Today is the last day of our daughter’s birthday month. Yeah, birthday month. Well, it seems like we have been celebrating all month, so why not a birthday month? Now that she is 15 – instead of a big blowout party – we had birthday celebrations and activities for three straight weekends. The weekend before her birthday weekend we took her on an all day adventure out of town where we went to a museum full of animals, a museum full of boats and ships, went on a nature hike around a lake, and took her to a movie she had been wanting to see at a new place we had never been before. On her birthday weekend we had grandparents visit, so we had a couple nice dinners, a big crazy cake, some birthday donuts, and had a little family party. Finally last weekend, the kid invited a friend over for a sleepover where we went out for pizza and watched movies. Now all that is over and her 16th year has begun. It’s all gone by so fast. Wasn’t she just a baby? Didn’t we just bring her to Disney World for the first time? It’s almost time to start teaching her to drive…
We bought a new treadmill over a month ago – which I talked about earlier. But it’s also been a spring like winter month, so I have been making an effort to increase my running output. I really haven’t been much of a runner in the past. Maybe running once a week. Sometimes twice. I go to the gym every week three times to lift, but not so much the running. I have run a bunch of 5k’s and four 8k’s, but I’ve never been able to really commit to the cardio. Well, the treadmill was the attempt to change that and in the first month things are looking up. Today I ran a couple miles at lunch on the treadmill which pushed me to over 20 miles this month. That’s my goal for now – 20 miles a month. Month one – check.
I had to do a strange thing lately. I had to put a big deposit down on a vacation that isn’t for another year and a half. We are planning a Disney cruise in August of 2018. They opened up the booking last week and it looked like the cabins were already booking up. This cruise was the only one late enough in August to take advantage of lower fares and still be before school starts. Or at least before when my wife needs to be back for her teaching job. A week earlier and the cost is significantly higher. Two weeks earlier is even more costly. I think that’s why it’s booking up fast. We didn’t want our choice of cabin to go away, so we decided to go ahead and put the deposit down. Our last Disney cruise was six years ago to Alaska. It was great, but cold and rainy. We wanted to try again, this time in the warm Caribbean, so we are doing the Western Caribbean cruise to Cozumel, Grand Cayman, Jamaica, and Castaway Cay. Me and my wife’s first real trip together was to Cozumel a million years ago. It will be really interesting to go back – even for just one day. We are hoping to make this trip a two week adventure with a week at Disney World and then the week long cruise, but we will have to see what my work situation will be then. If I’m in a new job then they may not let me take two weeks off at once. If I’m still in my current job, they won’t even know I’m gone.
Well, tomorrow is March. Time to bring on the madness…
dave's word 