First of Two posts tonight.

It was a really December since Thanksgiving. I did a training race On Dec 2, where we finished right in the middle of the pack, about where we expected. I have a new teamate who's pretty enthusiastic but even keeled - more importantly, he's about my speed. I have half a dozen races planned out for 07' and it should be good.

Since that race, it was time to focus back on family and it's been all holiday, non-stop, up until this week. As planned, my wife had finished all of her shopping in Hawaii where we spent Thanksgiving at my parents place. Somehow we got hit with a lot of bills in December (as to be expected in any household around Christmas), so I tried to keep my personal spending in check. Its now January and I still don't quite feel caught up. With the extra days off for Christmas and New Year's, I've taken to cleaning up the garage, arranging tools, building shelves, organizing, hanging light fixtures, putting things in boxes so that when the Christmas lights and ornaments get put away, they'll have a place to go. So far, job well done, the garage is about 75% of how I would ideally like it to look. I just have to keep plugging away at it even though I have a lot of projects piled up. I hate buying tools and parts for projects only to have it sit there. Idle money sitting in a bag or box only to get utilized when I get around to it

Work has been extremely busy and stressful and I need to handle it a bit better, but I'm starting to ride and train again. This helps my blood pressure and stress levels.

Anyways, Kaleo had a really good Christmas with lots of presents. I've had to do some early spring cleaning and have several bags of toys for donation. The rule of the house at this stage is: "No new toys in until some old toys go out". There just isn't much room for a lot of clutter in this house! I'm just as guilty though, I have a lot of my own "toys" crammed the garage.