Aloha Friday

Welcome to this week’s edition of Aloha Friday.
In Hawaii, Aloha Friday is the day that we take it easy and look forward to the weekend. So I thought that on Fridays I would take it easy on posting, too. Therefore, I’ll ask a simple question for you to answer. Nothing that requires a lengthy response.

My favorite Christmas gift was my polar heart rate monitor watch (I posted about it below).

What was your favorite Christmas gift that you received?

FTF Friday.....Some Good Information

This is a picture of my two favorite Christmas gifts. Well, the "strength, focus, discipline" blue bracelet was a gift from Christie after our last challenge and it is amazing how it can mentally help you pull through the last 10 minutes of a workout!!! Thank you Christie!!!!! The watch is my polar heart rate monitor watch so I can make sure my workouts are doing some good!!!! If I am going to do them, they need to count for something!!!!

Ok, so I have been on the bandwagon to drop a few pounds with Christie and many others over at Baby Tea Leaves and I love it. However, if you have been following my posts, I am pretty much at a standstill for the past month or so and this week is no different......I had no change. Yes, I want to be healthy and I know the only way to safely lose weight is by diet and exercise, which is what I am doing. But.....I want to do more of it to see more results. So.....my brother is a trainer in Florida and he was home for a week at Christmas. He introduced me to a new website called Crossfit. It is completely free and you log on every day to see the workout of the day. Many of the workouts are named after soldiers which I thought was very cool. Anyway, it is different everyday.....some days are pretty tough (like I think I might die today!!!) and some seem like they are nothing. I haven't focused on weight training for a while and I know I need to so this is helping me. I don't always know how to do a particular exercise so Matt is gracious enough to send me videos on those and he is modifying them for me so I don't quit after the first one. For example today I will be doing:

1 mile

50 rows (with 10lb dumbbells)

50 push ups (knee push ups)

100 squats (just with body weight)

1 mile

I was pretty surprised that my heart rate gets up pretty high when I am doing the weights and I thought it would be when I was doing cardio. This is probably why I have not been losing more.

Thousand Words Thursday

So little J spent her first night with Aunt Erin and this is how her feet came home!!!! Yes, they are painted like zebras!!! Don't those slippers just scream "High Maintenance"?!!! She had fun and that is all that matters.

Happy New Year!!!!!

Check out more Thousand Words at Cheaper Than Therapy.

Wordless Wednesday - Happy New Year!!!

Happy New Years Eve!!!!! It's time to party like the rockstar you are!!!

For more wordless Wednesday head over to Punky Monkeys The Official Site, MomDot, 5 Minutes for Mom, The Not So Blog Blog, Nothing But Purple, What’s That Smell?, Newlyweds, Photo Bug Baby, Mom of 3 Girls,All About Kimberly and Crazy Book Slut

It's Finally Over....Fake Santa and All

So, most people have many places to go during the holidays, especially if you live near family. If you throw in divorced parents, that doubles the places you have to go. So in our house, the day after Thanksgiving is our peak for excitement for Christmas. We are excited the whole month of December. Mid December is my husbands work party and the kids are happy to see Santa visit them there. Then the week of Christmas arrives and we are all SCROOGES by the time it is over from lack of sleep, not having a minute to just chill and enjoy the moment and the wrapping paper mess EVERYWHERE!!!!!

We started Monday night at my mother-in-laws house. She always puts on a play with the little kids and when someone goes off to the bathroom, magically, Santa appears. This year he came in with a trash bag filled with presents (hey even Santa is trying to cut back...maybe he sold his pretty red bag on ebay for some cash....who knows?!). So the little kids sat patiently as he called their names and gave them each a present and then he was gone and magically Gpa appeared back from the bathroom.

So, we had another Christmas Tuesday night, then Christmas Eve we were at my Grandma's and Jake was asked what he had gotten so far. He very matter of factly said he got a lego set from the "fake santa" at Grandma Becky's.

How did you know he was fake?

Because he had a pillow sticking out from under his coat.

Evidently Santa is not very good with detail or else my Jake is one smart cookie!!!

So, Christmas morning was the best. By this time I was living on caffeine and would have preferred to have an IV drip with me at all times. The kids woke up around 8am which would have been perfect if I hadn't stayed up until 2:30am playing "Would You Rather" and "Catchphrase" and drinking sangria with my brother, sister, hubby and Joe (sister's S.O.)

Christmas is my favorite holiday and by the time kids don't buy into the whole santa thing anymore, I will have nieces and nephews that do. It is just priceless to see their faces Christmas morning and the amazement that he really came to their house.

I love it but am glad to see it go away for another year. I am going to enjoy doing absolutely nothing this entire week!!!!

Weekly Winners

Christmas morning....the look of awe as he has presents to open.....even though he wasn't always on his best behavior this year.

The matching purse and hat of the year!!!

Yes that is the second pair of dora pajamas on little J. They both idolize their uncle Matt. He left last night to drive back to Florida.

Our annual Christmas play at my mother-in-laws house. Jaise is the angel sitting next to the cute little Shepard and Jake is the Shepard walking into the room. The little kids love doing it now, and I am sure will hate us for dressing them up when they are older!!!

Check out more weekly winners at Sarcastic Mom.