Holiday Hangover

Whew! As of today it's done! Christmas toys are out of the packages (no easy task) and they have found their place in my childrens' rooms. Holiday leftovers are finished or thrown away. Christmas decorations are down and safely back up in the attic til next year. Bulk trash even cruised through the 'hood today to help us finish off the trash. It's funny how my mantle and living room always look a little bare after the holidays come down.

I wasn't really in a hurry to have Christmas end, but it was Saturday and I didn't have much else to do so I decided to get things back to normal.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas break. What I love about mine is that is is not over!! I still have a full week til school starts back again. It's been so nice to sleep late and lounge around the house, snuggle with my kids and not have any lesson plans to write or papers to grade. Life without a "to do" list is pretty sweet! I have even finished a whole book! I read Blink, it's VERY interesting. I am about to start Kite Runner. I know I am a bit late on that one since I could just go see the movie!

Chris asked me last night if I missed work, "hmm not really" I responded. Then he asked, do you miss your students? "Yes I do, I suppose" Never thought I would say that! I do hope they all have had a nice Christmas!

So here goes, I know it's old or cliche or silly, but what are your new year resolutions? Chris never plays along with my game so now you guys have to!! Leave me a comment and give me one or two resolutions you have. I haven't made my list yet, just mulling a few around in my brain. I won't actually say any out loud until I am VERY certain. I spoke too soon last year and it ended up with me running 13.1 miles! Not sure I am up for that again, maybe maybe not!

Check out this funny little clip for some ideas!http://www.bluefishtv.com/ProductDetails.aspx?cid=1005&id=2120

Merry Christmas!

Luke 2
The Birth of Jesus 1In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2(This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3And everyone went to his own town to register.
4So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
The Shepherds and the Angels 8And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ[a] the Lord. 12This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."
13Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, 14"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests."
15When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about."
16So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. 17When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. 20The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told

Merry Christmas!

They like me, they really really like me!

Well I have made it through my first sememster of teaching after a 10 year "break". It was a fun day and I was thoroughly spoiled from start to finish! I am looking forward to my winter break and catching up on household stuff, scrapbook, time with family etc. My students sent me off in style yesterday. Thanks to them (and their parents) I could easily enjoy a FREE day that looks a little like this:

Head out the door and enjoy Starbucks, a GRANDE coffee AND a muffin and then I could make it to my 10:00 massage at Massage Envy. After that hour of relaxation I could then head to one of my favorite places, Barnes and Noble and pick out not just one book, but quite possible 3 or 4 thanks to my gift cards! Whew by then I will need a little nourishment so off to Pei Wei where I could have lunch and buy lunch for a friend!! Then I could head to Firewheel Shopping area and have my pick of places to shop and pick up something cute to wear when I head back to work. Just when you think this day of free fun is over, it's not, I can end the day quenching my thirst on a route 44 diet strawberry limeade!!! Oh and to top it off I have enough chocolate in my house right now to soothe the savage beast of about 50 PMSing women!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Give me a call if you have a chocolate emergency, I'm your gal!!

So for this chic that LOVES gifts and LOVES free stuff, yesterday was great! Just when I thought it couldn't get any better Chris, in his usual style, topped it all. He fixed a very nice "you made it through half the year" dinner. Complete with steak, twice baked potatoes, sugar snap peas, rolls and cheesecake! He's so awesome!

To celebrate being on break I stayed up past 10:00 and actually watched a movie!

So I guess those little critters aren't so bad after all! (Just kidding, they are sweet) or they are just worried about their report cards and thought they better put in a last minute bribe. Ha!!

Blog worthy!!!

Have you had this stuff? I started thinking about the foods out there that I can't have in the house because I will eat them til I am sick and thought I should share some of that list with you.

• crunch and munch ( I only buy this ONCE a year when I go to S. Padre. Crunch and Munch and the beach, good times!)


• hot tamales, I am out of control with these babies


• the peanut butter cookies with hershey kisses in the middle. I have embarrassed myself with my ablility to eat these in mass quantities.


• smarties, I firmly believe that eating these by the pound each Halloween increases my IQ


• mini-snickers


• a sweet cantaloupe (I had to add something healthy)

I am sure there are more.

Ok anyway! I am adding another item to that list and that is the cornfetti that is pictured above. Man that's good stuff. I don't have many friends, but the ones I have are really THE BEST!!

I just happened to mention to my friend on Tuesday night about how next time she goes to downtown McKinney could she grab me some cornfetti from the quaint little shop that sells it. I didn't give it another thought and then Thursday night Chris walks through the door with a giant bag of cornfetti that my friend gave him to deliver home. Chris can testify, I was sooo happy! I promptly hid it under the cabinet from the sugar monster in my house (Jessica) so I wouldn't have to share! I accidently left out today and she quickly spotted it, so now I gotta share! :)

I FINISHED!!!!

Well my fingers are about the only part of my body that isn't hurting at the moment, however they took about 4 hours to thaw out.

