Christmas in Pictures

My apologies to Jen for plagarizing the title to this post...

The week before Christmas break, my dear friend Lynn came over to help decorate cookies the kids give to their teachers. It was a nice evening drinking wine, chatting, and playing with icing.

That Friday evening it started snowing! We had a total of over 11" in our neighborhood, so the kids spent a fun weekend sledding with friends. Joey was quite the entrepreneur with the snow shovel, and cleared many a walk and driveway earning over $50!

The kids and I loaded up the car on Monday and came down to the beach. I had a crazy couple of days trying to get everything ready for Christmas--buying a tree and decorating it, laying in food, and a some last minute shopping. I also was desperately tracking a package that was supposed to get to coach Jen, but was delayed by bad weather. Several of her athletes all went in on this. What a riot!

Joey came in to wake me up about 6:30 Christmas morning. He wasn't too interesting in snuggling with Mom, and instead was ready to start in on the present opening!

Joey's haul

One of two new bike jerseys for Mom--this one from DeLoach Winery

Sophie and her bone!

#1 Son and his Kindle

After opening gifts and playtime, we had a nice brunch--french toast and eggs Jefferson (like eggs benedict but with spinach and crab)--and went for a walk on the beach before it started POURING rain.

The finished 2000 piece puzzle

Maddy in her new "fur" coat

That night we had a quiet dinner and ended up watching the Nutcracker.  The following day the rain had stopped so Joe and I went for a run together.  That night was my friend Ginny's wedding in Norfolk--a very small, pleasant affair.  The Bride looked smashing!

VCU friends Ginny and Caroline

I haven't been so good about getting workouts in these past several weeks.  I did get on my bike yesterday and managed to avoid many of the 2-3" deep puddles in the roads, but my toes absolutely froze.  This week I hope to make one of the Fat Frog rides, but damn, they start early (7:30am!) 

Smacznego! Bon Apetit! Buen Provecho! Ith gu leòir!

Turns out today is National Cupcake Day! I know how I'm celebrating--thanks to Molly.


Goodness knows after today's 42 mile bike ride, I need some little reward. I got my butt kicked by a bunch of older men, one of whom has over a total of 11,000 RECORDED miles for this year alone. Another guy was wearing bike shorts (no tights) and sandals (no socks--and it was 50 degrees), and riding on flat pedals--like the ones on kids' bikes. Now I totally understand why the first guy could ride me under the table, but SANDALS?! Damn, that's hard core.

Ouch

I can't easily do anything today except sit. Yesterday was my inaugural "Return to Weight Lifting" day, so I figured a 1/2 hour ab class followed by a 1 hr Body Shape class would do the trick. The ab class wasn't THAT bad, except for the SLOOOOW leg lifts. Then the perky young chick took over for Body Shape and had us do 8gazillion push ups. I'm not sure I like the whole "lifting" to music thing, especially when it's techno-80s mix at 110 beats per minute and you're doing lunges to the beat of the music. Hello! Can you see that my legs are twice as long as yours? From full lunge to knee lift position takes me 3x as long as the instructor. That and that it seems I'm really out of shape. There was one other girl in the class with an Ironman shirt on. I told her I'd much rather spend 6 hours on the bike than an extra 5 minutes in there.

So I survived that class, feeling like my arms were going to fall off, only to have Masters swim that night. Coach John laughed when I told him what I did that morning. Said something about it being "good for me." Sounds like something Jen would say. I led the lane for most of the warm up, and then decided when I saw that the main set was 3x (3x200s) to go to the back of the line. Time to do a little cruisin'. The first set of 3 200s was the hardest, since we got 5 seconds rest in between 100s on the subsequent ones. Who knew that 5 seconds rest could make or break your swim?! Then I actually took back leading the lane, and I did the last two sets of 200 in the same time, so I wasn't slowing down. Yey me! I then came home, ate dinner, watched Santa Claus is Comin' to Town, and collapsed.

This morning I was still ok, and then went for a massage. ow ow ow ow, with a few aaahs here and there. Pecs and hamstring/glutes were horribly painful (surprise surprise), and of course that is where Brooke decided I needed the most work. I'm going to now pop a few more Advil, watch the Biggest Loser finale, and go to bed, provided I can actually lift my butt up out of this chair.