Surviving the Holidays

Sorry it's been so long since I've updated. I'll try to get better at that. Here's what has been going on........

The Friday before Christmas, I attempted to get in my long 18 mile run. I say "attempted", because I didn't make it to 18. I started running outside and was doing great. I got in 7.5 miles in a great time, but then it got dark and I decided to head in and finish on the treadmill. Boy was that a mistake. After being outside, the treadmill was 10 times worse than normal. After 5.5 miles on it, I called it quits. I've done 6 marathons now, so I know I can cover the 26.2 miles, and Disney is not a race where I care about my time. 13 miles was good enough for me.

Saturday morning we woke up early to pick my daughter up from church where she had been at an all night lock-in. Then we drove to my Aunt's house for Christmas with my mom's side of the family. After all day there, we headed to my mother-in-law's house for Christmas with my husband's family. I managed to get in a 4 mile run on Monday morning before we opened gifts. We were there from Saturday evening until Monday afternoon when we headed home. We unloaded the car and headed to church for Christmas Eve services and then came home and went to bed so Santa could come.

Despite telling the kids to sleep late Christmas morning (yeah, right!), they didn't even make it until day light. At 6:30 am they were knocking on our door and telling us what Santa left. My son got his wii and my daughter got her zune. We unwrapped the few other gifts we had and then got ready to head to my parents for Christmas with them and my brother and his family. My parents called to say their electricity had gone off and to wait for a bit. Finally around 10:00 it was back on. We headed over at 11:00. We opened gifts with them, ate lunch and then hooked up Granna's wii. Yes, that's right. My mom also got a wii from Santa. He was very generous this year.

Wednesday morning I woke up in my usual "pack up the Christmas stuff and get this house cleaned" mode. And that's exactly what I did. I took down the trees, organized gifts, got them to their spots and had the house back to some normal order by early afternoon. Then I got my 5 mile run in and took my shower. Wednesday evening we had some friends over for game night on the wii. I bowled, golfed, boxed, played tennis, and played MANY carnival games. Does wii count as cross training?????

Yesterday had been designated as "run errand" day. There were some things I wanted to buy with my Christmas money and the kids had holes in their pockets as well. They got gift cards that needed to be spent. We went to Target first, which was actually the least crowded and the easiest place for shopping and returns. Then to Family Christian Bookstores, lunch, Academy, Justice, Bath and Body Works (which was a nightmare!!!), Barnes & Noble and then to my parents to get my daughter added to the cell phone network (and I made sure to block the text messaging capability on her new phone). Busy, busy day.

This morning I started washing clothes and did some things on the computer that needed to be done. The kids wanted to see a movie so we waited until my husband got home from work and went to see National Treasure. The theater had some problems and the movie started almost an hour late. Lucky for us they had ushers outside the door when it was over to hand us free certificates to come back and see another movie. Since we see about 2 movies a year in the theater, free passes is great for us. We'll have to decide what else we want to see.

Not sure what I'll do the rest of the evening. I'm planning to run with my TNT group in the morning, but have no idea how far we are suppose to go. Guess I'll just show up and run.