A Week In The Life

This past week my niece was in town to visit. My number one goal is the the BEST Auntie Ever! I don’t get to see her often so when she visits I drag take her along with me on all my fitness adventures and use the opportunity to try new things. Basically, she gets to live a week in the life of Auntie Tiffany. So here is what last week looked like:

Sunday – God, Family, and Lord of The Rings

Last Sunday I was scheduled to play the keyboard for worship. It was cool that my niece got to see me participating in church and meet our friends. J’s parents are in town so we all went out to lunch and she got to know them a little better also! Bonus!

Turns out she’d never seen the LOTR trilogy [WHAT?!], so we ended Sunday with The Fellowship Of the Ring. We spent the next few nights finishing the trilogy and at the end of the week I gave her my copy of The Hobbit so she can further learn about the wonders of Middle Earth. Three cheers for Treebeard! Yes, she likes to read, and I could not be more thrilled about that!

Monday – 2 Mile Run

I run with a group of high school kids on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays. We meet at 5:50 AM and this week we were doing two 20 minute runs with a 5 minute break in between. Of course my niece got to come along!

Last year when she visited, I had planted the seed about how running was a really good idea, and she has been running off and on this past year. Win for auntie!

She ran probably close to 2.5 miles. I, however, got stopped on the run due to a stray dog. This little dog did a lot better running alongside me than my own dog does! However, he was distracting the kids so I promised I’d watch him and told the kids to keep running!!!!

At about 9 AM, the early wake-up call and run caught up with my niece and she zonked on the couch for a nap.

Moxie was a big fan of my niece. In fact, it was hard to keep Moxie away from her when she was napping on the couch.

Tuesday – SUP & Roast Chicken

Okay, so stand up paddle board was new for both of us! There was a Groupon for Huntington Harbor Boat Rentals and my niece likes water sports. So I figured, why not?

We spent two hours paddling around the harbor.

Paddling under bridges.

It was a beautiful day with few others in the harbor to bother us.

For dinner, I taught Tierzah how to roast a chicken and made her truss it and everything.

I’m glad she’s not squeamish about raw, dead animal.

Wednesday – 4 Mile Hike

J took the day off and we all headed out to Silverado Canyon for a hike. We’ve never been out there before so we weren’t sure about the best place to go.

Unfortunately, we just spent about 2 hours walking up and down a fire road. I’m still leash training Moxie and it is SLOW going. When she pulls on her leash, I make her stop and start again. This is not ideal for a group walk.

Anyhow, we did find a dry, trashy creek bed off the paved road for some snack time in the shade. It was a hot morning.

We finished the day with Robin Hood Men in Tights because, well, early 90’s spoofs are just as important for her cultural education as LOTR, right?

Thursday – 3.5 Mile Run & Food Trucks

5 AM again! With no stray dog to distract the high schoolers, we were able to run a longer distance than we had on Monday.

I often get to lead stretches after the run. This is my opportunity to give nuggets of running wisdom to the kids. Thursday I told them why rest and sleep was important!

Since we planned to go to food trucks that night, I just had her make a quinoa salad for lunch instead of cooking something new for dinner. She remembered how I taught her to cut an avocado last year and I’m glad she’s making good use of that skill!

FOOD TRUCKS! I had been bragging about The Grilled Cheese Truck for some time and was excited to try out some things from the Bakery Truck.

Alas, The Bakery Truck didn’t show up and The Grilled Cheese Truck did not have any of the ingredients for their dessert items! Fortunately, Longboards was there and we got a custom dipped frozen treat.

After that we went to the park and Moxie got to run around like crazy for a while. Our church was going to watch The Lego Movie in the park, but I didn’t realize they weren’t going to start the movie until close to 9 PM! So we left not long after it started because we were tired! Also, we had to be up early on Friday for….

Friday – Surfing & Sauté

The worship pastor at our church had agreed to take us surfing! I do not surf but my niece was interested in trying it out. Thank goodness for Jairus being such a kind fellow!

We spent the morning at Newport Beach and for roughly 1.5 hours, my niece got Surfing 101. The morning was warm, the water was not too cold, and the waves were perfect for learning. If I hadn’t been taking pictures, I totally would’ve tried it out myself. Maybe another day.

My niece was smiling from ear to ear, which was so awesome to see. And of course she was able to stand up and ride out the last wave of the day! We celebrated her surfing victory with sushi and some souvenirs from a beach shop.

For dinner, I had her sauté eggplant to go in our teriyaki rice bowls and we watched select episodes of Doctor Who to give her a taste of sci-fi adventure, BBC style.

Play. Rest. Repeat.

The last time my niece came to visit, we made her summit Mt. Baden-Powell with us (9,400 ft) and do CrossFit. This time, we focused more on early morning runs (up at 5 AM) and water sports.

Her comment was that we seem to be the type of people who play hard and then rest hard. I know I probably sent her home today tired and sore. At least I hope I did! However, I hope she enjoys being able to try new things and be glad to have these fun memories with her Auntie.