Is this really my first post in 2015?

We are on a little working vacation. But oxymorons aside, I promised myself I'd do a little blogging with the down time. So I finally pulled up the blog tonight to discover how neglectful I've been. I actually looked to see if I had something in drafts, but no. I haven't blogged at all in 2015 and its nearly March!

Its not that stuff doesn't happen. Stuff is always happening. But I'm just too worn out after the kidlets are in bed to write any of it down. But I need to get better about it. Because I really do think the kids are going to enjoy reading all of this one day.

Our big event for January was Disneyland. We finally went. We had an opportunity to purchase some discounted tickets which meant our family could go for just a few hundred dollars, rather than like an absolutely ridiculous amount. Because, you know, a few hundred dollars to go to a theme park isn't ridiculous. But we bit the bullet and did it. It was both selfish and selfless. Selfless because I actually really didn't want to go, but felt I owed it to the kidlets. Selfish, because now we won't ever have to make a trip back to "do Disneyland." Its not that we wouldn't want to come back to SoCal to visit friends or warm up, but coming just to do Disney, nuh uh.

Overall, the trip was a big success. Traffic was not abhorrent, the kids lasted a full five hours, the rain held off until the parade in the afternoon which we still got to see and we were ready to leave by then anyway. (And you know there is a drought here but it did rain during our one and only day at Disneyland. Go figure!) The kids even went on a few rides and Elsa waved at Teia. Success.

The kids at "hollywood land"

We began our day at California Adventure which is right next to Disney and has Cars land. We had heard that the Radiator Springs Racers were not to be missed so we headed there first. The mythical line ups at RSR weren't so bad that day, thanks to it being a non-holiday Monday, rain in the forecast and measles. In 20 minutes we were strapped into our little carsmobile and headed out for what we thought was a fast rip around a scenic race track. That part was absolutely awesome but it was at the end of the ride and only lasted about 10 seconds. The first part was dark and filled with Cars characters jumping out at you. I'm not sure how Kai and Teia made it through but they did, with vows of NEVER doing THAT again. We did catch sight of the real Lightning McQueen, Mater and Red the Firetruck, which is good b/c we didn't see Mickey anywhere and there weren't too many Disney princesses walking around as we'd expected. But pretty much every character Teia spotted terrified her, even Sully, the big blue monster from Monsters, Inc. of whom she is normally a big fan. We went inside the Frozen palace with hopes of spotting Olaf and we did. Except that he was the size of an adult human instead of a small child as advertised in the movie, so Teia immediately wanted to vacate the premises.

Here is Teia as the RSR ride was getting started. She had no idea she was about to be quite frightened poor little thing.

The ride on RSR didn't completely ruin the kids and they did agree to go on the Finding Nemo submarine once we headed over to Disneyland. So we all climbed into the yellow, claustrophobic sub that goes around a small pool with cheesy fake ocean stuff to look at from the windows. But of course, the scariest parts of the movie just had to be included. Once the ocean outside of our window exploded and that scary fish with the light and big teeth showed up, Teia's hands were over her eyes and Kai was mildly panicked. He held it together nicely and just kept telling me in a worried whisper that he wanted to get the heck out of there. I'm not quite sure why the rides designed for children all had a shock and startle element but if I could give Disney any feedback it would be to have rides for children, be like, for children....

After that, we were able to get them on the monorail, an old red trolley and a horse drawn tram but they were pretty much done with rides.

We did alot of walking and checking things out, but no more rides. The parade was a nice ending to our day, particularly b/c there was Elsa and Anna and a small automated Olaf on a float, waving and making eye contact with all the little girls. Teia was starstruck.

In February news I did another Xterra trail race. This one was a 15K at Mission Trails Regional Park. It was uber hilly, up and over the Fortuna peaks X2 - about 1700 feet of climbing and really technical. It had all the makings of a great trail race, except a forest. There were stairs to climb (known in these parts as the "thousand stairs" even though someone has actually counted them to be more about 300). It was epic and painful but I somehow survived. I would have had a much more interesting race report had I blogged about it less than 23 days post-race. But here is my race photo. I paid money for it so I had to show it off somewhere. 

I did get these super cool Salomon Speedcross trail shoes on sale at REI. I bought them for Victoria b/c they're designed for wet, soft, technical trail but I decided to use them for this race given how technical it was, even if not wet. They are just awesome. I'm calling them my gecko shoes b/c the traction is incredible! I credit them with keeping me upright for 15 K that day!