Family BBQ + Masonry

I never made it out yesterday.  I decided it would be wise to shower and rest a bit before the onslaught of 4 (additional to my daughter) giggly second grade girls for the five hour birthday party.  And that was a bit of its own marathon though I did sit and watch part of the new Muppet movie with them.  Chicken nuggets for dinner - so classy.

Today continued the crazy week I've had.  Got up early-ish and got dressed for Palm Sunday.  The boys went last night so my husband to tackle the bbq-ing all morning.  Daughter and I stood through the entire reading of the Passion and 80 min later, we finally got released from the longest mass we've been to in ages.  Hit the grocery store and then back home to throw everything together for yet another birthday gathering. 

This one was kind of a big family thing.  Been a while since we've been together so when my daughter suggested a bbq to celebrate her birthday, I capitulated.  Only later did it dawn on me, the exact same group would be together next weekend for Easter.  Oh well.  When I say "big family" - it is a relative term.  It is "just" my husband and myself, his two sisters, one brother-in-law, his two parents (plus dad's girlfriend), and our collective 8 children (ages 7-next week, 8, 9, 10, 10, almost 11, 11 and 14) = 16.  His brother is currently deployed overseas and his wife is back on base (Norfolk - and they have no children).  We are blessed (most of the time) to have so much of my husband's immediate family close to us.

In just the hour or so after mass, I made two huge pans of hashbrown casserole, a batch and a half of fruit salad, cut up carrots and celery, mixed up a gallon of orange Koolaid, and warmed up 3 cans of corn.  Nothing fancy and certainly only borderline healthy at best.  My husband did the pork steaks and hot dogs to round out the meal.  I had made the cakes yesterday when making the cupcakes for the other party and iced them before bed last night so that was taken care of.  I did dig out a "8" candle to get the proverbial "blowing out" picture.

Weather was actually kind of hot, but after we all gorged ourselves - the kids (and some of the adults) played outside for most of the afternoon.  My daughter got a few gifts and blew out her candle.  We got everything cleaned up and at 4:30 I was trying to get myself pysched up to do a brick workout.  It was still hot, but nothing to do but suck it up, sweetheart.

I ended up doing the bike workout from last week with the end run from last week (so just shaved off the short run before the bike from my duathlon test run).  I was not in a good head space on most of the bike.  This was not helped by a bottle drop early on which I decided to circle back and pick up.  I got back from my 13+ miles and everyone had left so my husband had set up my transition area in front of the garage (bless him) and was reading the paper on the deck.  He asked me how it was and I told him it was "hard, but that if it were easy - everyone would do it".  He said if it were easy, I'd be on the couch right now and skipping the workout altogether.  So true.  The conversation was short though because I had pulled on my running shoes and headed out again.  There was far too much walking on this "run".  I just was not feeling it (other than feeling hot).  I listened to some music, but I mostly just slogged my way through it. 

So glad I have last weekend's workout to offset the mental crap from this week.  Will probably do something with Stacy tomorrow night and a short-ish (< 4 mi) run with Susan on Tue and maybe hit the pool with the kids on Wed since they are out of school for Easter break.  Need to try to "taper" a bit for the duathlon on Saturday.  I'm kind of getting excited about it because my husband suggested maybe he'd come along and be my cheerleader/sherpa/#1 fan (probably without the kids so he doesn't have to listen to them whine).  He said he was stoked to hear it was a looped course so he'll get to see me a bunch (once on the first run, twice on the bike and twice on the 2nd run).  I hope it helps me suck it up too.