Family was in town this past weekend so Dad could run the LIVESTRONG Austin Marathon.

He’s 58, so we were all like, uhhh, are you sure? But, he did a great job and made it across the finish line in 5 hours… then immediately started walking like a 6,000 year-old man. I assume he’ll be in pain for several months. I completely forgot my camera, but here’s a nice cellphone snappy snap post-race.

It was also PJ’s 29th birthday this weekend… yeah, we’re officially getting up there ourselves. My mom helped me bake him a cake… and by ‘helped me’, I obviously mean did all the work. It was delicious because she is a good baker and has the patience to read directions. I assume you develop that type of patience after raising three children who were all at one point teenage girls. Anyway, we used this white cake recipe and despite the fact that it says to top it with any non-chocolate icing, we topped it with this chocolate ganache.  It made a super fluffy cake and nobody in my family is super big on icing, so ganache worked really well.

The niece and nephew were here for the visit, too. I don’t have a ton of experience with other kids, but with these two, especially the girl, it’s always 1,000 mph no matter what. Since PJ is in school to be an elementary teacher, he had some insta-snow laying around, and they got a kick out of that. A messy, messy kick. We also hung up Christmas lights in the bedroom for them to look at, played with toys, read books, jumped on stuff, etc… it’s pretty easy to keep kids entertained if you’ve got the energy to do it… but good grief, who has that type of energy? Despite their ability to literally suck the will to live out of you, they are the cutest, most fantastic little people.