Buying footballs, toy cars, action figures, and even boxing gloves is something I've done as a Daddy. But today I bought a Barbie for the first time.

When Kid #1 was brewing in his Mom's belly, I was often asked if I wanted a boy or a girl. Considering I didn't have any kids at the time, I really and truly did not care. Ultimately I wanted some of each, but at the time, it seemed like a downer to folks when I said that it didn't matter.

Add to this that through Kid's #1-3, we never knew what flavor they were going to be until they were born. To me, it is one of the last veistiges of "Santa" that we get. Anyway, that we've held out on knowing whether it was XX or XY until game day has been part of the fun. Sure, it meant the baby room would have to wait to be decorated, but when Kid #1 was born, there wasn't going to be a "Baby's Room" anyway, and once Kid #2 was born, it didn't matter because they were going to share a room anyway...but I digress.

I've never worried about sissying up my boys or making sure they had manly boy's things. It pretty much works out that way, but it has never really been a focus. If my boys turn out like Daveed, I'll be blessed. Today, however, I thoroughly enjoyed having a girl.

Normally the toy department is a source of stress for me, much like going to Chuck E Cheese, Super Walmart, or having a kid's birthday party, but today, I had the Barbie aisle to myself, and I took the time to sort out which Barbie is best. We had twelve dancing princess Barbies, which would all fit the bill. There was a horse riding Barbie. A ballerina Barbie. A beach Barbie...ALL of the Barbies seemed to be the "right" one. On one hand, it seemed like a slam dunk that I couldn't get this wrong, but on the other, I wanted to put some thought into it too. Among the offerings of Barbies was a Sleeping Beauty Barbie, a Snow White Barbie (if I could have found the corresponding DVD, I would have picked this), and Belle Barbie (of Beauty and the Beast). That everything was pink and princess didn't even hurt my teeth.

Back and forth three times from the toys to the DVD's, which were at opposite ends of the store. Couldn't find Sleeping Beauty or Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I settled on making my own gift pack with Belle and Beauty and the Beast.

Christmas morning is special with kids at all, but I'm looking forward to seeing my daughter's reaction on Christmas morning.

The Wall

Ths is the wall in my office facing the driveway. Chloe has put jerseys we've won in frames, and optimistially set up another ten frames on the wall facing the pasture. The ones shown here are:

1. TRP jersey signed by Alison Dunlap the year she won World's. It says, "Christian, good luck racing. I'm yours forever, Alison" I made up part of that.
2. 2001 TX State Champ Track. Me.
3. 2002 Texas Cup Champ. Mama, cyclocross
4. 2003 24r hours of Adrenaline Champ. Team: Me, Troy, Byrd, Jaime, and Erick T.
5. 2006 TX State Champ Time Trial. Noah
6. 2006 TX State Champ Criterium. Noah
7. 2006 TX State Champ Track. Noah
8. 2006 TX State Champ Road Race. Noah
9. 2006 Texas Cup Champion Road. Noah
10. Blank, but it is for 2006 Texas Cup Champion Cyclocross. Noah
11. 1997 Hotter-n-Hell Champ. Me.

I'm sure this happens to you all the time...

...but it is the first it has happened to me.

20 days in a row. That's my current streak of being on the bike. But today it has been in the 20's and snow/wet/ice. I opted out and rode the rollers to keep that streak alive. Now, I realize that this quick story requires a visual, and I'm sorry that all of you haven't been out here yet, so bear (bare?) with me.

I'm in my dining room, which has a wall of windows that looks out across our front yard and to the county road. Across the road is a pasture that holds some very fine horses, but it is way dark here at nght and I can't see them. Besides, I have the light on in the dining room so I can see my slimming reflection in the window while I ride the rollers. I ride until I look like a bike racer or until I can't stand the site anymore. Took about an hour before I got sick of it, but that's another story.

So, I'm rolling along on the track bike on the rollers (it was closest when I was grabbig for a bike), and after long enough to be nice and sweaty, but not so long that I wanted off the bike, I saw something very big walk across in front of the window. Now, there are critters out here aplenty, so a racoon, skunk, rabbit, and so forth is a daily thing, but this was big. Big like a horse big.

Stopped pedaling quickly because I thought maybe it was a reflection of one of my kids standing behind me or something, but everyone was upstairs. I rode another minute or two and got a better look when the creature walked across a patch of snow, which gave just the right amount of light and contrast for me to make out that it was a horse. Both of the horses actually.

Off the bike and ran outside into the dark night with a sweaty un-d-shirt, bike shorts, and cycling shoes to protect me agains the 26 degrees, dark, snow and ice. I had to hurry because the front gate was open (as was the back gate, obviously at this point). Turns out the horses really like being next the comparably warm house, and it takes a lot of apples to get them back to the pasture. Or maybe they were just messing with me because of how I was dressed.

Locked the gate down tight, quick waddled back inside, remounted the aluminum steed quite refreshed, and busted out the last 30 minutes. Nobody here even woke up or stirred. Either I'm good, or they were watching out the bedroom window.

First Snow

It began snowing a few minutes ago. The first two pictures are of the pasture taken from my office windows. It looks funny to me how the snow is gathering on the trail me and Noah use when riding mtn bikes here. The last picture was taken from under the arbor out our front door.

The Grandkids

This is either funny in a knowingly way, funny in that "I'm glad that isn't MY kid" way, or this is an advertisement for birth control.

