That Sneaky Lepderchaun!

As we all sweat out the remnants of our St. Patrick’s Day Hangovers, I thought it a fine time to recap the weekend that was….let’s just say it was fairly busy, but all kinds of fun.

It started off with a bang on Friday as Landon’s buddy Anthony had a birthday party at Round Table pizza. Let me just announce here and now that Anthony’s parents are complete geniuses and I want to steal their idea for every one of Landon’s future birthdays. After several years of going to bounce houses and parks for birthdays (where there is not a drop of booze in sight), it was refreshing to get to hang out at pizza parlor and knock back pitchers of frosty beer while the kids practiced for their futures in the WWF. For starters, reserving a bounce house-type facility can be downright pricey (see more on that below), whereas all you have to do is call ahead to the pizza joint and see if they have room for your crew (even better if they have a private room you can use as was this case this weekend). So I would argue that the parents had an equally great time eating, drinking, and chatting while the kids went crazy…good times had by all and for that I salute you Pete and Jenn!

To top off the fun on Friday, the Sacramento area got hit with a major storm and it just dumped on us all evening….which made planning for our run on Saturday morning quite difficult…Typically Michaela and I will set out all of our running “gear” on Friday night so it’s ready for us the following morning…this consists of clothes, hats, glasses, watch, shoes, food, hydration packs, etc…I know that it sounds like a lot but when you’re out there for 4+ hours it’s good to have all that crap! Anyhow, for this particular run we had no idea what to pack as we weren’t really sure what kind of weather we were going to be in for. As of Friday night we were thinking we’d need to bring a canoe and a snorkel! But the weather did eventually clear up and Saturday morning ended up being a beautiful day for a run, with the trails not nearly as muddy as expected.

Saturday was also St. Patrick’s Day and wouldn’t you know it, our house was visited by a sneaky little Leprechaun (or Lep-der-chaun as Landon called it). Michaela utilized some strategically-placed green food coloring to make it look like a little green man had run all over our house causing mischief. He dyed our milk green, dyed our yogurt green, and even peed in our toilet (as evidenced by the green water). After that Landon made it his top priority to figure out what else he had turned green and ended up giving that little man more credit than he deserved! Everytime he came across something green he would turn to us and say "That Sneaky Lepderchaun did it again!"...too funny.

As for the run, it was great and was the longest (18 miles) that Michaela has run since she has been injured which made it a great “confidence run” for her as her training has been picking up. For me it was more about shaking out the pains from last weekend’s race, and also gave me a chance to run the first 9 miles with Michaela (we haven’t had the chance to run together in months)…it was all good for me until the last few miles when leg fatigue really kicked in and my right quad (which pained me in the race last week) felt like it blew up on me again…I’m hoping a little rest and recovery will be just what the doctor ordered to get it back in shape for this weekend’s long run and the upcoming 50 miler.

After the run it was time to rush home and get ready for Landon’s birthday party at Bounce U (yes I wish I would have known sooner about the whole Round Table Pizza thing I mentioned above)…When you do a birthday party at a place like this you pay by headcount and there are different pricing tiers based on how many kids show up…so it’s essential that you get an accurate count of kids that RSVP. We figure’d we make it extra easy for people by just asking them to call us if they weren’t going to attend…we end up getting invited to so many kids’ parties that we felt it would be lower maintenance to do it this way. At any rate, the final tally for kids that were going to attend was 13, which was great because the next tier up started at 14…however, when only 7 kids show up, you realize that you could have saved quite a bit of dough if their parents would have given you a heads up. Obviously the most important part was that Landon had fun, and believe me, he had a total blast playing with his good buddies. However, as the one who forked out the dough, I felt like it deserved a two-second gripe fest from me. Moving on…

After bouncing around with Landon and his pals for several hours it was a mad race to get back home in time for dinner plans. In this case we were having our friends Melisa, her nephew Bradyn (same age as Landon), Faith, and her boyfriend Darrin over for dinner…I had made chili earlier in the day and it had been cooking in the crock pot and making the house smell delicious! We made it home just in the nick of time and spent the evening engaging in some fun conversation while the boys ran around and played with Landon’s stuff.

On a funny side note, during our run on Saturday morning Michaela mentioned to me that Landon had told her what he wanted for his birthday breakfast on Sunday…as soon as she said this I started chanting “please say donuts, please say donuts!”…apparently not…probably because it’s been so long since he had them that he forgot about them, but he ended up asking Michaela to make him a Mickey Mouse-shaped pancake with marshmallows for the face…so that’s what he had for his birthday breakfast.

He proceeded to tear his way through his presents, stopping long enough over each to “ooh and ahh” before throwing it over his shoulder and moving on to the next one (we still have to work on the whole “savoring the moment” thing with the 4-year old). He got some great gifts from friends and family, and really enjoys playing with them all. Right now he’s particularly fond of dressing up as Darth Maul from Star Wars Episode I and he has me put on the Master Yoda mask and we duel for the right to rule the galaxy. He’s getting pretty good with his dual-ended lightsaber so I really have to be on my game.

My sister Nicole and my Dad and Cora came over to spend lunch with us and we all went out to BJ’s, which was excellent! The rest of the day was spent recovering from all the fun we just had. While we didn’t manage to have any corned beef and cabbage (not one of our favorites), we did celebrate the St. Paddy’s Day weekend the best way we know how (Guinness is good).

Hope you all had fun and avoided the sneaky Lepderchauns!