Weekend Wednesday

This post is going to be a bit rambling and random as I play catch up from being away (and off-line) all weekend.  If you don’t feel like reading about things that aren’t running related you best be moving along.

So, yeah, we went away on the weekend.  Colin’s parents live about 4 hours away (on a good day – which means without a small child).  We try to get up there a few times a year and it usually has to wait until a long weekend or else Colin has to take extra time off of work.  This year he ended up doing that anyways as I picked the short straw and got to work on Good Friday.  The consolation in that is that it was a statutory holiday and I got paid extra to be there.

We left on Saturday morning, but not as bright and early as anticipated.  Originally we were going to leave at 6am – it ended up being 7am by the time we hauled ourselves and our junk out of the parkade.  We stopped about 45 minutes from home for cheaper gas and breakfast.  And then stopped about 3 more times for bathroom breaks (for all of us, but mostly for Spud).  The hoped for nap for Spud on the way up never materialized – he watched movies on the iPhone that was strapped to my headrest – and we rolled into town (a bit of a “blink and you miss it” type of place) around lunch.  Due to our long runs having been done earlier in the week both Colin and I weren’t too worse for wear since we both had compression socks!  We did pretty much nothing for the rest of the day that didn’t involve kicking around the house.

Here are a few pictures of where we were driving through:

On Easter Sunday we went to my in-laws church and the service was held on the side of a local mountain (a small one).  It was sunny (but windy, so not warm) and everyone was very welcoming.  Here’s your Spud story for the post: at one point a gentleman came up with a lamb and spoke of Jesus being the Lamb of God.  Prior to starting he mentioned that the lamb (being a lamb, of course) would pee when it was on his lap because it relaxed.  The kids were allowed to come up and pet it.  Now, after his talk, he asked if anyone had come up with a good name for the lamb.  I could hear a little girl say, “Fluffy.”  And then I heard Spud.  At first he thought “Licky” would be a good name.  But then he changed his mind and laughingly blurted out that it’s name should be “Pee.”  Yes, my son is now forever to be remembered as the child who named the Easter lamb “Pee.”  A proud moment, let me tell you.

After our picnic lunch at church we went home and puttered around for a little bit.  Then Colin and I left Spud with his grandparents while we went off to a few wineries.  There’s no point being up in BC wine country if we can’t bring anything home.  We went to a couple of fruit wineries that we hadn’t been to yet and then took a little drive because Colin wanted some real wine.  You know it’s good when you’re willing to put up birthday money to get a second bottle.  I think we came home with 5 bottles of wine.  Now our wine fridge doesn’t look so empty!

This picture is for my friend Gina, who thinks that it’s a good idea to bike up this road as part of Subaru Ironman Canada in August.  It might not look too steep, but we’re about half way up in this picture.  It’s 11km at roughly 6% grade and not even halfway through the bike portion.  To each her own, I suppose!

We had a late start on Monday – who doesn’t like to sleep in?  Eventually we left at about noon.  We were supposed to take Spud to a model train museum that’s in the area, but just ran out of time.  We’re going up again in May so we’ll do it then.  However, we had to bribe him so he wouldn’t be too disappointed – we hit up mini golf on the way home.  When we unpacked we found out the Easter Bunny had visited our house as well as Gramma and Gramps’ so Spud got to stay up way past his bedtime.

Officially a really good weekend.  And you’ll probably note that there wasn’t a step of running done.  I can’t quite make myself care about that since the three of us had three days together.