Thirteen Just Might Be My Lucky Number

Last year, I started the year off spending the day with some of my very favorite people, and some who would become my very favorite, volunteering and cheering at a race.  This year, I wanted to get away from everything.  Wanted to go where there are no boxes to check in a training plan, no traffic to battle, no chores piling up, no hustle and certainly no bustle.  

Where better than the mountains to find that peace?

Mt. Elbert and Mt. Massive, Twin Lakes, CO

I did an awful lot of nothing, which is very rare for me.  I've never taken a relaxing vacation, one where the entire point was to just stop.  No restaurants, no grocery stores, no television, no phone, no internet and cell service was spotty at best.  No other people.  And I wouldn't have it any other way.  I did a lot of napping, a lot of reading, some more napping (seriously, I caught up on my sleep like whoa - after years of insomnia, I am Sleeping At Last) and a lot of sidling up close to the cabin's only source of heat.  

I'm a skilled oatmeal chef.  But it sadly ends there.

Plenty of hiking.  The snow, the views, it never got old.  That gentle quiet, so vast and yet so comforting.  Bliss.

We tried snow shoeing for the first time.  So much fun and so tiring! (hence the need for naps aplenty) 

Especially when we traipsed through the deep stuff!

Snow angels were made.  I mean, c'mon, two Texans had to take every advantage of the snow games!  

And often we'd stop and just stare.  The tiny cabin was in the middle of all of this.  Every direction you looked, mountains standing strong and tall.  So humbling - they were there long before I ever existed and will stand long after I'm gone.  

 No noisemakers, no champagne, no parties...2012 just quietly slipped away, replaced by a bright and shining sun of January.  I hurried out on the porch in my pajamas, caring not that it was but a single digit outside.  There is no way in the world that I would miss the first sunrise of the year.  And it did not disappoint.  

I was so blessed by the opportunity to really get away from it all and surround myself with such peace and beauty.  This may just be a new tradition for TPG.  Thirteen, turns out, is a number of which I've grown quite fond.  2013 is going to be an exciting year of change, I can feel it.  And I couldn't be more ready.

How did you ring in the New Year?