The Ugly Sweater/Shirt

It is a point of irony, and perhaps a sign of the coming Apocalypse, that I am trying to boost the Christmas spirit at my workplace today. I am hosting an Ugly Sweater/Shirt Contest. Bonus points go to those who wear Christmas sweaters.

What do you think? I think that I may have it clinched.

Yes, that is a homemade shirt complete with picture of me in elf hat (grinning like a lunatic) and holding my cats. Howard looks amusingly pissed at being forced to participate in such activities. I am wearing HUGE gobs of makeup, fake lashes, epilepsy inducing earrings and I spent an hour making my hair big and curly this morning. I was aiming for Crazy Christmas Cat Lady/Drag Queen but the kids think I look beautiful and wonder why I don't dress like this every day! Those are the kind eyes of love speaking, people.

I may be starting a whole new dressing up trend for Christmas... what do you think of Hallomas? I may just have investigate getting that trademarked!

Finn is 5!

It is a very exciting day today. Finn is now five years old. He is very excited about this fact. Here is a shot of the birthday boy playing with some of his new gifts.


The kids' school Christmas concert is today. So this will be a very busy day.

Finn's kindergarten teacher called me this morning at work to ask if it was okay if Finn could drink through a straw if he got really thirsty. Er... sure... why would you have to ask? I cautiously responded. Well it seems that Finn told his teacher that I had applied medicine to his face this morning and because of the medicine he was not allowed to drink all day. I can honestly understand why, if presented with this information, that a teacher might phone to ask questions. I was stifling laughter when I corrected that I had applied Blistex (a medicated lip balm) under his bottom lip and told him to not lick his lips. And that he could drink his fill with a straw or otherwise.

I had to wonder how many of these types of phone calls she has to make in a week dealing with kindergarten aged children. Too funny!

Look at what I found in my bed this morning.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY FINN!

Olivia's Christmas Piano Recital

This is Olivia's second year of piano lessons. She is very musical and has been doing very well at her lessons. This is a video of her and her music teacher playing a duet.

Week 3.2- Um, yeah that wasn't much better

The Good news:

Total Time: 2h 15 min ( 9 h 46 min)
Total Distance: 48 km (209.3 km)
Weight Loss: no loss but no gain.

Week 3.2- The Done-Over ripe with puns
I'll just apologize now as apparently I am feeling pun-ny this morning.

Well, I suppose that was better than last week in that I got 3 workouts done instead of only 1. But I am still not doing 6 workouts per week. So I am going to do a realistic reassessment of this program- with knowledge of my own schedule for the next month- and lowering the bar to 4 workouts per week instead of six. I will reassess this again in January but for right now 6 is too much. I know myself well enough to know that if I have too many more weeks of failure to meet my 6 workouts I will quit in frustration. And not only will I quit the program but I will adopt a pessimistic "I had might as well buy and eat an entire box of Turtles attitude". So I reassessed that a successful week is now redefined as 4 days per week workout.

I am still very much enjoying riding the bike and I can honestly say that I have made some gains in the past 4 weeks. A 30 minute bike ride still gets me very sweaty and is an excellent full body cardio workout. I can pedal faster and require less rest stops, with the same resistance, which translates into my 30 minute workout now nets me a farther distance travelled. That makes me feel like I am not spinning my wheels without purpose. :)

My one legged workouts still suck but I have only one more week of those and Month 2 changes tactics and training focus.

The down side is that a 60 minute bike ride is still pretty hard on my butt. OUCHY! I bought myself the puffy bottomed shorts; they do help but not quite enough. (The butt to puff ratio is still heavily favoured to the butt so that little bit of puff can only do so much.) Bottom line (hehehe) my seat has not spent enough time in the saddle yet to have grown accustomed to that kind of hardship yet. I do not know when this magic will happen but it isn't in the fourth week of training- that I know for sure!

From a weight loss perspective I have gone no where. I have neither lost nor gained. Which I suppose is not totally a bad thing. My body really likes my current weight and even with all of this extra exercise will not give up a pound. Which is honestly disappointing. But in all fairness this cannot all be laid at the feet of the program. I ate very conscientiously for the first 2 weeks but the last two I have been back to some of my bad habits.

My in-laws were at my house this weekend and showed off their new slimmer frames. They have each lost 25+ pounds! Their success was accomplished with a dedicated focus on establishing proper eating habits (portion and content) and walking. It makes me happy to see my mother-in-law smiling in satisfaction and victory while recounting how her blood pressure has dropped 40 points (for the good) and she is contemplating asking her doctor to take her off blood pressure meds she has used for years. I am proud to see her clothes drapey on her now slimmer frame. I am contemplative at the idea of what that would feel like on me.

It should be simple- eat healthfully when you are hungry, stop when you are full, stay hydrated and exercise regularly. But for some reason some of us get some (or most) of those simple rules mixed up in our brains. I know the benefits of doing it and the costs of not and still I willfully make bad choices. This is obviously something that I need to work on. Right now I will look at my in-laws and see inspiration- of what I could do too if my brain were focused on the task.

On another- and completely unrelated- note: I have finished #2 pair of mittens and are 70% finished my #3 pair. These have been good but the novelty of knitting mittens is wearing off.

Mittens #2 and partially completed #3

Week 4: And here comes Christmas
I suspect that part of this afternoon will be spent putting up the Christmas tree and decorating the house to match the season. And the rest of the week will be spent being startled to find the cat AND the kitten IN the Christmas tree. At eye level. I wonder each year which will be the day I return home at lunch to find the circuits blown, the tree knocked over and one of the cats electricuted and vaguely smoking.

The kids (and in this I totally include Scott) are all so excited. I have been trying to get into the Christmas spirit by listening to Christmas music but so far it hasn't took yet. Maybe I haven't hit that critical mass of Rodger Whitakker Christmas carols yet. I'm working on it. Christmas for my side of the family will be celebrated next weekend at our house. To this I say: Bring it. I'm ready.

Editor Note: Photo added later- Apparently those in a betting frame of mind should put their money on the brown cat as still being the trouble maker this year.