a week away

We decided to head south for our Thanksgiving break to enjoy some much needed time with our "southern" family and friends and to soak up some of their 80 degree weather (thank you very much). It was great, as always, to be there.

We made sure to visit the beach. Seems necessary every year we are there for either Thanksgiving or Christmas. It feels so wrong to be on the beach in November, but yet it feels oh so right...

I spent some time sewing. I have been taking a fantastic sewing class and I have really loved it. I have made only a few simple things and I still can't really sew in a straight line all the time. But I have made some (mostly) functional things and it's been fun! I have yet to work on a sewing machine that is younger than probably 30 years old and I don't think I'd have it any other way. The older machines seem to deal with my shortcomings and so I forgive them theirs. I used my aunt's machine this week (which has sewn me many a dress or halloween costume) and it was good to learn some tricks from her.

We spent time with some of the world's sweetest kids.

Oh, and of course we baked.

On Thanksgiving morning we ran a 10k race. After running four 5k's it seemed like I should up my mileage or something. My friend and inspiration J.lo and I have been running together for a few months now and though we would be in separate states on Thanksgiving we each decided to run a 10k-- even thought I wouldn't be with her I thought, "I certainly can't train and then not run a race"!

Well, I ran alone... really alone for much of it because I wasn't really keeping up with the pack. I ran it in 1 hour, 7 and a half minutes and I came in 5th to last place. People, there were only four runners behind me! And I didn't feel like I was dragging by any means (now I know I jog, I don't run... but still. It was no walk that's for sure). Oh well, I was happy to complete it. It wasn't until about 4 miles into it that I thought "I can do this". So many times before then I thought to myself, "if I lay down right now no one will ever know. I don't have to keep going... I'll just cut through the woods to the finish line" But I kept going, reminding myself of friends that have done half marathons and full marathons... and I am suffering at mile 3.5? Oh, brother. When it was over I thought, "I'm glad I did that...right?" and I will probably forget the hardship in time and do another one some day and ask myself "whyyyyy?!?" Because they say exercise is good for me, that's why.

Then, to make up for it, I ate my weight in Thanksgiving food. But look at these beautiful people I got to dine with!

One day we walked through a park that had faces carved into the trees. Apparently this is a "thing"... people travel to see the tree faces. Never heard of such a thing? Me neither. Allow me to enlighten you.

Tree people or no, I do love me some tall trees in Georgia. And that grimy spanish moss-- beauty.

A sweet week away, for sure. And we came home to a little thing I like to call, Christmastime. My favorite.