Running & Decorating

Yesterday morning, Ryan and I took advantage of the fact that mom and dad are here to get out for a run together! I wanted to test my legs a bit and see how they would handle a slightly longer run, and Ryan was planning on 20. I suggested the Foreside loop, which was a solid 14 miles, and then Ryan would just continue on to finish up his miles. We set out at 7:30 am under overcast skies. It was extremely balmy out, at least 50 degrees. Crazy weather for December! After Friday's rains, which had melted pretty much all the uncompacted snow, it looked, and felt, like spring.

Foreside was fairly busy until we passed the dump road, at which point, it got a bit quiet. It's a fairly flat route on the way out and we ran along, talking about this and that. As we neared the crossing of the Muddy River, we heard a big crack. We stopped to take a look at the river and realized that with the warming temps (and perhaps the tide?), large, and small, chunks of ice were swirling and cracking and groaning and making noises as they hit each other like wind chimes, all the while, shifting and floating along in the river. Some of the ice chunks were at least 3" or 4" thick and huge. We walked back and forth across the bridge several times, enjoying this neat phenomenon. It was fascinating to watch. Nature is pretty cool. (14.3 miles)

Then it was on up the hill to turn onto Rt. 24 for the return trip. There we felt the wind, which had apparently been at our backs along Foreside, and the road gets a bit hillier. We were still moving along nicely but around 10 miles, my legs were ready to be done 😂 It was a bit of a grind for the remainder of the run, and once we hit the urban line and the road got a bit busier, I may have been less than enthused 😁 Still, nice to have Ryan's company for the run and even if my legs weren't quite as spry as I would have liked, it was a good test! I would say I've still got a bit of that 50 miles in my legs, but things are coming around 😀

The rest of the day was filled with friends, family and decorating! Anne and Thistle came over in the late morning for some playtime, lunch and cookie decorating. Lots of fun, laughter and a whole lot of icing everywhere! 😆🎅🎄

Then, after the girls left and I cleaned up the table, Neenie and Sam got to work putting together the gingerbread house!

While Sam was patiently waiting for the icing holding the house together to dry, Sam worked on decorating some of the accent pieces like the tree, the chimney, etc, worked on some designs for how to ice and decorate the roof with candy, and also decided there should be a few gumdrop giants in the mix 😄 Many thanks to Neenie for making the house pieces and lovingly bringing them up here to Maine so that she and Sam could tackle this project together 😍 The rest of the house will get decorated today but it's already been quite a successful and fun project so far!!