Staying warm.

Well, it appears to be winter. You know how I know? Because yesterday I saw a dog wearing shoes. I also saw some pigeons eating a slice of pizza, but I'm not really sure what that means. In any case, our lovely mild Fall left us rather abruptly, with the average temperature dropping 40 degrees within about two days. It was sad.

Thankfully, there are ways to stay warm that don't necessarily involve watching Glee in my pajamas and eating ice cream (not that I have a problem with that). For example, a couple weekends ago our stake had our annual YSA film festival. Most of the entries were predictably mediocre, but one stood out as a crowd pleaser and won the final prize:

Twilight Years from Tom on Vimeo.

It's also party season, which I happen to be a fan of. In addition to our company holiday soiree and various dinner engagements, we went to a Roaring 20s themed Christmas party recently. Pretty much everyone got decked out and looked fabulous, which was a lot of fun. Our friend Joshua has his own photography business and was there taking glamour shots:



All shots can be found here.
And a week from tomorrow I can look forward to thawing out a bit more (and eating my weight in homemade candy) when I fly back to California for a week and a half. Until then, I'll be keeping a close eye on the behavior of the neighborhood animals.

Running for pie.

At the beginning of October, around the time I discovered I would get to go home for Thanksgiving, Sarah and I talked about finding a race to do together while we were there. Others caught on and things got a little out of hand, with the end result being that last Thursday morning, 8 of us participated in the Silicon Valley Turkey Trot. Most of us did the 10K race, while Sarah's husband Joel ran the 5K and two mini-redheads rocked the kids' races (and got MEDALS, which I am totally not at all jealous about).

The weeks leading up to the race included many mass emails back and forth with updates on mileage and training. It was fun getting each other hyped up and also talking trash (obligatory). It all culminated in the glory of Thanksgiving day, running alongside some of my faves with the promise of major gluttony later on.



Totally gangsta.
Disgustingly, David smoked all of us and finished first despite not having trained at all (unless you count going on one 2-mile run a few weeks before the race, which I do not). But we all finished under our goal time of an hour and looked fabulous doing it. Special props to my dad who, though he is in a two-man biker gang with my mom, had never run more than a couple miles before he started training for this race.

We were rewarded handsomely with a little of this action:


There may also have been mass quantities of pie involved. My stomach had been training for this day just as much as my legs had. Life is about balance, right?

More pictures here.