A Moving and a Shaking!

I have been a moving and a shaking recently.  After the holidays, we quickly come upon my birthday, which thankfully is not a big deal anymore!  After 40, you stop counting and I cannot top 2011 nor do I need or want to – so my birthday was a normal work day/coaching basketball at night with Graham kind of day – which was super.  We did get out for dinner at my favorite restaurant this weekend and that was nice.   (I am just glad my sister turns 40 this year so I can start to harass her now).

What is more exciting is that the twins turn 10 this week.  TEN!  I cannot believe it.  I remember hearing (when my kids were 2, 3 and 4 years old) some of my friend’s kids turning 10 and I thought that was SO OLD.  It kind of is…but they are still great at this age.  They are still young enough to want to be with us and old enough to be pretty self-sufficient.  I actually really like this 4th grade year.  This weekend I even was asked about the birds and bees and once I got to the part where the egg is released by the woman, their eyes glassed over and they were on the floor in laughing in disgust.  GREAT….Jerome said “this is going so well.”  Jerome threatened to show the twins what my LOVELY neighbors bought me for my birthday (not PG)…NOW that would have been a fun conversation!

I am also back to training. I guess I was after the holidays – but I was pissing around a little bit more than I should have been.  This year I am racing more locally and am not doing any IM.  I may do a couple of ½ IMs, but I have not decided with ones yet.  I am trying desperately to get back into swim shape.   I expect my running to be pathetic now (healing up my Achilles)…..but my swimming is worse than I want it to be.  Sound familiar?  Lol.  After my time off, I had to swim solo for a bit to get some fitness back…and just recently I went back to Masters – as of last Wednesday.  They are 90 minute practices and I absolutely have to swim hard for most of it.  And, on Wednesday I even moved down a lane as not to slow down my normal lanemates…but this morning (Sunday) I was back in my normal lane.  Endurance-wise there are no issues, but damn if I can barely flip and do stroke with them.  But, what can I expect?  I do LITTLE to no stroke work all year and then I expect to swim with these swimmers come January?  While they are doing swim meets and I am coming out of my off weeks.  We have a meet coming up in 3 weeks and – for the first time in many years – It is going to literally kill me to swim what I typically swim.  Oh well…who cares..it will come back and I don’t need to be super fast in the winter – of course – but when I choose to swim with swimmers on a competitive team, THIS is their season!

I will say I am consistent once I get back into the pool and this week I swam 4x/week and 4500+ each time, so it will just be a matter of time now.

And, we have some exciting news!  I said that quote to my neighbors this week and when do you get to the point when people do NOT think you are pregnant.  ?!!!  Gosh.  Ha.  NO!    The exciting news is that we bought a lot and closed on it in December.  We will eventually be building our dream home on this lot and selling our beloved 1880s house.  It was a VERY hard decision for me…(not for Jerome) because I LOVE our neighborhood and have raised the kids with all their friends and traditions in this neighborhood.   But, with the twins turning 10 and in 1 more year off to middle school, it was go time.  They are still young enough to make good friends and not feel the impact of being uprooted.  AND ironically, this lot is only 5 miles or so from our current house and the kids will go to the SAME middle school as all their friends – their High School will be different though.    And, no we did not consider buying a house or lot in Tucson.  Family before SUN at this point.

So, that is the main reason why I did not take the Hawaii slot at IM Arizona…remember I said we had some big plans going on in 2012 that were not triathlon related?  Well, this was it…but because this market SUCKS so bad, we never thought the deal was done until the ink dried on the closing papers!!   And, I just wanted to negotiate the heck out of the deal until we got everything we wanted…including them “mowing” the yard in the snow to make it perfect.

We are not going to build this huge house – neither of us want anything obnoxious – we want to be w/ the kids and/or on our bikes!  But, I want simple things like:  a proper bathroom upstairs…..a closet in my bedroom, storage….and simple things that a house built in 1880 does not have.  It will be hard and sad to leave this neighborhood – my neighbors are the best – but it is the right thing and time for us to do this move.  AND I am so excited to start designing our house.   We have spent our free time interviewing builders, real estate agents, architects and more!  We have hired the builder (general contractor) so now it is rolling!  And, we have to sell our current home before we can build the new one….So this is a long process…but one we are so excited about.

Jerome is fixing Graham’s room and re-painting it – so we are starting the house improvement projects to sell this house.

On Friday night we went to dinner for my birthday and then to Barnes & Noble to look through all the magazines at what we want and our wish list.  It is a fun chapter in our lives.  We will be building a Craftsman style home.  If anyone has any tips – I will take them!

2012 is going to be a great year in many regards!


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