Shamrock and Cville

A few weeks ago, I ran in my 5th Shamrock Marathon Weekend.  

1st year: I ran 26.2 and qualified for Boston (by 39 seconds)

2nd year: I ran the marathon as a bandit with my friend Mike Fine

3rd year: 9 weeks pregnant and ran the 1/2 with Team Hoyt, where Kelly F, Rebecca and I had an incredible flat-tire experience and finished in a respectable 2:03

4th year: Jackson is 5 months old so I pushed and finished 3 minutes below my personal best

5th year: 1/2 marathon with Blair Fine (Mike's better half) who set her personal best!!!

As boring as the course is, I do love this race. 

At the beach on Saturday, pre-race

Mr Byrne made me this sign last year when J was 5 months old and when I saw it, and them, I cried. This year I was much less hormonal (and it was SO cold that I didn't stop to hug them...just keep moving...just keep moving). 

The following week, J was pretty sick for what seemed like an eternity. We treated him for croupe and he had his first fever, which we think is pretty great considering he's 17 months old. It's so sad to have  a sick child, one who wants to be held every moment, doesn't eat anything, coughs and has a sad look on his face all day. One afternoon I got him up from nap and he proceeded to lay down on the changing table and try to fall back to sleep. This is a rare moment of not fighting a battle while on this table!

What do you do with a sick child? Drop him off at BB and Grandad's and go to Charlottesville! We left for our favorite place on Friday morning and stopped at several vineyards in the area, most new to us. We didn't take advantage of "wine country of the east coast" when we were in school (too much studying or something like that), and a ton of vineyards have popped up since. We toured Pollak, Flying Fox, Veritas and King Family. We also stopped for lunch at Devil's Backbone, a brewery and restaurant at the base of Wintergreen. We had a sample of their beer the week before at Tapped, a new VA Beach Gastropub and it was pretty good, so we were excited to stumble upon the actual location! 

After a day of wine tours, we picked up dinner at Citizen Burger on the Downtown Mall and ate (and stayed the night..yes we are still those people who stay with friends, at least for the next year...but really, even if we weren't cheap it's still way more fun to have the entire night and morning to visit with friends) with Kelly and Mark and their 1 year old daughter, Colbie. We are so grateful for roommates who became dear friends. 

Pollak

Veritas, in front of their LOVE sign, part of the VA is for Lovers ad campaign

And one of the best parts of the trip was visiting with Christian and her precious girls Lilly Kate and Anne Elise.  They are both getting so grown up and it's so much fun to visit with college friends and see them maturing into the role of mother.  Are we really old enough to be mothers? Weren't we just dancing around dorm rooms in fleece pants? 

 After our fun weekend at the Boars Head in Charlottesville (tough life, I know) we came home to this....Granddad and the three pups, all passed out in the living room. It's exhausting to have a sick child?? Why, we don't have any idea what you're talking about :)