Daily Life, hearing tests and running

I know it has been a while since my last post. Life has been moving along here. We have gotten back into our routines. The girls have gone to gymnastics, swimming and czech lessons after school. Actually Ali skipped her Czech lesson this week since she had a headache and was absolutely exhausted. I'm not sure if it is just getting back into the routine or if she is having a growth spurt but she has been very tired this last week. Swimming is going great. We bought Ali a shortie wetsuit for swimming lessons and it has made a big difference. She isn't shivering and asking to get out of the pool after fifteen minutes. Sofia has her ear plugs for swimming and she is also doing really well.

We finally had Sofia's hearing tested last week as well. She has moderate hearing loss in the very lowest pitch (frequency) in her right ear and mild hearing loss (or moderate depending on whose chart you look at to determine the ranges) in the lower pitches in her left ear but she is in the normal range for all the other frequencies. I'm not sure if they will do another hearing test in six months or not but either way we will be going back to the doctor for checkups on her ear every month for the next six months.

I've started my half marathon training. It has been slightly difficult given all the snow we have had (the largest amount of snow in Prague since 1979!). The upside of all the snow is that I get some good cross training activity as I shovel out our road repeatedly! (I'm just trying to put a smiling face on all the shoveling. If I say it enough times I might believe it myself. Haha) The temperature has dropped again making things a bit more difficult for running since it just froze everything to ice in the parks. My friend, Beanie, and I are perservering though and have managed to get in most of our runs. My Christmas present finally arrived so I have been wearing my new garmin GPS training watch for our runs. It is fun to see how my pace changes throughout a run. It is also nice not to have to come home and map out my run in order to find out my pace. Hopefully we will get a little warm up soon to help with the running and melt a lot of ice but as I look at the forecast, I'm not that optimistic.