Wrap it up

The holiday season this year has been busy and wonderful, just like it always is. It started the week before Thanksgiving with a little holiday miracle. Jazz, the adorable Siamese kitty that the Winns adopted back in July went missing. She was last spotted on Friday afternoon, and there was no sign of her all weekend. Since the last Siamese cat they had vanished, Jarom was quite concerned. On Sunday evening he even told the kids that Jazz was gone. But Monday morning he got a phone call from Alixa with a very hungry, loudly meowing cat on the other end. No idea where she went or what she was up to for almost 3 days, but she found her way back without a scratch on her.

Thanksgiving had the usual traditions. Jarom woke up early to go play his once-a-year game of football and loved it. Lix baked some amazing pies and rolls and the clan headed over to eat a wonderful meal with Mario and PJ, along with the Nate Winn family. There were some football games to be watched, and some fantasy football teams to still care about. By the time Christmas arrived that would no longer be the case as Jarom and Alixa failed to win any of their leagues this year.

 Winner twinners

December has been a whirlwind. Jenna could not be happier at school and loves learning. She is a reading machine, going through books like a hot knife through butter. We are all continually amazed by her. She got the eagle student achievement award of the week or something for her class, which is given to the student that shows good leadership. She was very excited about that because it meant they read her name over the intercom to the entire school. Alixa helped her class with their Christmas party, the first of hundreds of class parties she will be working on.

Bo has also really started to catch on in school. He goes to a preschool run by Sister Kanzler, who is also his primary teacher, and he loves her to death. And he should because she is awesome. When we got a Christmas card from her family Alixa showed it to him and he was so happy to see her. He likes to explain that she is Sister Kanzler at church, but Miss Bethanne at school. She’s done a good job getting Bo excited about learning his letters and starting to read and write. We’ve been doing some letter flash cards with him and he is good with all the sounds they make. Emmy also likes to play with them. Jarom walked in on Alixa working with them and heard Alixa say this great tidbit to Emily, who wanted a flashcard: “You can have U. Nobody likes U.” Poor Emmy.

 Everybody in the house sticks their tongue out when they concentrate, except Lix

Emmy refuses to start speaking. At least she refuses to speak words. She makes a handful of noises that aren’t really associated with any particular object. And she will repeat them loudly over and over while you try to guess what it is that she wants. And either you will find the correct object and get her to stop or you will be forced to kill her or yourself, because that is how annoying it gets after about 20 seconds. But she is an adorable little kid when you don’t want to strangle her. Unfortunately she spent the week before Christmas deathly ill. For about 5 days she would throw up anything and everything that we managed to get her to eat, which was almost nothing. We thought it was a bad case of the flu, but after a doctor’s visit we found out that it was pneumonia and an ear infection. We got her some shots and drugs and after a few more days of being mostly comatose (except at night, when she wouldn’t sleep for more than 30 minutes without crying unless someone was cuddling her) she started to mend.

For Christmas all an utterly exhausted mom and dad wanted were a few uninterrupted hours of sleep, and Santa came through. The 24^th was the first night that Emmy didn’t wake up, sleeping 14 hours. Which meant that after a fun dinner and evening at Mimi and Opa's house with Abe and Mikah, Jarom and Alixa got nearly 10 hours of sleep. That made for a great start to Christmas. It was followed by watching the kids open up an assortment of fun dolls and cars and train tracks and books and games, all of which they loved. Emmy probably loved her gifts the most. She got a mop and broom cleaning set and wanders all over the house wiping things, and she got a new purple scooter that she can ride just like her older sister and brother. The family went back to Alixa’s parents’ house for a late brunch and some hanging out, and then left the kids with Mimi for a few hours to go see Into the Woods, which was great but a little too long.

Our biggest Christmas present really came a trimester ago when Lix got pregnant with baby number 4. That info has been spread on Facebook and instagram, so this probably isn’t news to you. This wasn’t really a planned baby. Jarom has pretty much always been ready to be done having kids, but his resistance has gotten progressively stronger after each one. Alixa wanted to have 4, and here we are. Alixa 4, Jarom 0. They both agree that this is the end, though. The baby will be here in June, which gives Jarom a few months to figure out how to not let this happen again. The pregnancy has been rougher than the first three on Lix from a nausea perspective, but she is past that point now and seems to be doing well, although she is always hungry, which is totally different from the non-pregnant version of Alixa. She’s still working out like a crazy person, so she hasn’t gained very much weight.

