I convinced Jay to bundle the kids and join us after the run this year so he could join in the Dirty Santa fun (alcohol only, yet still so many possibilities... our contributions are pictured above!)
We get bigger and fancier every year!
Francine, Amy H., and Amy G.
We had 16 gifts to fight over ;-)
The toast, given by Mack, as always. With a chime-in from JP!
Terry opened Tank's gift, which was wrapped in boxes within boxes...
Cora went straight to Miss Amy when she arrived!
(James stayed in the van with his Kindle and a blanket - smart boy!)
Jay brought the giant thermos of coffee, which many of us appreciated greatly. It was only 27 degrees when we started our run at 5:30am, and by 8:00am it wasn't a whole lot warmer...
Cora retired to the fire pit with a plate of cookies while we battled it out over wine...
Enjoying the fancy bottle of wine that Lori's father sends every year. In plastic cups...
Beth and Kristi (both Boston Marathon qualifiers this year!) ran 16 miles (in 40 minutes longer than it took the rest of us to complete 8...) and thus needed extra calories. Beth cracked me up walking around with one of the cheese plates!
Chasing bubbles when she got bored of the fire.
Mack, Kristi, Tom, Francine, me, Jay, Cora, Amy H., Amy G., Lori, Tank (AKA Chris Tankesly), Mack Ferris, Debbie, Terry, Beth, Robert (AKA Dr. Sadler), and JP (AKA John Paris).
Most of the crowd left by 9:30am, but a few of us hung around until the fire went out (JP was trash diving here looking for things to burn when we ran out of firewood) and the last of the champagne was gone.
2015 was a very good running year (to be re-capped later) and I am once again just very thankful to have these amazing people in my life. There are best friends, and friends, and acquaintances, and then there are running friends. Anyone with running friends knows that they are a different breed, in a very good way. You go through a lot together (training cycles, speedwork, marathon pain, etc.), there are plenty of miles to get to know each other (often on more levels than your other friends - you'd be amazed which topics arise during mile 18 of a 20-miler), somebody is always giving advice or telling stories to help us young-ins gain perspective and experience, and the running community as a whole is just very accepting and encouraging. There is no better party (well, maybe our Halloween party) throughout the year than the RWOP Dirty Santa!
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