My Christmas Wish

What a weekend so far!  Friday night I worked at Nike and we broke the record that day for our highest sales EVER.  If felt like it!  Lots of last minute shoppers and we didn’t get out of there until 11:05PM. Saturday morning I woke up at 5:50AM to get ready to meet the Twin Peaks Preview runners.  I couldn’t run and was not real excited about that.  I thought I would try hiking for a brief while.

I arrived at the trailhead at 6:50AM and there were already tons of people there. I gave some last minute instruction to the runners and we were off at about 7:10 (32 runners including me).  Of course I was walking.  Fortunately, George was also walking.  He has a muscle tightness problem that needs to get warmed up so we walked together for about a mile before I turned around to go back to my car and kill some time.

I killed some time and met up with Wendy at about 9:40 back at the trailhead.  She had run Whiting Ranch that morning with a group of about 20 runners.  We planned to hike back up a little ways and take pictures of runners as there were coming down.  Just before we set off on the trailhead, Dan came down finished shortly thereafter by Kyle.  By my calculations they had run sub 9 minutes miles and the first half of this run climbed 9 miles and 3000 or so feet.  That’s pretty darn impressive.

Wendy and I went up and enjoyed the beautiful day.  The sun was out.  It was clear.  You could see the ocean and Catalina Island in the distance.  It was a bit windy though.  The runners who went all the way up were talking about how cold it was near the top of the trail and how there were still little bits of snow and ice alongside the trail from last weekend.  After 99% of the runners came back down, Wendy and I hiked back down to our cars.  My foot wasn’t hurting me too bad so I was feeling good about that.

I was very happy to have another smashingly successful Twin Peaks preview run!

I went home to unpack our house.  By the time I walked in the door there my foot was hurting pretty bad.  Kate looked at it and said it was swollen.  It was.  In fact it was swollen around my foot on both sides and the top even though it only hurt on the outside.  I rested a bit and iced it before getting to some unpacking duties.

We got a lot down and decided to reward ourselves with sushi.  When we arrived I thought it also appropriate to reward ourselves with some Sake.  Okay to reward me, but I "made" Kate drink some too.  They took a Polaroid of us while we were there to put up on their customer wall.  So if you ever get into Sashimi in Mission Viejo, look on the wall near the door.  We had lots of sushi.  Awesome, delicious sushi.  Some Saki.  Some sushi and some more sake.  Then we went to church   Saddleback Christmas service was wonderful.  There was a live nativity as we walked along the path to the main worship center.  We were a little late since the place was already packed.  We decided to go sit outside so we found our way under some heat lamps and watched the service from plastic lawn chairs.  Only in California.  I love it here!!

After church we met up with a few people at the Yard House in Irvine.  Pastor Rick has said that God wants us to be filled with Joy and celebrate.  Okay, taken a little out of context but I had a watermelon martini anyway.  We stayed there for a couple hours with Wendy and a friend of hers that stopped by for a bit. The night was tons of fun and my day couldn’t have been much more filled.  We got back to our wonderful new place and I crashed. 

Earlier in the day as Kate and I were standing out on our patio , I had asked "can you believe we live here?".  Yes indeed.  The view out the back of our house is of Oneill Regional Park.  Just wilderness.  NO roads.  No houses.  Below is the view I have out my bedroom window as I sit and write this blog entry.  I have the joy and pleasure and good fortune to have this view and be able to look out over at the Twin Peaks course and my favorite running playground nearly every day    

Pictures from the preview run
Pictures from Saturday night’s fun

I could say that my Christmas wish is for my foot to get better and I
certainly want that.  But despite my foot and not being able to run, I
know I have a blessed life in many ways.

I don’t expect to get a lot of gifts this Christmas either.  I’ve got all I need.

Merry Christmas to you all!
Jessica