The other noteworthy even from the past month is the minor raccoon invasion that Jarom had to evict. We’ve had raccoon visitors in the past when one took up residence in the attic for a week or so. Jarom had to go up there and block off the vent that he had used to crawl in. We see coons around every now and again, but they don’t really bother us. Until recently when Jarom left for work one morning and found Jazz’s food bin had been knocked over and opened. He thought it might have been Jazz, but when it happened a second night in a row he knew it was those dang coons. So they moved the cat food inside, and Jarom kept an ear out for the troublemakers the next night. Around 11 he heard some rustling out in the garage so he headed out. He turned on the light and was face to face with at least 4 big raccoons poking around the garage looking for the now missing food. They seemed to be enjoying themselves. One had climbed to the top of the ladder, one was investigating a pile of golf balls, but none of them were happy to see Jarom. They started growling at him, so he grabbed a baseball bat, opened the garage door and started laying the smack down. However, as annoying and meddlesome as coons are, they are still pretty cute and he just couldn’t bring himself to really hit any of them. So he poked and prodded and growled back at them. He chased one into the back yard and over the fence, and then over the neighbors fence as well. It was quite the production. He just wanted to make sure that it was sufficiently stressful that they would think twice before coming back.

The next night Jarom was coming home from basketball around 11, and sure enough as he pulled into the driveway his headlights lit up the little coon eyes of at least 4 critters. So he grabbed the bat and started round 2. This time he decided he needed to send a stronger message so he actually treed one of them and landed some solid body blows. No permanent damage, but Miko will definitely be waking up with some bruised ribs. Eventually it got down out of the tree and ran like the wind for the nearest storm drain, with Jarom chasing him. A hilarious sight if there were anyone to see it, I’m sure. Since there is no longer any available food, and being around means they might get violently assaulted, the coons have stopped showing up.

Jazz helped put away the Christmas decorations

Hopefully everyone else’s Christmas season was filled with gifts and family and fun and adventures just like ours was. Here’s hoping that 2015 is another great year for the Winns and for you!

Run. Drive. Sleep? Repeat.

 Halloween happened. Emmy was Wonder Woman, Cousin Itt, and Doug the dog

 The cast of Up and their trick or treating buddies

 After learning that people put candy in whatever bag you are holding, 

Emmy starting carrying a bag everywhere she went

After successfully completing their first half-marathon as a married couple Jarom and Alixa moved on to stage 2 of their fall race schedule. Race week began on Tuesday with the arrival of their babysitters, who were kind enough to schedule a long layover in Dallas on their way to Hawaii. All three kids were thrilled to spend a few days under the watchful eyes of Jarom’s parents, because that usually means lots of fun times with Grandma and Grandpa. Sadly, Jarom and Alixa didn’t get to spend much time with them because they took off on Wednesday morning to catch their flight to Vegas.

After a typically amazing Spirit flight they were met at baggage claim by their favorite host, Grandpa Winn. The first stop, as it always is whenever there is one within range, was at Café Rio for lunch. Then it was Walgreens to get some sunglasses, because Alixa forgot hers and it was marvelously bright and sunny all weekend long. Wednesday and Thursday were hang out with Grandpa days, eating wonderful meals, visiting the strip, checking out the new baby lion cubs and dolphins at the mirage, stopping at the Bellagio, eating more wonderful meals, and generally enjoying not having nap times and trying to feed toddlers and hearing the kids yell. In their absence the kids were having a blast with the grandparents, and except for the time Alixa sent Grandma to the wrong location for a birthday party things went well back in Dallas. On Thursday evening in Nevada the Carters arrived with Jeremy. They spent the evening chatting and playing cards, and everyone went to bed relatively early. That would be the last decent rest for the weekend.

 First stops: Cafe Rio and a movie theater with recliners

For the uninformed, Ragnar is a 12-person, 200 mile relay race. The team is broken up into two vans of 6 runners each, and each runner has 3 legs they must run of differing lengths and difficulties. The race began Friday morning, but the Winns were in van 2 so they didn’t start until noonish. Alixa and Jarom had opening runs that were about the same: 5.5 miles, almost exclusively up steep hills. Their van was done around 5 and only a few miles from Grandpa’s place, so they met him for dinner and then headed back to his house for showers and a brief rest. That rest was about 2.5 hours. Then they were off to their next run, this time through the dead of night. Alixa’s was 6 miles, mostly downhill, and Jarom’s was 5.3 and very downhill. Combined with the cool night temperatures the second runs felt much better than the third. After finishing around 3am they headed back to Grandpa’s place for showers and another brief sleep. Then they were up and out for their final runs. Alixa finished with another 5 mile run and Jarom only had to do 3, but they were both uphill again and the repeated runs without rest was starting to get to them. Even Dave, the groups best runner by far and the relay anchor, was struggling by the end and even got passed by a few people. The crew finished the course in about 29 hours, which was good enough for a distant 23^rd place out of 305.

