Weekend Report (plus Friday)

While Alex and Ari were in school on Friday, Kira had her first music class. This was exciting because it is the first class she is taking on her own (with Mommy, of course) instead of tagging along with Ari and Alex. She loved the music, playing with the instruments and the other kids. Here she is playing with the colorful scarves that the teacher handed out during one song:Friday afternoon Mommy left the kids in the very capable hands of Daddy to leave for her first Olympic Distance triathlon. Meanwhile, Daddy took Ari, Alex and Kira to Miri and Opa's for dinner and for a belated birthday celebration for both Daddy and Cousin Jonathan. While the weather was beautiful at home, Mommy arrived at the beach for her triathlon only to be greeted with wind gusts in excess of 25 mph, cloudy skies, and cold temperatures. There was also a coastal flood warning in effect and rip currents in the water, leading to talk of cancelling the swim portion of the race if conditions weren't better by morning. Mommy had mixed feelings about this: while the swim is her weakest leg of the triathlon, and she was nervous about her first ocean/wetsuit swim, she still wanted to do the whole triathlon if the water conditions improved.

Unfortunately, conditions had not improved by morning so the race director cancelled the swim and replaced it with an equal distance (1500m) beach run. Since Mommy's strength is running, this was obviously in her favor and the result was that she finished 7th woman overall and won a nice glass trophy for first in her age group. Of course, a few hours after the race and while Mommy was driving home, the sun came out and the weather improved dramatically!

Back at home, Daddy took Ari, Alex and Kira a local park with Miri, Opa, Uncle Jason, and Cousins Jonathan and Naomi to ride the train which now only runs on the weekends (which we figured out a few weeks ago when we went to the same park with friends and Alex was very disappointed to find out the train was not working!)

This morning, while Daddy coached a soccer game, Mommy took the kids to visit her good friend, Trip, who works for the Cleveland Browns and was in town for this weekend's game. Ari and Alex loved the fountain in the hotel's lobby and Alex discovered a fun game of running around so that Trip would chase and catch him. Mommy was taking a picture of the kids and trip when a nice man offered to take a picture of all of us. After taking the picture he commented on what a nice Christmas card picture it would make :)

It was so great to catch up with Trip and when we left, Ari and Alex kept asking for "more Trip." Hopefully we'll get to see him again when he's back in town for the Redskins game in October!