It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

My 6-year-old kindergartener started singing this song yesterday as the snow started to accumulate on the ground.  I love snow.  It is so pretty and it is quiet!  I love being outside during a heavy snow fall or right after a large dump of snow when no one is on the roads. Everything is so peaceful.  Add the Christmas lights to all of this and it is hard to be in a bad mood.  Christmas is my favorite time of the year. I am not religious but to me, Christmas is a time for family and friends and reaching out to those who are less fortunate than us. At this time of year, the little things we do can make a huge difference to families in need.  I hope all of you are in a position to help in some way.

Yesterday’s weather was miserable. Light snow and howling gales.  So imagine my surprise when I agreed to go for a run with one of my friends!  I even paid a babysitter to watch the kids so I could do this.  It was one of the best runs I have done since returning to running after my surgery.  We knocked off 5 miles in under an hour.  No records broken but I cannot begin to tell you how great I felt afterwards.  And of course, this earned me quite a few Weight Watchers points 🙂  I love that I can buy points by exercising.  I hear Tony Horton calling my name today.  I don’t imagine the trails are runnable today.

Again I have two questions.  What do you do to help those in need at Christmas?

Who else braved the elements to get in a little exercise and what did you do?

So Much for Good Intentions

Why is it so hard to blog regularly?  I love talking and I love writing.  Yet, blogging is a chore. It isn’t as though I have nothing to blog about either.  Heck, no one needs to have material other than day to day life!  But here I am.  Perhaps one of the reasons I haven’t been blogging is because all of my good intentions to change my lifestyle have not come to fruition.  My recovery from hip surgery was a lot longer than I anticipated and as a consequence, I have gained 20 pounds since my last marathon.  I also had a very busy semester so time was not on my side.  The upside is that I feel as though my hip is 99% recovered and I can run again.  I joined Weight Watchers online on Monday and plan to use it to help me through the silly season.

The easiest way for me to lose weight would be to give up my wine in the evenings.  During the semester breaks, this is easy, but during the academic school year, I have made a habit of unwinding with a glass of wine while cooking dinner and then usually another one with dinner.  And my glasses are no 5 oz!  What can I do instead?  That is really what I need –  way to unwind in the evenings that doesn’t involve alcohol.  Having two young children means that I am not free to just disappear and do whatever.  I have the Tony Horton Power90 DVDs and they have been instrumental in getting me back into some form of shape but the kids hate it when I do it.  They want my attention.  I even try to get them to do it with me, but they last through one set of exercises and then they’ve had enough.  So today I have two questions:

How do you maintain and not gain weight during the holidays?

How do you unwind after work?