Pre-running

 Post port-a-potty and feeling great

With the strip behind her 

 Lix had the misfortune of following a mariokart racer

In total Lix ran 16.6 miles at an 8:15 minute pace and Jarom did 13.7 at 8:30. Most people have confused looks when you tell them you are running a race like this and ask you why. The main reason is the atmosphere. It is fun to try and push yourself to see what you are capable of physically, but hanging out with good friends that you don’t get to see very often is a ton of fun too. The lack of sleep and exhaustion from running makes for lots of silly and memorable experiences, and doing it all against the backdrop of Vegas with our favorite Nevadan as a host makes it all even better. After finishing up the group grabbed one more bite to eat and then the Utahns took off driving north. The Winns just relaxed with Grandpa for the afternoon, catching another few hours of rest and a last nice meal before boarding their red-eye flight home. There was no sleeping there, and when they got back they had to retrieve the kids from Nate and Kenz and start getting back to normal life. It was a few days of recovering before they really felt normal, but they had a great time and loved seeing everyone. And for now their race schedule is over. But they’ll probably end up doing something like this again soon enough.

 Finish line pics

And Bo playing piano, because I think it's funny

Girls rule and Boys drool

Alixa has been working super hard to lose pregnancy weight and get into great shape over the past year. So early this summer she decided that she wanted to run a half marathon with some of her friends and Jarom said that he would do it with her. You may or may not recall that Jarom did a half two years ago with his brother Nate. It didn’t go very well. So this time he decided to shed about 230 pounds and see if he could break 2 hours. It became clear very early in their training that this was not going to be a challenging goal for Alixa. Her target was more like 1:45. She did an amazing job with her training, working out diligently most every morning. Jarom’s training did not go nearly as well, and at age 33 he is admittedly in the worst physical condition of his life. One of the perks of being a stay-at-home mom is that Lix has a standing appointment at the gym every day, whereas it is a little tougher for Jarom to make the time to get there as regularly. Also, Jarom is lazier than Alixa.

 The kids took a day off to feed the goats and pick pumpkins

The race started early Saturday morning, so Lix and Jarom left the kids with Mimi and booked a hotel room downtown near the race start. That way they didn’t have to get up an extra 45 minutes early and they could come back and shower and take a short nap before driving home after the race. Alixa spent the hour before the race using the bathroom about 50 times. I’m not sure it helped, because she still had to stop mid race to go again. Other than that pit stop that cost her a minute or so, the race went very well for Alixa and she cruised into the finish line at 1:48. Then the long wait began for her husband. Jarom came in 8 minutes behind her at 1:56. That time was better than he expected given his training and condition, and was a PR by nearly 30 minutes. Now that he has a respectable time on his resume he will likely not do any more of these half marathons. On the flip side, Alixa enjoyed her training and will probably continue to do these until she gets below the 90 minute mark, because she’s borderline insane. But we are all very proud of her.

 Pictures from the finish line. Looks like Jarom got tired and fell asleep.
Fast people take selfies with their medal

After the race they walked back to their hotel room and slept for a couple of hours. It was amazing. They hit up five guys on the way home for a greasy post race meal that hit the spot. In their absence Bo scored 4 goals in his final soccer game of the season, and self-reported that he also stopped them from scoring 3 times. We’ve tried to explain to both him and Jenna that defense is just as important as offense, so he’s started keeping track of that as well. 

Then the whole crew took off to a fall party about an hour north on a farm with some friends. There was a four-wheeler to ride, which Jenna and Bo loved. There were frisbees to throw and tractors to play on, a hay-less hay ride, a nice potluck dinner, pumpkins to carve, kickball to play, and nice people to chat with. It was a really great evening. Bo stepped on a fireant nest and it was about 90 degrees, but other than that it was a great time. And in an interesting twist the friend who invited us up to her family’s place also happens to be the half-sister of the lunatic who got stake basketball cancelled here in Frisco. And he brought his buddy from the game a few years ago. You can read about it here.