Weekend of Celebrations

This past weekend was one fun and special celebration after another!

First, my husband and I celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary on Saturday, August 21, 2010! Wow, time sure flies when you're having fun! Or to use the words of my husband, it doesn't feel like a day over eighteen years! LOL Kidding. Um, right, honey? You were kidding, right? Aww, yeah. He was kidding. ^_^

So how did we spend our day celebrating? We did our usual Saturday morning bike ride up through the reservation in the morning, I took a really long nap on the sofa in the afternoon while he watched football (soccer), and then later we went out to dinner for Thai food ... alone! We had a really nice time eating our favorite foods and talking {without interruption!} or having to clean up the dishes! All thanks to our teenage daughter who held down the fort at home watching over her younger sister and her grandfather. ^_^

Speaking of anniversaries... and biking... Sunday was the one year anniversary for me and my road bike. Okay, so this is kind of a dorky thing to acknowledge or even remember, I admit it. But I've been having fun keeping track of my rides in a log, plus I have an odometer on my cyclocomputer on my bike. It currently says 561 miles and according to my records, I rode 74 miles before my husband installed the cyclocomputer last fall, which means I've ridden nearly 635 miles in the last year! So cool!

That's equivalent to the approximate distance from my town in NJ to places like Myrtle Beach, SC... or Lexington, KY ... or Dayton, OH ... or Detroit, MI ... or even further than Quebec, QC, Canada! So if you live near one of those places I could have ridden my bike all the way to you.

Of course, it would have taken me a year to get there. LOL! ^_^

Here is a photo of me fixing the first of three flat tires I got this summer.

At least I discovered this one before I got very far and didn't have to change it on the side of a busy road. My husband secretly took the picture back in June when he came out of the house to go to work thinking I was at least halfway through my ride already, only to find me sitting in the driveway, my eyes full of tears, fixing the flat. Apparently he thought I was pretty cute all teary eyed tackling the flat all by myself without having come in to ask for his help. And maybe for the fact that I was following instructions how to change a bike flat from a YouTube video on my iPhone that I kept pausing and playing as I got through each step, since I kind of forgot some of the steps. I seem to recall it was a particularly emotional day for me that day, but hey, some days a girl's just gotta cry over spilt milk or flat tires or whatever, right? ^_^

This is me on my bike in the driveway taken by my daughter: Much happier.

I digress. I can't think of a better way to celebrate this little one year milestone with my biking career than to have had a really awesome ride on Saturday. We tried a slightly new route on our normal loop through the local wildlife reservation that included a different hill to climb. I was worried that morning that I wouldn't be able to do it without stopping, but I did it!!! The climb wasn't quite as steep as I thought it would have been based on my perspective from the car or from having ridden it downhill with my friend Ellen last week, but it was long. Every time I climbed my way around a bend, I anticipated the top, but ended up feeling "uh oh" every time there was more climbing to do, thinking to myself, "Can I do it?" Finally, there was one last bend to the top and I was really happy that I did it all in one swoop without having to stop. Phew!

Checking our stats on my cyclocomputer at the end of our ride, I was super charged to learn that we averaged 15.1 mph for the ride, which is really good considering it is a mountain loop. Prior to this ride, we were averaging 14.5 mph for the nearly same loop. I really pushed myself and worked hard on this ride, but what a great improvement! I hope this is my new pace!

Finally, yesterday my husband and I had another evening out alone to attend a friend's wedding. The groom is in my husband's triweekly soccer gang. This was the first time I met the bride. The ceremony was lovely and the reception was a lot of fun. With all that eating and dancing, how could it not? The bride and groom looked so happy together and it was clear they were having such a great time at the reception. In ways that I can't quite pinpoint, their wedding reminded me a lot of our wedding almost exactly seventeen years ago. Or maybe it's just because this wedding took place on the same weekend as ours did all those years ago, that it made me reflect so much about our own. No matter the case, it was wonderful to be a part of this couple's special day and I relished the warm feelings and memories it brought me about our special day.

Special thanks to my dear friend Claudia who took me dress shopping two weeks ago, finding me a sexy evening dress that I love for $50 that was originally $168. Score! Plus she lent me her sassy black strappy heels and sparkly, artsy earrings and matching necklace.

Somehow, the evening escaped us without a full length photo, but here we are at the wedding last night:

This weekend of celebrations was another valuable reminder that Life is good.

I hope you had a great weekend, too. Anything exciting going on?