Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Running, Family, Gifts, Cats & Happiness!

I hope by this point that it is no surprise that I love Christmas. I love Christmas so much that I get very sad the day after Christmas, I’m not exaggerating. I haven’t done much all day because I’ve been so sad that the Christmas season has come to an end. I did do some online shopping and I will be going for a short night run soon in hopes that I can still see Christmas lights. This year I am particularly sad because I had such a good time on Christmas Eve and Christmas. On Christmas Eve Phil and I went to my parent’s house for dinner. YES, I had another BOWnus day of RED!! My family was thrilled, at least I like to think they were.

Dinner was a lot of fun, exchanging gifts was also fun. Phil had previously banned me from candles and EOS lip balms because I have sooooo many. He told me I needed to take a break from buying EOS lip balms, candles, and sparkly soul headbands. This may be true but I’ll never admit it to him. I do have an excessive amount of all of these things but I just like them a lot. The smallest things make me happy and EOS, candles, and sparkly souls are on the top of this list. Luckily, a few days before Christmas (as part of the ambassador program) I got a free sparkly soul. When we exchanged gifts at my parents house my parents and my brother both gave me a candle and my mom made sure to give me 3 EOS lip balms!! LOOPHOLE!!! Phil is thrilled about this! I also received a nice wallet from my grandmother. In comparison to my old wallet this one is perfect! My old wallet barely stayed shut and it was too small, had very few compartments, and I usually just threw money haphazardly into my purse or backpack instead of struggling to shut the wallet. The new wallet is literally perfect and I love it. Despite the nice gifts my favorite part of the evening was just sitting around talking about anything and everything.

When Phil and I got home we waited until after midnight and then opened our gifts to each other. If you remember the post I wrote about my office you’ll recall that I said I wanted this office because I didn’t have a laptop and I had no way of mobilizing my work. Well, Phil gave me a laptop for Christmas so that I can always be connected and blog at any moment do my graduate work wherever I go. Ironically, he said he had already ordered it before I wrote that post and that now he wants the office back!! I’m planning to keep crafting the office into my own but I will allow Phil to share it with me. I think the snow hats, case for his go pro, and christmas pens I gave him were lame gifts compared to the laptop he gave me but he seemed to like them anyway.

When we woke up on Christmas morning I made red velvet waffles. They seemed to be more pink than red and the icing melted because I put it on top of them while they were still hot. They did however taste delicious!!

The cats got their Christmas tuna for breakfast and Santa Cat brought them a new toy! They were very happy.

After we played with the cats and their new toy Phil and I got ready to go over his parent’s house.

When we got to Phil’s parents house we played ping pong with the kids, apparently I am not very good at ping pong! I’m not good at any sport that involves a ball so this wasn’t a surprise to me. At least I tried! We also watched Arthur Christmas, I think it was a hit. When it was time to exchange gifts we decided to go around the room and open one gift at a time so we could all see what everyone got. This was the absolute best way to do this since there were so many of us and since the kids were all so excited. I was also able to collect some ribbons this way because I wasn’t distracted with opening my own gifts. My sister in law loves to wrap gifts with ribbon and I love to make bows with ribbon. Don’t be surprised if the ribbons I collected turns into bows for the 5 days of red and BOWnus days of red next year!!!

It was a game changer when I opened my autographed Lauren Fleshman Believe journal though. I was too distracted to continue collecting ribbon.

Since I was so excited about this journal and I felt decent enough to run, I ran 4 miles when I got home last night. That may not seem like a lot but for someone who has been feeling sub par for several weeks with bad migraines and a mysterious issue that makes my hands and feet numb 4 miles is a lot. In fact it is the most I’ve ran in almost a month. It was a good run too. The pace was quicker than I had expected and I was fortunate enough to see 2 cats while I ran!! One cat was in the middle of town and then ran down an alley when I ran by. The other cat was on the street my street is off of and ran back into his yard when I ran by. I love to count how many cats I see when I run, I always have and always will. I’m feeling decent and I plan to gradually ease back into training while working with my new doctor to figure out whats going on. I also plan to use this new journal to record the whole process and all of my runs. The only problem is that I need to wait until Monday (the day runners typically start their week and the way that this journal has the weeks set up) to officially use it. For now I am writing my run(s) on hello kitty stationary and putting them in the journal.

I hope you all had an amazing holiday season filled with happiness!!!

Merry “The Day After Christmas!!”