New Year's Eve is no longer a big fete for us with Beans and one on the way, but it will be great to have another day off of work and to continue to recover from 4 days of Christmas!! It's amazing to look back at everything that happened over the last year. It went by so quickly but so much happened. Last cross season Ella was a tiny little peanut, content to lay in her stroller, the sling, then the baby bjorn when she was finally big enough! Pete raced on very few hours of sleep, and we lucked out with great weather(well for spectating anyway :)!). November came and went, and so did my job. My company sold and we decided I would try the stay at home mom gig for as long as we could survive. I was relieved b/c I could not imagine handing off our little Ella to a stranger so I could go to a crappy job and wait for the day to end. Pete was relieved too, I think.
The spring/summer brought a new season, and a now mobile/solid food eating Ella with a new set of planning involved in our weekends of racing. She was still happy to sleep in the stroller most of the time, but the car time was getting to her! Summer brought our first road trip, Mountain Bike Nationals in VT. Ella did great, slept in her pack and play, enjoyed the breweries that we checked out, even went for a swim in the pool in one of the few hours that it didn't rain!
By the time cross season came this fall she was an all out walking/running/falling machine who laughed at the prospect of being wrangled into the stroller so I could see more than one section of the course! MUCH different than her first cross season, but we adjusted. There were even some races that she took a nap during the race so I could actually see what was going on. Another season and another road trip! Ella was now 1, and we headed down to Delaware for a weekend.
By this time we knew that another baby was on the way and any trips for the 2008 season would have Pete flying solo! The amount of pictures/video I got to take was about 1/2 of what I usually took, but towards the end of the season Ella even started to ring her bell and clap right after the racers went by. Right before the last cross race (the day Pete returned from his trip out to Oregon).
I went back to work part time, the good old funds need replenishing before baby #2!! I'm glad that I got another race season in before having to worry about prepping for daycare/work on Mondays after long days of travelling and packing/unpacking!
So I guess this brings us to 2008. Who knows what it will bring, but I'm sure it will be a year filled with fun, excitement, lots of planning, lots of packing, and lots of chasing (hopefully just for me, not Pete!). Word on the street is that Pete is going to lay low during the road season while we adjust to our family of 4 (yikes) and try his legs out at the track. Hopefully we'll adjust quickly, maybe it's unrealistic ....but that's the plan. Cross season '08 will see me with a 2 year old and a 6 month old. So it should be pretty amusing watching me chase Ella around with a baby in tow. It will be here before we know it!
Happy New Year!
