Christmas -a week of carb loading and burning

Like most everyone else on the internets, I've been holidaying rather than blogging and judging from my RSS reader, I'm not alone. It seems like lots of us are trying to catch up, recap and review this past week. I'm into that action, so here are some highlights from the holiday week....one that I could summarize as a series of events in which I was either carb-loading or carb unloading.

• OK...completely unrelated to carbs...but we started off the holiday week on Christmas eve morning, when we did our annual "cousins with Santa" photo. My SIL and I started this tradition 14 years ago when DramaGirl and my SIL's son were babies. DramaGirl and Sam were born about 5 weeks apart, so, of course, that first year, we trekked down to the mall to take baby pictures with Santa. 14 years later, we're up to one more SIL and 8 cousins. Here's the crew...

Almost everyone looking at the camera...not bad!

• While in the mall, I introduced my youngest niece to the Coach store. She loved it.

Two handbags, glasses, and the girl was SET to shop

• We spent Christmas Eve with BIL and SIL and their kids. We do this every year, and every year, dinner includes Blue Jello (don't ask...it's a tradition).

Isn't blue jello a holiday tradition EVERYWHERE?

Cousin Kate and DramaGirl

The kids table...is ANYTHING good going to happen here?

• On Christmas morning, DramaGirl and Turbo were up at 6:00 am (actually, I think they were awake earlier, but waited until 6am to wake me...nice of them). We were done with the present-fest by 7:00.
• By 7:30, I decided to go for a bike ride. It was a beautiful SoCal morning, so I rode over to Lake BP. I texted the herd, but all were either a) out of town, b) don't have kids, or c) their kids are older than mine and do NOT wake up at the butt-crack of dawn on Christmas morning, so nobody responded (actually, Betty did, but I was almost done with my ride by then). Nevertheless, it was a wonderful ride. I pretty much had the roads to myself. I rode 19.56 miles.
  

Me at Lake BP on Christmas Morning

• For the rest of Christmas Day, I cooked (and to be honest, I started three days earlier) and consumed lots of carb/butter/cheese/potato/starchy yummy foods I. For some reason, this year I decided to be a cross between Paula Deen and Emeril, so much so that I sent Walter to the grocery store (we have a little market down the street that is opened on Christmas Day. I think they do a bang-up business in beer sales!) for more butter twice! We had pulled pork sandwiches for Christmas Dinner (since we would be watching the Chargers football game this was somehow appropriate), homemade mac and cheese (not the boxed stuff), mashed potatoes with andouille sausage, cole slaw (my sister's homemade) bread pudding, a brocolli/cauliflower au-gratin that was so overdone with cheese sauce that Walter asked me if there were really any vegetables in it. After all that, I was pretty happy that I rode in the morning.
• On Monday, in a carb-induced hangover haze, I enjoyed one of the wonderful gifts that DramaGirl gave me--Wii Gold's Gym Cardio Boxing. I was hoping for a Wii workout game that had a little higher intensity than anything else I was doing, but was still low impact since running in place, or jumping up and down are big NO-NOs with the stress fracture. This seems to be fitting the bill. I've only done it once, but I did get my heart-rate up and it works my upper body, something which is sorely missing in my life.
• On Sunday, Betty and I did another East County-Three cities ride.
  

• On Monday, for the first time in probably five years, I stepped foot in A GYM...24 Hour Fitness to be exact. Years ago, I had a membership, but that was back when I only pretended to exercise (love the irony? I pretended to exercise and I had a gym membership. I canceled it when I started to run). Anyway, since I continue to be the BEST PATIENT EVER and AM NOT RUNNING, I went to the gym to workout as Betty's guest so that I could get in a good cardio workout on the elliptical. I am soooooooooo out of the gym mode that I completely forgot my iPod and endured 45 minutes on the elliptical without tunes! Luckily, there were plenty of people to watch.
• Last night Betty and I took our "heffer-ettes" out to dinner and a movie. We saw Nine...not a bad movie, certainly not as bad a movie as some of the reviews would have you believe, but you have to like musicals...and Italian movies. If that's not your thing, then you might want to avoid it.
  

Hefferettes at dinner

Heffers (me, Clarence, Betty, and Elsie) in the theatre

• One of the things that came out of "movie night" was a plan to do a bike ride this morning...and we INSISTED that Elsie, who purchased a used bike from Craig's list a year ago and had yet to ride it come along. So this morning, we met to do the 5 cities ride. We started at Harbor Island (where we met many times this summer and fall to run with the SDTC) and rode south through Chula Vista, National City, Imperial Beach, back up the Silver Strand to Coronado, then took the ferry back to San Diego...and rode back to Harbor Island...almost 30 miles! (29.2 to be exact).

Elsie and her bike

Clarence on her first ride in a month or more (an easy ride around the bay, right?)

The herd...ready to ride (yes, I know I was shooting into the sun so we can't see anyone's faces...GAH!)

Clarence and Elsie--somewhere in National City

• Since Elsie had a very important massage appointment to get to, she and Betty turned around at 12.5 miles and headed back to Harbor Island. Mik, Clarence and I continued around the bay, and headed toward Coronado. We got to the ferry landing five minutes before the boat left...very important because if we'd missed the boat, we would have had to wait an hour to catch another.
  

Clarence and I on the ferry

Mik and I on the ferry

Just another day in San Diego

Route and Stats for this morning's ride. 29.17 miles is the LONGEST ride I think I've ever done. My legs are certainly feeling it this afternoon.

• We got off the ferry and it was a ZOO. City workers were getting bleachers set up for the Holiday Bowl Parade which is tomorrow morning (I actually woke up at 6am and thought to myself..."gosh, I hope the parade isn't TODAY!). There are also TONS of Nebraska fans in town. You can tell the Nebraska fans...they're wearing lots of RED. Arizona fans either hadn't arrived yet, or were much more subtle in their outerwear. I didn't see as many of those.

Oops...so close to the end and no falls. Clarence had just finished telling me how hungry she was. I think she was thinking about lunch, then she fell...BUMMER!

• Luckily, the carb-loading part of the holiday season seems to be over. As I said earlier, I have been a VERY GOOD GIRL and am not running. It's very difficult. Every time I see a runner I want to roll over them, but I am also being a VERY GOOD GIRL and not doing that either.

Up next? I've got a year in review blog and some goals for next year blog underway. I'll be posting them later this week.