The Times They Are A Changing…

This past Sunday was a pretty busy and active day for our family.

It started off with a 6:15am wake up call and an hour drive over to the beach for the half marathon that Jenn & I signed up to run. Teresa came over to watch the kids and we were off.

We signed up for this race when things were a little less busy, but since then training has been difficult. Jenn (the runner in our family) only had the opportunity to run a few times since we signed up. I on the other hand had trained to 10 miles, hurt my foot and stopped running anything over 3 miles (minus one 6 mile run on Thanksgiving which only reinforced the fact that my foot hurt).

The funny thing is I was still up for suffering through the race, but Jenn asked if we could just do the 5K instead. Not sure when she became the workout slacker, but it may have something to do with her official race number…666.

Once we realized how hot it was going to be during the race, that the entire race was on the sand and that we probably would not make it home in time for our next engagement we decided to run the 5K.

And we didn’t feel bad about it at all…except maybe towards the end when people thought we were ridiculously fast 1/2 marathoners, but even then we didn’t feel too bad.

Jenn came in 6th overall (2nd female) and I came in 19th (2nd in my age group) with a personal best time of 25:15…not Kenyan fast, but not bad for a kid who grew up wearing corrective shoes.

We made our way home, quickly showered and then headed to the Irish Heritage Christmas Party.

Call it ignorance or call it bliss, but in day to day life, I don’t ever see our family as different. You go to an event like this and you could easily realize how different you are to some people, but you also realize how special that is.

We walked in and I think it shocked people to see that we now had two children. Everyone was very excited to meet Grace.

This group has always taken a liking to our family but this time the party was different. We weren’t the only non all white family. In fact there were a few. Jenn & I thought some of these older Irish people must be looking around and thinking to themselves…boy, the times they are a changing? This made us both laugh.

At the end of the day, the kids all picked up like they play together all the time, The Danny Boyle Band rocked the house on the accordion, Santa came (and Nolin didn’t scream), and Jenn & I felt every sore muscle in our legs and thought Thank God we didn’t run the half.

PS- Stay tuned because things are just about to get interesting…