. Both lived downtown and were always up for adventures. We all discussed our race strategies a little bit. Though it was her first race and she had only run a handful of times, Erika is a natural athlete and a former pro cyclist. She is competitive by nature and I knew she was going to run hard and fast. Kristy and Ruth wanted to have some fun and finish happy. I wasn't sure what the heck I was going to do. I had been going back and forth all week on whether I would push the triple, push Isaac in the single and have Alan push the girls in the double (but then the two separate strollers didn't fit in our trunk), run along side Alan pushing the triple, push the triple with Alan, run alone fast, run alone slow. So many options. It was Thanksgiving, and we were all doing this together so we lined up behind crowds of masses all together. I felt like Alan wanted me to run with him and the kids, so I finally decided I would do that.
The countdown commenced and the race was on! It took us a good 2 minutes to cross the start line with the triple stroller and the crowds of racers who all came downtown for the city's inaugural event. Alan could sense my anxiousness within the first 400 meters of jogging beside him. "This is like an obstacle course!" he excitedly told the kids. Swerving in and out of joggers and trying to move up, I was antsy. "Just go!" he turned and shouted. "Are you sure?" "Yes!" And I was off. Dashing and swerving and moving my way up, I picked off runners one by one. This is kind of fun, passing so many runners and feeling fast, I thought to myself. I had never started so far back in a race in my life and so the experience of passing so many runners was novel. The course was out and back meaning I could see Alan, the kids, Ruth, Kristy and Erika all on the other side of the road as I was nearing the finish. We all cheered for each other and I just kept on running hard. I didn't kill myself but did run hard and finished with my all. I realized that I can't come to a race and just run. I crossed the finish line in a chip time of 20:08 which was good enough for 1st in my age-group and 5th woman overall. A pace of 6:30/mile, that's the fastest I have run in quite a number of years and it felt good.
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| Friends loving my kids.. there's no better feeling. |
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| 'Sup? |
A volunteer cut off my chip and I crossed the street and made my way back to find Alan and the triple. He was moving fast and only had about 400 m left when I reached him. I jumped in the race and finished all together. The cheers for the triple stroller were incredible - louder than for the lead racers! Then a bunch of photographers jumped at the chance to take our pictures and comment on the craziness of a triple stroller! Alan pushed that thing up some gnarly hills to finish in 24:45. Erika ended up finishing 5th in our age group, Kristy had an awesome time herself and Ruth finished 9 minutes faster than her goal time!
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| Post-race hang out! |
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| Isaac appropriately sporting my 1st place age-group medal in his 1st ever Turkey Trot! |
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| My cute littlest turkey! |
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| Cool down in front of City Hall and the giant Christmas tree! |
We spent the next hour hanging out on the grassy field across from City Hall, drinking free coffee from Groundworks, playing chase with the kids, watching Isaac crawl around and smile at everyone and enjoying that post-race endorphin high. "Let's do this again - make it an annual tradition," was mentioned more than a few times. Perhaps we will. In fact, yes, let's do it! Feeling grateful for so many things - among them family and friends and the opportunity to be out there together participating in my favorite activity - made for one wonderful Thanksgiving. The infectious energy of yesterday morning kept me going all day as we returned home for a neighborhood jog to give Cesia a nap (luckily it only took 15 minutes as my legs were fried), visited with neighborhood friends, watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade re-play on TV and walked the 1 block to Kathi and Clark's for the most marvelous Thanksgiving dinner feast.
What did you do to make the day special? How did you celebrate? Any other Turkey Trotters out there? Apparently 80,000 runners participated in turkey trots across the nation yesterday - how cool! Are you ready for - dare I say it - Christmas? I sure am! My absolute favorite time of year and we are off to get the tree this afternoon. Happy Holidays, all!
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| So thankful for our wonderful family of five! |
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