Tomato Paste with 57 ingredients

So far this month we've spent the following weekends as such:

Nov 2-6- Terlingua

Nov 10-12- GSTz Trainning Camp #1 (based out of here)

Nov 16-17- 100 mile team ride, then date weekend with Mama (Thank you Lauren-on-Thursdays)

Nov 22-25- Went to Longview for Thanksgiving

Also during November we've launched the Lone Star Works (womens) Racing Team.

On top of this, Oct and Nov have been the biggest months of signing on new athletes for me. And we've started Monday evening plyometric workouts and Tuesday nights out at the track.

WHEW!

So, I'm gonna do some photo blogging here to get back up to speed. Wish I had some pics of the GSTz camp. I may have some pics of date night, but they aren't suitable for family viewing.

Let's start with Terlingua (I'll post up the rest later)...

We drove out to the Big Bend area to see Nono and some friends. It was good to get away for a few days, and down there is about as "away" as one can possibly get.

Noah and I coming down after climbing Mt Leon. I don't have any pictures of the actual climb. Our friend, Scott, took most of these. He met us out at the mtn, though he took a much more reasonable path.

This is a shot of the house taken from up somewhere on Leon Mtn. We came down to this spot to meet Scott. Best I can figure after looking at a map and an aerial view is that this is about a kilometer away from the house.

This is after we came all the way down the mtn. I post this one to remind me to write about the actual climb.

It is beautiful out there.

This is Scott and Petra. They are friends of ours who live down in San Patricio.

La Leona (my Father-in-law's ranch) is the perfect place to do nothing or to get as "out there" as you want. Here's the group of us hanging out at one of the limestone pools.

Noah and Scott in the pools.

In some parts of the creek there isn't much water for swimming.

But the hike to the next spot is always worth it.

Scott and the supervisors at the grill.

Scott is the grill MASTER.

FIX ME TURKEY POT PIE!

Speaking of food, we arrived at the Chili Cook Off World Championships just as it was announced that it was time to turn in chili for judging.

This is the group of us looking like tourons on "The Porch" in the ghost town in Terlingua.

We rounded ourselves up for a family pic in the star pit at the house. That's not a fake background.

I set a world record

BS. This is BS because I know for a fact that there are at least 2000 Williams at any high school football game in East Texas.

Quotes of the weekend

Pretty tired still, so I'm just gonna post up some quotes from #1, #2, and #3 from the weekend.

#1-- "No it wasn't me."

#2-- #2 and #3 have a thing they do at school that we call "what letter?" Basically, someone says a letter, and then the kids come up with words that start with that letter.

After playing it for a few minutes, we were on the letter "K." "Kuh kuh KICK. Kuh kuh KITE. Kuh kuh Kangaroo. Daddy, a kangaroo hops!" Then I said, what about "L." #2 then said, "No 'L's' don't hop."

#3-- Every now and again we have to ask #3 if he did big job in his diaper. Sometimes the evidence is stacked against him, so we know the answer in advance, but we either like the asking of the obvious or we think it is a stage of potty training to be aware that one's pants are full of crap. So, smelling the evidence while driving home, I asked #3, "Did you do big job?" #3 responded, "No. It was Noah."

Tom

Boonen does't live in the States.

I'm such a disappointment to Kid #2

because I don't know everything. We were pretty certain that I did, but today I had no answer for her. That is, unless someone here can help me. So, what color is turtle throw up, anyway?

No Shame

At all

Another Buddy pic

This is a picture of Buddy back when he played football with ROF May.

Buon Compleanno

3 years old!

Sleeping Beauty

I dig going to the ballet. I love going to the ballet with Reanie. We went to see Sleeping Beauty on Saturday. one thing...Sleeping Beauty is a 3-hour ballet with four intermissions. Reanie hung tough, though, and we're looking forward to the Nutcracker coming up soon.

What we need here...

...are some chickens, our own goats, a couple pigs. Why? Because nobody I know misses training rides because of Brucellosis.

Sounds a little something like this.

Another State Champ in the Family

Troy's father passed away just one week ago. He and Roxanne are pregnant with their first child. And today he won the State Road race. We love you, brother!

more Noah

This is a video done up by Steve, who is the father of Austin and Hunter (the boy in white getting a medal), who are new teammates for next year. You can tell that Hunter is thinking "Good grief, I can't wait to get out of this age group" when Noah can't seem to dress himself. First Bonnie tries to help, then the boy, Connor, who came in second, finally helps Noah with something he should have sorted out in preschool. Good fun! (1 min, 9 sec)

4 for 4 in 2006

2006 State Criterium Champion
2006 State Time Trial Champion
2006 State Track Champion
and now...

2006
State Road Race Champion !

In my belly

My wife is an excellent cook. She has a degree in food science, worked as a chef in some fine restaurants, trained as a chef in Italy, and even specialized in pastries for a spell. All that said, I still like fried Spam sandwiches, complete with mayonnaise on white bread. It isn't my first choice for sustenance, mind you, but I doubt I'd turn one down if offered.

This morning I took the POSS2 for donuts. Hadn't been there in some time. But seeing as Kid #1 and I are leaving for a bike race today, I wanted to give them a treat of sorts. Here's the thing, though...I didn't get a donut for myself. That ain't no baby step!

Of Moms and Leprechauns

This is a picture of the Church in Limerick where my step-Mother, Pat, was baptized. She and my Dad are in Ireland looking for information about her birth family. But I've also noticed that the price of Guinness has gone up here at home since they've been there.