Weekend of October 25-27
Can you believe we had our first snowstorm in Colorado already?! I woke up on Thursday morning to find a few inches of snow… but I was flying out of town and off to upstate New York, where the fall foliage was still in brightly colored splendor.
I flew into Syracuse, and had a work call come in before I had even made it off the jetway. With back to back calls the entire time on my drive from Syracuse to Ithaca, I arrived in Ithaca absolutely starving at 3pm, having not yet eaten lunch. I considered going to CTB for a sandwich, but was concerned it might take too long both to find parking and get a delicious toasted sandwich made. Or at least, that’s what I told myself my excuse was when I went to the Cornell Dairy Bar and got a ginormous ice cream cone for lunch.
My afternoon was filled with calls, but I was able to take a break to hit the elliptical at the gym for a little bit. And, finding I had the gym all to myself, I also decided it would be a good time to avoid making a fool of myself and practice skipping on the treadmill. My PT is letting me start doing some light plyo in preparation for a hopeful return to running next week!! As I wrote about last weekend, I’ve been getting really down in the dumps about my calf injury, so this was amazing to start doing some jumping and knowing that it’s preparing me to run sooner rather than later.
I was really exhausted Thursday night, so went to bed early and slept hard – ten hours before I had to be up for morning calls! I snuck in a quick elliptical session to start my day, then managed to shower before I started jumping on conference calls. And then I finished getting dressed / made up / packing while I was on conference calls. (Shhh, don’t tell.) As soon as my calls wrapped, I skedaddled across the street for a women’s MBA lunch, and then it was back to the hotel for a few more calls and to pack up. Quick trip, but a good one! From there, I took some more calls from the road, and enjoyed the gorgeous fall foliage en route to Albany.
I arrived in Saratoga just in time, heading straight to my nephews’ elementary school for their Halloween party. The kids were adorable, and I was so excited I got to be there with them for it! Torin was dressed as a cat, and Breckin as a frog, and it was also fun to see all their classmates’ costumes… definitely a cute Friday night 🙂
We headed back to my brother’s house after the party, and after a few hours of hanging out and prepping for the party the next day (#JelloShots), I headed to bed. The next morning, my sister-in-law and I woke up before everyone else and snuck out to her YMCA, where we got to take a Les Mills Strong class together! I can’t say it was a class I would get excited about (the way I do Orangetheory), but it was definitely a good workout – and had a decent amount of plyo jumping, which satisfied my PT requirement. I actually had to cut back on a few jumping jacks toward the end, so I didn’t go overboard, but I was happy to get some jumping lunges in!
After class (and a quick stop at Stewart’s to pick up coffee for ourselves and my brother), we stopped back at the house for a quick shower, and then were off to the fields for my nephews’ last soccer game of the season. It was a stunningly beautiful day, and the fall colors really popped against the blue, blue sky. Such a rarity in upstate New York – I felt so lucky!
We stopped back at my brother’s house for lunch and a quick change of clothes after soccer, and then my mom, sister-in-law, and I took my nephews downtown for the annual Saratoga Fall Festival… and pumpkin roll! In addition to getting to trick or treat at all the stores, my nephews got to join tons of other kids in rolling pumpkins down a hilly street, trying to see whose pumpkin would be the fastest. I had never heard of this tradition, but it was a total riot to watch the kids chasing their pumpkins down the hill.
We skedaddled back to the house after the Fall Festival, and after sending my nephews off with one of their other grandmas for a sleepover, the rest of us got to party prep. We had been worried about how much time it would take, but my brother had done a lot while we were at the Fall Festival, and we finished plenty early! I made a huge batch of this cinnamon cider whiskey sour, which was delicious… but that ended up being the problem. It didn’t taste like whiskey at all, and went down way too smooth! So… I would recommend it, but it is dangerous 🙂
It was a struggle to wake up the morning after the party, but luckily, I had set two alarms… since I had to get up at 4am to catch a 6am flight out. I had originally planned to be on an afternoon flight, but after seeing how bad the forecast was in Denver, I was advised that the only way I’d be able to get into town was to leave as early as possible! My new routing took me through Philly, which was also having some weather, but I ended up landing in Denver around 10:30am, right on time. Phew! I had a Board meeting on Monday that I could not miss, and the weather was only supposed to get worse.
After going home to unpack and shower, I then headed downtown to meet a friend for lunch at a brewery before the store got really bad. As luck would have it, it didn’t materialize to be nearly as bad as predicted – I was thrilled by that! Though I felt guilty I hadn’t seen my family as much as I wanted due to the forecast 🙁 On the bright side, I’ll be back there for Christmas in just about six weeks, and I can’t wait.