SRC Arena

This is it! The new Indoor Track facility at OCC. Last night was the Inaugural Section III High School Indoor Track Meet. There were about 25 schools that took part in the evening events.

This is what the inside of the arena looks like. The track is on the bottom floor, the spectators watch from above. Which is a new and very interesting perspective. You can actually see all the way around the track. I think that's pretty smart. All of the field houses I've ever been to, you could only see from the ground level, and you could never actually see all the way around the entire track. (Can you spot Alex in the photo above?? Hint: He's not at the bottom of the photo. He's kind of in the middle, walking on the track towards the camera.)

I met up with Rich (Sheila's friend) at the meet, he had saved a spot at the start/finish line. Which turns out was a great place to be. (Except for when some mean guy yelled at me...) We had a great view! Alex ran in the DMR, the Distance Medley Relay. He was the 3rd leg of the relay and ran an 800m.

He held on to the big lead very nicely. Unfortunately, the 4th and final leg of the relay (the 1600m leg) couldn't quite hang on, so they didn't win. But it was a great first race and a great first meet of the season! I'm looking forward to many more great events at the SRC Arena.

Corny Obsession

I've become obsessed with making caramel corn this week. I mentioned in a post a couple of days ago that I got Sheila's famous caramel corn recipe. Well, I've been having so much fun making it (and eating it and sharing it), that I can't stop!

I'm on my 3rd batch in 4 days. I'm now starting to experiment. This round I added cashews. The last batch, I added roasted peanuts. (Yum!!)

And in addition to the cashews, I drizzled some chocolate on top! This is going to be a gift for a woman I work with who is going on maternity leave Friday. She's been the biggest fan of the caramel corn. So I thought it would be fun to send her on her way with her own extra-special batch of the better-than-Fiddle-Faddle treat!

Young Architects

I had the privilege of helping Laura and Kelly make their Gingerbread Houses this year. These are the finished products... can you guess who made each house?? Their personalities really came out in the house building process.

Of course, with many projects, it got off to a rough start...

But soon enough, we were under way. Everybody pitched in to help. Paula and Kelly placed the decorations in just the right spots.

Grandma Sheila helped Laura put frosting on the gumdrops.

Gary created perfect window frames.

Aunt Amanda became a pro at icicle creation.

Laura decorated an adorable snowman for the front lawn.

And in the end, both girls made perfect and beautiful Gingerbread Houses. Each in their own unique way. While Kelly likes blizzards, Laura prefers a light dusting of snow.

And then Kelly began to eat hers...

Decking the Halls

We decorated the house last weekend. It's our 4th Christmas with the 9' tree. We still like it. A lot. So does Jenny.

We got a new ornament while we were on vacation this year. It's always fun putting up the ornaments, most of them bring back great memories.

Today I finally attempted to make Sheila's Famous Caramel Corn. We were very pleased with not only how easy it was to make, but how tasty it was! I think we might be making this more often! Incidentally, do you pronounce it "Car-mel" or "Car-a-mel"? This has been quite the debate going on in our house for awhile...

One more thing before I finish up this post. This is SRC Arena. Well, it's an artist's rendering. This was built at the Syracuse Campus of Onondaga Community College (aka "OCC"). It just officially opened yesterday. Guess what's inside that arena?? There's a 6-lane Indoor Track in there! All of Section III track meets will be run here this year. I cannot express how happy this makes me. Not to have to drive all over the state in the middle of the winter to attend track meets. I think the kids are pretty excited about it too. I can't wait to see it. The first meet is Wednesday, I'll be sure to take lots of pictures! (Well, don't I always??)

Cookies, Treadmills and Managers

It has been a crazy busy week since Thanksgiving. Well, since before Thanksgiving really, but even more so since I've been back to work. But before I get into that, I wanted to share a photo of the first batch of holiday cookies that I made over the weekend. Eric's favorite. Apparently I had never made them for my parents, so it was good they were here to enjoy the warm chocolate-peanut-buttery goodness.

