Don't Be Jealous

You know that post Christmas warm fuzzy feeling that you have as you drive home from seeing all your family, eating lots of food, and opening gifts or sharing memories, then BAM back to reality you have to go back to work?   Well I still have 6 more days to recover from that! Hence, the "Don't Be Jealous" Title!!!  Yes, that is one of the wonderful things about my job we usually get more than a week off at Christmas time this year it's a week and 2 days and with any luck it looks like a snow storm will be coming in the day we're supposed to go back to work and we'll have a snow day.  Ok Ok I know don't push my luck.  But I have to say the most wonderful part about having this time off is that EVERYONE has it off at the same time so you don't come back to a completely ridiculous number of emails and urgent phone messages!

We spent the last 5 days at my parents house in the mountains and it was awesome!  I usually relax the whole time I'm up there.  We went for some hikes and I went for a little run but what I found out is that although it is easy and enjoyable to run in snow it's not so much fun to run in that weird mush/ice/snow mix that you get in between storms so while I was up there I didn't do any long runs.  On one of the hikes my dog came across a carcass that was hideous some one had obviously not done a good job of taking care of their probably illegal kill!! Grrrrrr and my dog started to lick some of the bones before I got her to come to me.  Thank goodness she didn't try to eat it!  YUCK!!!  Half of it's face was eaten off but the other bones were pretty clean!  Other than that the hikes were uneventful.  Ahh the joys of growing up in a small backwoods town. 

Ice skating was the highlight of the outdoor activities while we were there.  It was a popular place to be.  It brought back lots of memories from my childhood!

I also convinced my fam to go to an abandoned horse stables right after it snowed for some family pics.  Someones dog got out of their house and wouldn't listen to them to come back when they called for it.  So we stood their patiently waiting.  But as it kept getting closer we started getting nervous for little Lexi and my husband slowly went near it and it started to back off but the owner yelled "It will bite your ass" which is ridiculous, I picked Lexi up off the ground just in case but then the owner finally got his hands on his dog and said "Sorry about that Merry Christmas" which unfortunately didn't quite make up for the first comment but at least nothing happened!  But by then everyone was getting cold including the dog and we packed it up.  Which if not I might have kept on trying until we got a pic where my dog actually looked happy, check out her face in all our pics...

Now we're back home, going to volunteer for a couple of hours at a food bank, and get back to the gym.  Yesterday's spin class is just what I needed after a long car ride home.  But as for the format of the spin class I'll have a whole nother post about that!!  Have you ever taken a Les Mills RPM Spin class? 

Merry Post Christmas!   Do any of you hit the after Christmas sales or do you avoid it as much as I avoid Black Friday Sales?

Merry Christmas, Ironman Style!

We woke up to some white snow which made my husband very happy, he says he's never had a white Christmas (he grew up in California).  For me it was like most of my Christmases growing up!  It was good to spend the Holidays up in the mountains!  The only thing missing was the rest of the family!  But for my dad and I my brother made us this video of our Ironman Race and we loved it!!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Watch out for the ELF!!!!

Santa checks his list to see who’s been naughty or nice, but while he’s checking it twice…. the elf on the shelf is already there….. so for goodness sakes be NICE!!

   MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Happy Holidays from the Arnold Family!

I'm getting so excited for the Holidays and even more for the 7 days I have off from work!!!!!!  I couldn't contain myself any longer.... Happy Holidays blogger family!!!   

A Case of the Mondays...... SIKE!

Am I dating my self by using old slang?  I don't care, you know you're a child of the 80s if...

So interesting fact I have a post that talks about a Case of the Mondays and has a picture of the lady from the movie Office Space that says that.  Turns out that is one of the most searched phrases that sends people to my blog.  I often like to post a "Happy Friday" post and that one never gets searched!!  So I thought I'd surprise them.  Someone have a crappy monday will now find one of my Happy Friday posts!!! :-)  Only interesting to me?  Ok well at lease it's still Friday!

December to Remember FITspiration #14: Change gears every once in a while!  "Life is like a ten-speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use."
- Charles Schulz

It appears I am on gym bag overload.  I got a surprise package in the mail yesterday and it was, guess.... another gym bag!!!  So I gave my mom one that I had been using since it's still cute and fairly new and switched to my now favorite one.  Hubs needs a new one so I told him he could have one of my extras.  Boom Christmas shopping half way done! :-)

Happy Friday!!  I'm hoping this rain turns into snow!!!