Holiday Fun!

IN PICTURES (mostly)! :)

Our Christmas Tree!  Some of you already saw this on FB, but that's o-kay!
We went to visit my sister/brother-n-law who live up near Salida, CO and they had to clear some big trees out from around their property.  SO, they cut this one down.  Of course, it was about 20 feet tall, but we were able to cut it to the perfect size! :)
It's not as full as traditional Christmas trees, but I just love it!

AND, on one of the branches sits my new ornament for the year!!  Instead of buying a pre-made one, which by the way is outrageously expensive, I just decided to make my own!  One plastic bulb and a sharpie paint pen make a great  homemade ornament...don't you think?
The other side has the date and my time for IMAZ on it!

So, I don't know if all you moms and dads out there know about this, but every month the Lego stores have a free mini figure build.  Well, the December one was this nutcracker.  I was excited to take my boys, but had no idea what to expect.  The event started at 5pm and we got there around 4:35, thinking that would be plenty early!  NO!!  There were already over 100 kids/families in line and IT WAS CRAZY!  There was no way that we could wait in line for 2hrs, so unfortunately we had to leave.  My oldest started crying because he was just really looking forward to doing it, and I felt sooo sad for him.
SO, what did I do?

As soon as we got home, I set the boys up with a game and I snuck into their room.  I spent probably 40min. in there trying to find the right pieces to make my own version of it!

Obviously, it's not the same, but it's not bad...right??!!  I think I did pretty good considering I didn't have all the right pieces.  AND, the best part, my boys absolutely loved it and thought it was the coolest thing!  :)

Mmmm...Frambozen!  My husband and I wait all year for this to come out during the winter months because it is so good!  I am not a beer drinker, but I'll drink this!

Taking our boys to see Santa! :)

Our "Elf on the Shelf," or Candy Cane as we call him in our house!  Seriously, whoever came up with this idea is a genius!  Plus, it's fun for our boys to try and find him every morning (like hanging from a random hook on the ceiling!) ha ha!








I hope you all have a great weekend!  :)

Holiday Randomness

There were just some random thoughts going through my head, so I thought I'd post some of them!

1. Baking and decorating Christmas cookies is always fun, no matter how old you are!   

2.  Every year we make a special treat for our neighbors.  This year, we made pumpkin bread!  My boys help me make it, then we walk around and deliver it to our neighbors.  It always ends up being a fun and rewarding experience!

3.  One of our Christmas traditions is a time capsule.  I have the boys answer some questions about their favorite things, and then draw/paint a picture.  Then, we put them in a "time capsule."  Every Christmas, we get out the time capsule papers and drawings, read what was written, and talk about how much has changed. My boys love it and they always get a kick out of reading what they liked the previous years!

It's supposed to be a picture of a train on tracks that are on a bridge over grass! :) 

4.  Every year, the Denver Botanical Gardens transforms the gardens into a beautiful light display.  They use thousands and thousands of trees and it is spectacular!  We go every year, regardless of the weather!  Monday night, we took the boys armed with extra warm clothes and mugs full of hot chocolate. 

 5.  If you have kids, you HAVE to go to The Portable North Pole [HERE] and make an email message to your kids from Santa.  It is AWESOME!  My boys, 3 and 5, were in awe and were totally captivated by seeing Santa talking to them on the computer!  

6.  Have you seen the movie, "Santa Buddies" yet?  Seriously, I watched it with my boys the other day and got teary eyed!  When that little dog sings in the pound...wow...tear jerker!  It makes me want to go to the pound and adopt every dot that's there!

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7.  I think this will be the first year in a long time that we won't have a "white Christmas."  It makes me kind of sad because although I've enjoyed the warmer temperatures, I have always loved having snow on Christmas. However, I know the snow is coming and when it does, I'll be wishing for these warm, dry temperatures again! 


Happy Holidays everyone! Thank you for being such wonderful blogger friends!  :)

A week in review and other things too

Training:
*  Training for this week can pretty much be summed up by one word: BLAH!  Ever since my 18miler turned 14miler last weekend, I have just been in a weird funk.  I don't know what it is, but it needs to stop NOW!  I guess it didn't help that my husband was sick with a 24hr. stomach bug and my youngest is having night terrors.  The lack of sleep is definitely playing a toll.

*  I missed my yoga class this week too...:(

*  I downloaded a winter tri maintenance plan from beginnertriathlete.com and am thinking about starting it up in the next 2 weeks.  This might sound crazy, but I think my blahness (not a real word, but it should be!) is because I'm tired of JUST running.  I miss riding my bike and swimming.  It may sound crazy, but I actually like looking at my calendar and seeing a nice mix of swims, bike rides, and runs to do!  I'm not sure how it will play into my marathon training, but I guess I'll find out pretty soon.  

Other things too:

*Trish at My Path to Travel left me a comment directing me to this site and I thought I'd pass it along:  http://ironbandmusic.com/emails/120110.htm.  I'm sure you all know the story of Jon "Blazeman" Blias.  Well, music and triathlon recently came together to raise more money for the Blazeman Foundation to fight the war on ALS.  All you have to do is go to iTunes, buy the tunes, and 100% of the proceeds will go to help fight ALS.  Pretty cool huh?
Here are links from iTunes:
*Blazeman Band - Ironman Blazeman [HERE]
*Ironband - Please, Please, Santa [HERE]

You can also check out this video [HERE] of the "Iron Blazeman" song video featuring some great musicians and pros.  I have to admit it was pretty crazy to see Chrissy Wellington and Matty Reed singing. :)

*  I won an Outside PR bucket full of goodies from Tall Mom on the Run and it came in the mail today!  All I can say is WOW!  There were so many cool things in the bucket!  Check out all the goodies!

I am so excited to try these things out!
Oh, and I have some good news!  One of the items you see in the picture will be featured in a special giveaway!  Details coming soon!  Woohoo! :)

*  So, Hammer nutrition [HERE] is having an awesome sale right now.  All of their fuel and supplements are 20% off from now until Dec. 17th.  My husband and I love Hammer gel, so we decided to take advantage of their awesome prices and stock up.  Well, our order arrived today and I was shocked to find tons of extra things inside!
Hammer rocks!  The boxes and big gel container is what we ordered, everything else were free goodies!  I have been reading a lot of great things about Perpetuem and Heed, so I am really excited about trying them out in my training.  Plus, now that IMAZ is right around the corner (well, really 11 months away..he he), I need to figure out what my nutrition will be come race day (yes, I am already stressing about it!).

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*  Is it really already Dec. 3rd???  That is crazy!  That means we only have 22 days until Christmas!  Wow!  I think we're going to get our Christmas tree this weekend.  Yay!

I hope you all have a great weekend!  :)