Update: The Fam

Just some photos of the little ones -- they're growing so fast!



My sister-in-law loves being a mommy :)



Aaron meeting cousin Mady for the first time. He wonders when she'll be big enough to play ball.







One of Aaron's new favorite things is playing with Grandpa in the workshop.



Grandpa shows him all kinds of cool things, like magnifying glasses.







Hello, Blue Eyes! What a pretty little girl my niece is!







And who's her favorite auntie? I am, of course.

St. Louis "Marathon" Weekend

Here are a few more photos from my first weekend in St. Louis...



We went to the Arch, of course, and I got a history lesson on its construction as well as a few cool photos.



Touching the Arch is supposed to be good luck, so we gave it a whirl.





I also got to sample some St. Louie cuisine, including the famous Imo's pizza and toasted ravioli! Yum!



Art Hill and the museum in Forest Park on a gloriously sunny day.





This was the first time I'd been to one of Stretch's races, but I think grabbing a cup of coffee while I wait for him to get to the finish line will work nicely as my regular race day routine.

St. Louis City Museum: Recapture Your Childhood for Just $12

I was a scrawny, decidedly unathletic wisp of a child -- all sharp angles and toothpicky limbs. No matter what sport the other kids were playing, my attempts to join in typically ended quickly and unceremoniously with a nose bleed or an asthma attack. Just watching a game of dodgeball gave me bruises.

Despite my somewhat fragile constitution, I eventually discovered that I was reasonably coordinated and found a blissful sanctuary on the playground: the monkey bars.

Twenty years later, I'm still avoiding dodgeball games, but sadly, my friends and I have outgrown the monkey bars...

Until this weekend.




As part of our move from "dating" to "seriously dating," Stretch took me to St. Louis to "watch him run in the St. Louis Marathon" (read: "meet his parents and tour his hometown"). On my little tour, he took me to St. Louis City Museum, which is basically a ginormous indoor/outdoor jungle gym for grown-ups.

Here are some photos, but you really need to see this place to believe it.







Stretch squeezing through a giant slinky to get from one floor to the next. Being skinny and flexible has never been more convenient.



Slides!! Woo hoo!!!



Outside, the giant slinky madness continues as we hover three stories above the ground with only some twisted re-bar keeping us from a grisly death.











Stretch likes the chains in the castle, though it occurs to me that this might be the most dangerous part of the whole ordeal.



Luckily, neither of us fell down this staircase, and we left City Museum feeling fulling twenty years younger.

Happy St. Patty's

The weekend before St. Patty's day, the new boyfriend and I took one of those awesome relationship steps when he started dropping the "L-word." I was on Cloud 9 the next three days until actual St. Patrick's Day, Wednesday, when Stretch called me from the ER to tell me he that he was in an accident on his bike.

Now, when you're with an athlete -- and I suppose this is true of all athletes, but it is definitely true of Ironmen -- you have to expect the occasional accident or injury, but my boyfriend is strong and smart and I trust him to take care of himself. Of course, that doesn't do much good when he's cycling down the road, minding his own business, and a pickup truck hits him from behind.

Dear Guy in the Truck: Why are you trying to ruin everything?

He assured me that he was fine, despite a few flesh wounds; I think that was the Morphine talking because when I got there the next day, he was bandaged up like a mummy and in significant pain. We spent the rest of the weekend cleaning wounds and changing bandages. He's totally worth it, but it wasn't very much fun for either of us, so for my sake, please watch where you're driving.

Valentine's Day Dilemnas

The first Valentine's Day with somebody new is always a bit of a relationship minefield. First of all, since people's reactions to the whole notion of Valentine's Day are so various, you never know whether you should go casual (and risk making your pookie feel neglected and unimportant) or go big (and convince him or her that you're needy/insecure/psycho). And even once you figure out what your plans are, something's bound to go terribly wrong and ruin them anyway.

My first boyfriend was bonkers about any excuse for a romantic occasion -- he wanted to celebrate every week for the first several months we dated and every month for the whole two years. Obviously, he made a huge to-do about Valentine's with fancy dinners and gifts he couldn't really afford. I broke up with him on Christmas Eve one year, and I think he was more upset about me ruining his romantic plans for Christmas than he was about us breaking up.

I presumed I would be spending the following Valentine's Day alone, but in fact, I met another young man just a couple of days before, and though we weren't yet dating, he happened to be at my house on February 14th when my charming ex decided to make an appearance for one of his big, romantic gestures. He was jogging up to the front door when he spotted the other guy through the living room window and changed his plans a bit -- he reached in his pocket, pulled out a watch I'd given him, smashed it against the front door, and stormed back to his car, where he sat parked at the curb for the next twenty minutes, either composing himself or waiting for me to come out and talk to him or both. Romantic, eh?

The following year, I was in Japan and my boyfriend was in the States, so for Valentine's Day, I was expecting a phone call. Apparently, he was one of those guys who doesn't like making a big deal of Valentine's because the phone call never came. When I did finally talk to him three or four days later, he told me there was some other girl who didn't live 7,000 miles away from him whom he had feelings for. Also very romantic.



So since then, I've been a little, well, cynical about Valentine's day. This year, as the 14th of February was looming on the horizon, I was trying to pick up cues from Stretch about his take on Valentine's Day. We'd only been dating a few months, and though things were going well, he had been very low-key about both my birthday and Christmas, so I was pretty sure that Valentine's Day wasn't going to be big on his list of priorities.


Luckily, I got a little help on this one from his cousin. We were down in Chicago visiting him in January, and he mentioned something about their Valentine's Day tradition, which they then explained to me -- a trip home to St. Louis and a Blues game with the boys.

So that cleared the question up for me. No romantic Valentine's Day plans this year. Whew!



But the story doesn't end there. A week or so later we were out having dinner with my sister, and I teasingly mentioned something about how I was going to be abandoned on Valentine's Day since the boyfriend was going to St. Louis.

"No, I'm not."

"You're not?"

"No, I'm staying here so I can take you out for Valentine's Day."

"... Why?"

"Because I want to."

"O."

So we left it at that for the night. This was not, after all, the first time Stretch had done something to surprise me.

I started to think about plans for the 14th, whether we should go out to dinner and where or whether I should cook or whether he'd want to cook... and while I was doing that, he was finding a ski resort and making reservations at a hotel up north. This from the guy who claims he's not romantic.

So we spent our first Valentine's Day on the snowy side of a mountain. Not everything went smoothly, of course. I took a few hard spills when Stretch convinced me to attack a black diamond, and he tragically lost his keys on the mountain, but despite the bruises and the inconvenience, I think I may have shaken the Valentine's Day curse. We spent all day skiing and got "suited up" for a nice dinner in the evening, and the following day we drove up to the bridge to see the straights all frozen over and have a hot breakfast in the UP before our long drive home. A pretty romantic Valentine's Day after all.