Anyway, now there’s an app for that.

But if you’d rather hear the news via email, at least this newsletter seems more complete.

All of this excitement has me making preparations for my end because at this rate, I don’t have long. When I die, make me into a record, here.

I’ve done harder things in my life than run a marathon. Stage races when I raced bikes were harder. 2-3 days of grueling 2-4 hour pain or 8 hours at the track. In both cases, despite the fact that you hurt from the first race, you had to suck it up until you finished all of your races. Usually, the kid with the highest pain threshold won. Believe me, this is far worse than having to stay at the table until you finish your brussel sprouts. I’ve survived both. Labor was most definitely harder. But, because running a marathon is relatively special, but widely understood to be excruciating, as with labor, when you’ve finished, you hobble off with a ton of street credibility which somehow makes up for the fact that you are hobbling.

Truth be known, we’ve been the sickest ever this winter sampling each of Winter’s nasties. So, between flights of bedridden illness there was the obligatory frantic holiday shopping and crafting, booking of holiday trips, the attendance at holiday gatherings, avoidance of some due to flights of illness, then holidays and the taking of holiday trips… and I just never found time to check in.

Rather than boring you with what we’ve been up to, I figure I’ll start the year off with some learnings from 2009:
1. If you have to see the Nutcracker at Christmas, and you aren’t going to see your child or beloved family/friend, get tickets to the San Francisco Ballet. It is incredible.
2. The Madame du Cirque Scene in the Nutcracker is when all the three year olds in the audience exit to the hallways to run about.
3. Star Wars is not, as we parents believed, about spaceships and space. According to Will, it is about people and killing and …
4. 5 year olds don’t want guitars for Christmas. The fact that it was made by Santa doesn’t matter.
5. Santa’s giving your 5 year old a guitar for Christmas will make him appreciate the backpack, new markers, and fresh sets of Legos you bought him.
6. When booking your next trip to Disneyland, stay at the Howard Johnson across the street. The pirate themed waterpark attached to the hotel was our favorite Disney attraction.
7. You have to do New Years Eve at Disneyland once in your life. It sure beats standing around for 8 hours in single digits to watch a ball drop out of the sky.
8. Buy and cook fresh Dungenous crab for Christmas. Fresh, it is $4.99 a pound! At my house, we make the vegetarians boil those suckers alive.

What you miss by leaving Disneyland before the sun goes down:

Will rang in the new year missing a front tooth after knocking it lose in a freak rootbeer making accident. (We made rootbeer floats for Christmas Eve lunch.)

In other news, Santa brought me a ukulele to complete my hipster look. What a blast! The beauty of 4 strings is you can pretty quickly start plunking out identifiable tunes. I’m getting pretty decent at the classics like Leaving on a Jet Plane, She is Leaving Home (Beatles), Edelweiss, I’m so tired (Beatles), All of Me, Puff the Magic Dragon, Tonight You Belong to Me and Rainbow Connection. Still working on While My Ukulele Gently Weeps and Blackbird. I take requests… Maybe a tour in 2011?

When I’m not obsessively strumming, we’re training for the Napa Marathon on March 7th.

Will’s set in the following Tuesday with a 103 degree fever that could not be abated. We alternated Tylenol and Motrin, spent 5 hours getting to know the on-call doctor by phone, and finally just ended up weathering the following 36 hours of fever and paralyzing aches.

It is Sylvie’s turn, again, this week. Monday, I was called to the school early to fetch the feverish kiddo. She was asleep in the loft. (Loft: the classroom quiet space used for diving off onto teachers or quarantined sick children). Typically a fever trailing another illness is the work of pneumonia or an ear infection. Not so, today. After a negative H1N1 swab, normal O2 levels, and clear ears, the devil revealed itself when Sylvie’s body attempted to exorcise itself while waiting for an (clear) xray. She ruined her clothes, and we learned that they don’t sell kiddie clothes in the hospital gift shop. I need to explain to her that there are easier ways to get a new pashmina toga… We’re back home, recovering. Sylvie is beginning to look perky, again. Wonder what we’re in for, next?

We kicked it off Thursday carving pumpkins. Doug and the kids made a totem pole. Our kitchen looked like there’d been a pumpkin massacre. (Which, yeah, I guess there was.)

Friday, the two schools meant two parades and two parties.

We let the kids eat candy for lunch and then capped the evening off with a pizza and movie night at Will’s elementary school. Despite the fact that Will had a pretty awesome Luke Skywalker flight suit (purchased), he requested a different day costume. I talked him out of fun-to-make robot and into easier-to-make vampire bat. Unfortunately we all slept in and he ran off to school without his fangs. Don’t the teeth only come out at night, anyway?

At least the cape looked cool on the playground.

Saturday morning the kids dressed for our run.

And then again for the block party.

And then again for trick-or-treating (not captured in film). Sylvie was Tinkerbell and Will and Doug were Clark Kents.

And then again after trick-or-treating for the haunted house. (Also not captured in film.) Sylvie was a monkey and Will was green racer (pjs).

The highlight: the kids barely made it 1 full block before they were complaining about the weight of their trick-or-treating bags. Stella came running back to us whining, “They said I could only take 2!” “Well, Stella, you have plenty of candy already.” “I know, and it is so heavy! I can’t carry another piece!”

Gluttons for punishment that we are, we had a marathon of playdates Sunday. We’re sleeping off all the excitement this work week.