So my morning began at 5:30 as I got up and got my running shoes on asking them to carry the furthest they ever have. I ate some food, not real sure what to eat for maximum performance so I just fueled up with a hodgepodge of foods including a diet coke (real runners would be appalled) to keep that nasty caffeine headache at bay. I headed to my sisters house to ride downtown with her and her husband for the big race. We parked with ease and got inside the American Airlines center for warmth and a potty break, with the rest of the 15,000 runners.
Adrienne (sister) and I walked Doug to the starting point for the full marathon and sent him on his happy way.

We still had an hour to wait til the half marathon began so we headed back to the car to get out of the cold and crowds. We chit chatted til about 8:45 and then went back out to brave the cold. Before we got out of the car an agreement was made, that I know will be kept. See all this idea of the half marathon began about December 30th of 2007 when two goofy sisters were sitting around discussing resolutions. We had just finished the relay and had fun doing that, then we watched Doug finish his 2nd marathon and that is always inspiring. So one of us threw out the idea of going for the half marathon on '08 and we chuckled and said "why not". Now before you think we are actually, die hard follow through on our commitment people, we are SO NOT, but there was one other person in the room that heard that conversation that clearly is of that crazy personality, Doug, and he would not hear of us NOT following through on this commitment. So the sister pack that was made this morning is that no New Year's resolutions will be discussed between sisters, well at least not in the presence of Doug, EVER AGAIN!!

We made our way to the starting line and waited in the wind and the cold for the start. It's just AMAZING how many people take part in this event. I think 6000 ran the Half Marathon.
It's always a little anti climatic when you hear the starting gun, because it takes awhile to actually get 6000 people across one starting point. We were off for 13.1 miles of running fun. Adrienne and I stuck together til we hit a hill about mile 4 and then we went our separate ways. I think my few years of Atlanta running still helps me on these Texas Hills or should we say inclines! After that it was just me, no music, no buddies, just me and a sea of strangers all asking their body to do something difficult. I love the people watching, it's amazing to see some that have a stride that looks painful with each step and others that are fluid runners that look lean and mean. It's inspiring to see the people in a wheel chair as they ask their arms to do the same work I am asking of my legs and feet. I saw two blind runners that were running with guides. The level of trust the blind person must have in their guide must be amazing.

So I overall I felt good, it was so cold and my legs never seemed to lose their tight grip and warm up for me. My feet were great, which I was extremely grateful for, once the feet start to go it gets nasty! Things were smooth sailing to mile 9, then I am convinced that someone was moving the mile marker flags further and further apart, my stomach started growling, and the grip on my hamstrings was starting to tighten. I am kinda goofy because I don't like to stop and walk through aid stations so I know that I wasn't really hydrating myself very well, I grabbed a gatorade from one table and drank and ran, spilling most of it on me, but still refusing to stop. At mile 10 a small miracle happened, one fella was passing out jolly ranchers, I grabbed one and it was the best jolly rancher EVER. It tasted really really good and served as a great distraction from the thoughts of just wanting to be finished.

Next thing I knew I could hear the roar of the crowd as I neared the finished. This is such a neat thing. I knew my mom and dad and sweet husband and kids were waiting somewhere in that line and freezing their little bottoms off, so I had to keep going. I spotted them quickly and saw the sweet sign Chris and the kids made me, this of course brought tears and just the final push I needed to finish! I crossed the finish line at 2 hours and 25 minutes! My goal was somewhere between 2:30 to 2:40, so I am quite happy about that.

I made it home and got in a warm bath and promptly feel asleep! I woke myself up snoring in the bath tub! How funny is that!

I am so glad it's done and my legs are still letting me know that they gave me their all, but that should get better soon. I am very happy that it's over and I am very happy that I did it.

If you are still actually reading this long post, you may feel like you just ran a marathon! ha

It's the final FINAL countdown

Now I am down to the wire, only 6 days left til I run The Half. I am ready to be done with this. I know the race will be fun, as fun as 13.1 miles can actually be. Not much I can do at this point. I plan to run a little this week. The best part of this week is that I am pretending that I need to do some "carb" loading over the 6 days so it's pretty much a free for all in the eating department! It will be sad that I will have to say yes, I ran 13.1 miles and yet still managed to gain 13.1 pounds!!

IN other news, we put up our Christmas tree on Saturday. This is my favorite night of the holiday season. We all get our jammies on, put up the tree and then have hot chocolate and cookies and watch a Christmas movie. Elf was the movie of choice. It's always a given that my kids (and Chris) will rewind the part when Buddy gets hit by the taxi cab, over and over and over and laugh hysterically. That's doesn't seem like the Christmas spirit to me!

I always get teary eyed when we put up the cute little ornaments the kids have made over the years. The ones with pictures usually bring out the tears. Chris just laughs and shakes his head at me, Joshua, he can't stand it when I cry so he said to Jessica, "quick do something funny, she is starting to cry!"

On a side note, i haven't had a quote of the week in a long time however today something was said to me that I felt was worth repeating.
Ok, so I am cleaning the house today and Joshua comes in when I am mopping the kitchen floor and says, "man, mom your working hard."

"Yes, I am just trying to get the house clean, it needed it." I respond thinking how nice it was that he noticed my hard work...

Joshua replies, "Hmmm, maybe you should change your name from LeRay to LeMaid."

I didn't have much of a response on that one, he went right on back outside to play.