Holiday Recap

Merry Christmas! Tomorrow I'm heading back North, but tonight I'm enjoying one last night sitting by the fire, snuggling with my puppies, and hanging out with my mom and dad. We had a great Christmas- lots of family, lots of love, lots of food, and surprisingly, lots of exercise!

We started Christmas celebrations by decorating the tree...

He was slightly perturbed his nap spot was taken over by presents

Then welcomed grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins for Christmas Eve dinner and gifts...

The Walker siblings. We do Christmas Eve in our fanciest of fancy.

And I was crazy about this darling new addition...

Excuse the crazy eyes. Love this little darling girl! She's not too sure about me...

Then spent Christmas Day opening stockings and family presents, eating sausage biscuits and doughnuts, and relaxing by the fire watching Home Alone and Christmas Vacation...

And spent lots of time burning off holiday treats at the gym.... or what I like to call, balancing treat intake. My runs this past week included an 8 mile run on Sunday (9:40 pace), a 5 mile run on Christmas Eve (9:30 pace), a 3 mile walk with the pups on Christmas Day, and a 4.5 mile speed workout (8:53 pace) on Wednesday. 

I loved the speed workout-- it's one I've done before, and last time I did it, I had to drop the speed down in able to finish it. This time, I added 10 minutes to the workout and ended feeling strong:

(adapted from Carrots 'N Cake)

Today was a rest day, and tomorrow before I get on the train to NYC (via Allentown), I'm going to do the speed workout again. Yes, train. Flights were way too expensive so I'll be on the train for 10 hours and 28 minutes. Here's too lots of reading, finally watching Pitch Perfect, and hopefully not going crazy.

Sad to leave home and Christmas, but excited for 2013!

Christmas is over?

Home For The Holidays

After spending 15 hours in a bus, then a car, on I-95 South yesterday, I'm finally home for Christmas! I took the bus from NYC to DC, where my brother and sister picked me up for the longest unintentional road trip ever. Turns out, everyone who lives on the I-95 corridor decided to go driving yesterday.

My sister took this sometime around 11pm as we finally crossed the border into SC!

We kept ourselves entertained with comedy roulette- I have never listened to so many stand-up specials in my life. Now it's finally time to relax and enjoy Christmas with the family! We're decorating the tree tonight (a long standing tradition) and tomorrow we'll have the entire family over to celebrate!

Speaking of home for the holidays, have you seen this SNL skit? It's like they interviewed my family it's so spot on: