Christmas Break - The We Left the House Sometimes Edition

Better late than never, yes?  Lest you think that I did nothing but sit around in my pajamas and eat Christmas cookies all break, I present to you.....the few times we left the house!!  Hooray! 

On Saturday after Christmas, the beautiful weather continued and we ended up going skiing.  Yes, you saw that right..."we".  As in, me too.  Actually, me AND Nana!  Nana ended up being a ski hustler, she told me she hadn't been in over 15 years and assured me that she would be at my level.  First run of the day?  She's swooshing down the mountain like she does it every day!  Hustled by my own mother in law!! :)

Here is a lovely shot of me, looking about as clumsy as I feel coming down the slope.

But seriously, the weather was perfect that day, and the boys had a blast of course!  I was completely drained by the end of the day, and well into the next day... Sunday was a blur, I was pretty much useless.

The week after Christmas, I decided that I needed to get back on track with some type of workout.  The number of times I exercised since the first week of December added up to zero.  That week was when my total body fusion class I take at work ended, and then I spent the remainder of the month walking to the closet to get cookies and called it a workout.  I had signed up for that class again and would start the first week of January after going back to work, so I knew that if  I didn't do something over the break, it would be absurdly painful to start that class back up.  So I popped in the Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred 3 times the week after Christmas and tried to not die or swear at the TV.

 You know, they say you can learn a lot about yourself when you work out....kind of get lost in your own mind and really focus on YOU.  I found that I did learn something that week....I learned that if I mute the TV so I don't hear Jillian's voice yelling at me to keep going and replace it with a blaring Britney Spears playlist on my phone instead, I am much, much happier.  Namaste.

I'd like to think that maybe Brit was even cheering me on....

For new years eve, we headed over to the neighbors house, they host a small get together every year (super convenient for us, since we just have to walk across the street!)  We came home around 11, got the boys to bed, then I declared that I was going to bed, too.  Brian gave me a hard time since it was almost 11:20 by then and couldn't believe that I'd just give up on seeing midnight at that point.  Ugh.  FINE.  So I drag myself downstairs (just in time to see Taylor Swift perform, so at least there was that!)  Then, I look over after her performance to find this....

 OHHHHHHHHH.....maybe going to bed wasn't such a crazy idea, huh??  Then I promptly passed out myself during the commercial that aired around 11:55pm.  We woke up on the couch in a state of confusion at 12:30, mumbled a "happy new year" and stumbled up to bed.  #wildandcrazy

On New Years day, we met a few friends and their kids at the bowling alley, which is always a good time!

And that, my friends, pretty much summed up our Christmas break.  As always, it went too fast, but we had fun while it lasted!!

Singin' in the rain

Ok, so there was no singing, it was more like grumbling and whining.  As if dragging myself to my fitness class twice a week isn't already a challenge enough, today it was raining. 

 

I survived the walk in the rain only to barely survive the class.  A few weeks ago, I discovered that chugging a bunch of water in between sets on a circuit then doing 10 burpees makes me throw up in my mouth (and I don't mean that figuratively, like "oh I hate burpees so much they make me wanna puke in my mouth")...I mean it quite literally.  I discovered today that mountain climbers on a cardio circuit have the same effect.  Gross.  Also, you're welcome for me sharing that tidbit of information with you.

There is one redeeming aspect of hiking up to that class every Tuesday and Thursday, and that's that I get to admire the Cathedral on my way there.  This view never gets old. 

obviously taken on a non-rainy day.  I don't think I threw up on this day either, so there's that.

Hail to Pitt!! 

Get movin', mama.

Remember a little over a year ago when I started running?  Not because I particularly had an interest in doing so, but because I made a vow to myself to do what I can to stay healthy for my husband and kids?  That went ok for awhile.  I kept up with it nearly all of last summer, running two 5Ks over the summer, and another one in early October with my sister-in-law, Katie.

That was in early October; it all fell apart after that.  We went to Disney.  It was Halloween.  It got cold.  It was the holidays.  It was even more cold.  It snowed for 439 days in a row (at least it felt that way)  All excuses, I know.  But they were excuses I was willing to accept.  I was sporadically doing the Jillian Michaels 30 day shred, but I wasn't being as consistent as I should have been.

Spring was finally just around the corner, and a friend asked me to run a 5K with her.  Not just any 5K (because if it had been just any old 5K I would have immediately told her no, there was no way I'd be ready)...but this dear friend has watched her dad battle leukemia for over a year.  She has been by his side for multiple hospital stays, testing, treatments, and transfusions.  There were times when she was going through that when I felt helpless..I would do what I could, I'd drop off food, take her daughter for a few hours so that she could go to the hospital...but I always felt like I wanted to do more.  So this 5K that was for leukemia?  That I could do. 

I ran it. It wasn't pretty since I literally had not run since October, but I did it in 38 minutes.  But I knew after running it, I wanted to do something else.  I needed to try something new, something more structured.  I know myself all too well, and it's way too easy for me to make excuses to not keep up with running.

So I finally took the plunge and signed up for a fitness class through work; it's called total body fusion and it meets 2 days as week for 50 minutes each class.  It works for me for two reasons: #1, I paid for it (really reasonable, but still) so I'm more inspired to go to get my money's worth out of it.  #2 - it's in the middle of the day, not during my "home" time.  The home thing was a big part of it for me before, I felt guilty (even though I shouldn't) for going out to run when I was at home with the boys.  After being away from them all day, the guilt was eating away at me when I would leave them again to go do something for myself.  But doing something during my lunch hour eases that guilt right up!

I don't love the class, and I think I just have to accept the fact that I will never love any type of workout.  I think that was another issue for me; I keep waiting to have that "a-ha!" moment that other people seem to have...the one where they find something that clicks for them and they look forward to it, and crave it when they can't do it.  I'm not going to lie...I hate every minute of being in that class.  I hate the sweating, I hate the tiredness, I hate hauling myself there when frankly, I would rather take a leisurely lunch break to myself.  But, I will do it because what I don't hate is knowing that I  am helping myself, and through that, helping my family in the long run. 

image courtesy of theworkoutmama.com