{until we meet again}

This weekend was a mix of happy and sad. This past weekend my family laid a mother, grandmother, great grandmother, and great great grandmother to rest. It's not goodbye, it's until we meet again. The funeral was beautiful and throughout most of it I was choking back tears. It was a beautiful sunny day and great grandma will be greatly missed by many many people. She was the kind of women you just keep thinking is going to live forever. I remember a long long time ago one of my cousin's saying that it will be a sad sad day when she passes away and I think many of us just thought that that day would never come. It was a tough day, but grandma is at home now and we know that we will be with her again one day. Instead of celebrating Christmas with us his year, she is celebrating it with Jesus himself. What a great thought!

I know I tried burying much of my feelings about my grandma's passing in order to not let Ayden see my down and out. He understands that someone passed away. I took him to the funeral, but I don't think he realizes just who it is. I mean, he has seen grandma at many family gatherings over the last eight years, but at his young age, I don't know that he knows who exactly she was to him. And that is partly my fault.

Other than the funeral, the rest of the weekend was fine. Nothing overly exciting. I ran 8.24 miles. My farthest run to date. I haven't been out running since Friday and I need it. We got a pretty significant amount of snow yesterday, so it will be a few days again before I can get back out onto the sidewalks and run outside. In the mean time, I am going to be taking my runs inside to the dreaded treadmill. Ugh! Just the thought of it doesn't appeal to me. I love running outside. My 8 mile run was pretty cathartic. I think I needed it. I just kept going and going and going. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever be able to run a half marathon and then other times I know that I will be able to. I AM going to do this. I know I am!

We decorated our tree on Sunday with my mom. It looks like an Ashley decorated Christmas tree... totally imperfectly perfect. I am not all about decorating big for Christmas. I keep hoping that once we get our own house that maybe I will get into the spirit of it, but I doubt it. I just don't find any joy in making more work for myself haha! But Ayden, my mom, and I all had fun putting the ornaments on it and eating chocolate and just being together.

As I mentioned before, it snowed pretty much all day yesterday. If I had to guess, I would say that we got about 4 inches of snow. Ayden is in love with the snow. He spent a number of hours outside yesterday afternoon making and destroying snowmen and shoveling and just having fun. Me, I stayed inside where it was nice and warm. I do not like the cold and snow too much, but I do know that we will probably be outside quite a bit more this winter because of our large front yard and the huge snow hill right behind our house to use the sleds with. Oh yeah, it is going to be a good winter, that is for sure.

I was mildly nervous about my drive into work today, but thankfully the roads weren't too bad. I drove slower than normal and it seemed like everyone else was being kind of cautious as well which was good. We made it to December with no snow and good roads, that means one less month of bad winter driving. Usually by the middle to end of February we do not have to worry as much about the roads. So... just two and a half months of winter weather driving because believe me, the amount of snow we got yesterday is not going to melt. It is here for the long haul, haha!

Because I couldn't (didn't want to kill myself trying to) get out and run yesterday, I decided that I needed to do some kind of exercise indoors. I pondered calling my dad to see if I could use his dreadmill (yes, I called it a dreadmill, haha), but decided against that. So, workout DVD it was... and that left me to decide which one. I knew because I have been eating like chocolate is going out of style since St. Nick has come (stupid person in my house who bought all of the chocolate and stupid person who writes this blog who cannot keep her hand out of the chocolate bowl), I needed some kind of high impact cardio to kick my butt. Insert... Turbo Fire 55EZ. Believe you mean, EZ does not mean EASY, haha! I figured that since I could now run about five miles without burning out too easily that Turbo Fire wouldn't kick my butt as much. WRONG! 55 minutes after starting I finished with sweat dripping off of me and not so kind words slipping through my teeth. I contemplated stopping the workout not even 30 minutes in because I was bone tired already, but I kept pushing through. I knew that I needed to keep going and so I did (even when I didn't want to). I was proud of myself at the end and I totally felt it in my arms today. It is that good workout pain though. I know that I am at the point in my fitness journey that when I don't workout for a couple of days, my mood suffers because of it. I wasn't in the most joyous of moods at all this entire weekend (other reasons included), but on Sunday when my bestie time and shopping time was cancelled because of the stupid snow, I wasn't too happy and needed to get my workout on because even though they kick my butt, they also elevate my mood. I was feeling much happier after my workout (even though afterwards, I showered and crawled into my bed with my Kindle).

I started a good book on Friday (I think) and got sucked into it and now I am ready to get to the end of it, but there isn't enough time in the day, haha! I think I should be able to finish it tonight sometime. I am looking forward to how it ends. I love getting sucked into a good book and because of my crazy schedule lately I haven't been able to do that as often as I would like to anymore. Ain't that it will a lot of things in life.

CIAO for now. Another post coming soon with pictures of some fun gingerbread house making!

LOVE ME!