This is another thing I did over the weekend. I bought a treadmill. The Black Friday Sports Authority Door Buster was quite a good deal! (And I didn't even have to wake up at 4am to get it!) Given the above photo of the chocolate-peanut-buttery goodness, it is probably a VERY good thing that I bought it. I've been wanting one for a long time. So with my extra freelance money, I splurged. It's been wonderful so far. And Eric even joins me on the elliptical for a little workout too. I think our "gym" is rather basement-y, but that's ok. It works for me.

So back to the busy week I've had at work. On Monday, it was a back-to-the-grind kind of day. But there seemed to be a strange air about the day. And at 4:50pm, we figured out why. The HR woman and the GM came down to our department and announced they had just fired our boss. It took every ounce of self-control for each of us to keep a straight, serious face while they spoke to us. But we did it. There were high-5's flying and we were jumping for joy the moment they left. It was a LONG time coming, and it finally, actually, really happened. We had to pinch ourselves that we weren't dreaming.

Since that moment, I was kind of promoted to the "manager" of the department. Which so far has been a little crazy. We've been uncovering all the items of business that the former boss had been neglecting for quite some time. It's been a long couple of days trying to re-organize the calendar and schedule projects that we didn't even know existed. We'll get there, it'll take time to start running smoothly, but we're happy and relieved that he's finally gone!

And I guess that's about all that's been going on around here. It's now December, time to start thinking about Christmas!! Decorating to commence this weekend...

Thanksgiving 2011

We spent Thanksgiving at Gary & Paula's house and had a wonderful day!

Gary and Paula are always such great hosts. They really went all out with the dinner, everything was perfect! Gary and my dad carved the 2 turkeys.

This was the "big" bird. They had another in the crock pot.

One half of the table, with Gary, Kelly, Sheila, Rich, Paula and my mom.

And the other side, with my dad, me, Laura, Alex, and Kelly again. I think Arlene is down at the end. Paula's dad and his friend Arlene stopped by for dessert.

This was my very full plate full of food. I was so stuffed I could barely move.

We got to Skype with Greg, Diane, Emily, Derek and Mark. We wished they could have been there, but it was nice to share part of the day with them via Skype. Now that we have video phones, maybe the flying cars will be along soon...

Here's Laura looking very pretty with her pink bow!

And Kelly enjoyed the black frosting a little too much!

Laura took a nice photo of Eric and I.

Mom and Kelly played on their tablets.

Alex looked up Turkey Trot results.

And I enjoyed sharing my birthday with my wonderful family! Thanks for everyone who made Thanksgiving and my birthday such a special day. Especially Sheila, who made this adorable turkey cake!!

Oh... and who could forget little Jenny. She was there as well. Sitting under the table, playing the part of a canister vacuum.

ThanksBirthday

It's been a fun day today! It was Thanksgiving AND my birthday. All in one day. I'm thankful so for many things, most of all another year on earth to spend with those I am thankful for.

This morning we got up bright and early to continue an annual tradition. A tradition that was apparently born the same year that I was! For us however, it's just been a tradition for the past 3 years.

Alex changed it up a little bit this year. Instead of running the 5k, he ran the 10k. He's been sick for the past week, so I was a little worried about him. But he did great! He came in 33rd over all (out of over 500 runners) and ran the 10k in 42:14. Not too bad for being sick. He's the one on the long-sleeved white t-shirt in the middle.

Here he is heading towards the finish line. It was a great event. Over 1800 people ran the 5k, it was quite a crowd, but it was nicely thinned out by the time the 10k was over.

My parents are in town for the holiday, and my dad joined me in cheering for Alex. He said that next year, he wants to run the 5k. Should we hold him to it??

I'm going to post Thanksgiving/Birthday photos tomorrow. We went to Gary & Paula's for a wonderful dinner and I have lots of photos to sort through. Too many to do tonight. I'm stuffed and exhausted. But I had a great day!