Wishing all a Happy Valentines Day, celebrate with a good run

Dear James, Daniel and Emily,

Wishing everyone a Happy Valentines Day. Up until about 14 years ago, I did not look forward to Valentines Day. But life has changed and I just want people to have a good day, especially my children as they start to hit the ages where Valentines can actually mean something. I especially want my lovely wife Kim to have a splendid day (which she gets to start off with a visit to the dentist), because it is her presence in my life that allows me to enjoy a day like today. Of course, like all other days that have come to symbolize excess and consumption in our culture I recommend taking the time today to get out and celebrate with some form of exercise, so you can enjoy all those other sweets you will consume.

Family

Had what amounted to a lazy, but relaxing weekend. I had a couple of appointments with contractors to measure the basement. We took the kids to the park and enjoyed the nice weather both days. I resumed the electronic game ban during the day (10 -4 roughly), much to the boys dismay. But we also got the house cleaned up, and tackled a big shopping trip.

So we took a long drive on Sunday, and while discussing possible things we might do with the basement Daniel out of blue stated that he wanted his own room. So we took the chance to discuss how we might partition part of the basement as a room for James. And how we could do that, and even figured out a transition plan to test it out before we undertook a major renovation. So that's a potential big change we might be looking at this year.

Emily had been having a rough time going to be on time lately. Partially due to inconsistent scheduling due to the time off. Also partially due to her fighting the colds. But I decided to try something, as those things were gone and she still refused to go to bed on time. I pushed her bed time up 30 minutes, so her & Daniel shared the same bed time. So far that has worked, we have avoided the 30+ minutes of screaming and histrionics, so we will see if that works going forward

Training

I returned to the roads and trails this weekend! Saturday morning I ran early, since I had the contractor coming, which made the Y unworkable. Sunday I took Spotty for our trail run. And boy did it feel good to get that early start, and get in the fresh air. But I did notice that I held to my pace better, which I can attribute to the time on the treadmill. So I will probably still do that on Saturday mornings, because the kids seem to enjoy that time out of the house, and there is a benefit to those runs on the treadmill.