Indoor Track 2026

 

Last year Erin's indoor track season got off on the wrong foot, literally, after an altercation between her pinky toe and a home rowing machine left her unable to compete for much of the season. This year she started on the right foot and a healthy left foot.

She mostly ran the 2-mile, which on an indoor 200m oval is 16 laps. At an invitational in January she lowered her personal best to 11:33

All top 5 girls from the cross-country season ran indoor, and in and of itself this gave the team depth for the distance events of indoor meets. 4 soccer players came on and ran middle distance to add to the firepower 

At the League Championships, Erin ran the mile finishing in a personal best of 5:20. Lexington finished 1,2,4,5 in the mile

Lexington girls won the League Championship with a record score of 154 points. In addition to the distance crew, they have a nationally ranked thrower, an All-American jumper, a deep sprint squad.

At the State Championship, Lexington finished 1,4,7 in the 1000m

1,2,4 in the mile

and then for the 2-mile they qualified 7 girls into the 29-girl race

One of the other coaches joked that it wasn't fair - the start looked like a cross-country race

and the cross-country girls finished 1,2,4,5,8

Erin also was on the winning 4x800 team. These 4 events earned 76 points, which in past years has been enough to win this state championship

 In the remaining 9 events, Lexington scored another 37 points for a total of 113, a record team total for the state championship that may stand for many years

After States, attention turned to Nationals, which was a home meet for Lexington being held at the same New Balance track where the League and State meets were held. All events at Nationals have qualifying standards and the girls qualified an amazing 28 athletes including all of the distance girls in either the 800m, 1-mile, 2-mile, 5000m, 4x800m, 4xmile, or distance medley relay (1200-400-800-1600)

For Nationals, the team photographer took green screen photos to use in social media postings

In the 4 x mile race, Erin struggled with pacing but the team finished in 21:18, 17th out of the 50 teams running. That's a 5:20 mile average and was good enough to set the Lexington high school record, one of 11 school records established by the 2026 girl's team. 

Outdoor season starts in April and Erin will be running the mile and 2k steeplechase

Holidays 2025

Christmas Eve we caroled on the town green

There was enough snow to make Christmas white

I prepared our yule log dessert

and we opened gifts under the tree

Rather than waste away the rest of the vacation on the couch, we traveled down to DC

Katy's house had a new guest, a tortoise-shelled cat that showed up on their doorstep. She was very friendly and they named her Amber. Her ear was clipped, likely a sign that she had been spayed as a feral cat. But was she still a stray or a lost pet?

A visiting vet helped solve the mystery. Amber had a microchip in her shoulder that was registered to a clinic in nearby Chesapeake Beach. The clinic recalled that a female tortoiseshell had been adopted by an owner of a horse barn, where she had been living as a barn cat. When contacted and told of Amber's potential new home, the owner agreed that an indoor cat's life is better than an outdoor one, and let Katy's family keep her.

Bevil and Alex hosted all the Ehmanns for a get together. My mom gave Bevil her favorite Canadian Dare cookies

Piscataway Park is a NPS site that we glancingly visited back in 2015 and I decided to return for a fuller experience. It is located in Maryland across the Potomac River from Mount Vernon, and the cold wind was whipping on the water.

President Trump's Executive Order titled "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History" was on display. I didn't notice any signs that were negative about past or living Americans, but I did wonder if over at Ford's Theater, will the information about John Wilkes Booth, the past American who assassinated the founder of the Republican party, need to be revised for Truth and Sanity.  

On another outing we battled wits with escape rooms

and emerged victorious

In preparation for New Year's, I taught the kids how to play poker and blackjack

For Claire and Peter's New Year's Eve party, the theme was Colonial America and Brooke painted her customary menu

Way back in 2018, Heather bought a fancy dress for attending a Hamilton singalong. Other period dresses were scrounged for the girls and my sartorial splendor came via Amazon

The Ehmann-Jones crew was equally decked out

For these annual parties, the appetizers and dessert are fixed items while the mains rotate with the theme 

This year Sabrina researched colonial fare at the Williamsburg taverns and cooked a delicious peanut soup, chicken pot pie, and Hasselback sweet potatoes 

After dancing, my hair achieved new heights

and like any decent founding father, I found time to pen some historical documents

 Happy New Year!