Best Wishes!

I have been a horrible blog slacker, but wanted to sign in to wish everyone a happy Christmastime and New Year!!

No biking to report on lately with a painful knee and too many distractions! But you can see lots of winter fun is being had, including playtime in the snow with the dogs, on my general/not tracking fitness stats type of blog =)

(Scan of a vintage card from my Grandmother's scrapbook.)

Our Holiday: Bike Rides, Games and Food

My calf muscles are suddenly better. Honestly, I think the pomegranate cosmos I made last night healed me!! They were very, very relaxing =)

We always have some Scrabble battles around this time of year. We've been playing on the PS3 too, but working together in those games, like Resistance, to shoot the monsters.

It's nice to have Jeff home on vacation for games and lots of bike riding. We've already been out two days this week. Today's ride included 2.16 miles of beach riding which is incredibly fun.

When it's cold, gray and damp out I love to heat up the oven and make homemade pizza. It's the best after ride food! Here's one I made yesterday, didn't the crust come out well? This time the toppings were turkey pepperoni and kalamata olives. I sprinkled a little pecorino romano over the top in addition to the mozzarella.

Happy Christmas!

I got my Christmas wish...the snow melted so Jeff and I could ride! After 5 days off, I was feeling achy. It wouldn't have been so bad if I had been able to walk or jog, but we had treacherous ice and I didn't want to risk falling. Everywhere I went I hobbled around like a penguin. Today, it felt so great to get on the bike. It always feels so light and responsive after a break. But, it took me about 10 miles to work out the kinks in my muscles. Jeff and I did 33.34 miles in all on the cx bikes. It was really windy, but it was a fairly steady wind so it wasn't knocking us off our line much.

We opened our presents this morning and the dogs opened theirs as well. Saffy knows what to do on Christmas and gets very excited for it. Silas is more reserved about it. He's a bit neurotic, to say the least, and new stuff can make him nervous.

Silas slowly worked his way into his present and really seemed pleased with the tire toy.

Saffy tore into the paper, and found her stuffed, squeaky hedgehog to add to her increasing collection of soft toys. That was fun to play with, but she also had to shred all the wrapping paper into tiny pieces.

After shredding and playing with hedgehog, she set her sights on the tire and stole it from Silas.

After all the excitement and treats, they are sleeping soundly now.

O Christmas Tree

My legs are feeling a little twitchy from two days off the bike, but I'm getting a lot of other things done around here, like decorating for Christmas!

We have a tabletop tree, loaded with an assortment of ornaments from family and a few I've picked out over the years, but I don't seem to have a single bicycle ornament!