Hi Everyone –

Wow – so I am officially on vacation now – yes!  It feels so nice to be on break.  I woke up this morning realizing that I just had to get through one more day before holiday break – and that was all I needed to get motivated!

For coffee this morning, I totally warmed up the leftover coffee from yesterday (is that disgusting?! I did not want to waste it!) with whole milk and tried to drink it quickly as I was getting ready for work.

Once I got to work I had breakfast: Trader Joe’s instant blueberry oatmeal and a little container of no sugar added apple sauce. It was a pretty good combo, and I was fine until lunch at 12:30.

I had a cardio day at work! We were busy moving and cleaning our work area, and it was great. We were doing lots of moving around, lifting, re-organizing, and it made the day go by quickly – and we definitely burned calories!

Here is what lunch looked like today. I find it really hard to make lunch when I only have a two day work week – especially when I am going on vacation (or going home to see my family!) because I do not want to go to the market and then waste food…

So today I made a Teddy and raspberry jam sandwich on Arnold’s seven grain bread.  I also enjoyed some baby carrots and a fat free Jello chocolate pudding (wow, that was good!) over all it was a good lunch. I was surprised how it kept me going all afternoon!

Here is the one afternoon snack I had –

I do not know what to say about this picture – it is horrible. For some reason my camera did not want to FOCUS on a piece of CHOCOLATE today. (Come on – who doesn’t want to focus on a piece of dark chocolate??) I took several pictures of this – and the camera just would not focus. I just don’t know what to say. But it was a piece of dark chocolate with almonds. It was small. I enjoyed it! 😛

After work I went to the Chestnut Hill Mall to meet Ben at the Apple Store. We go to the Apple store a lot… I guess because we are Mac people! It was the third or fourth time I had been in an Apple store in a week. Sweet!

The big news in our house tonight is that Ben totally took the plunge today – and got an iPhone!!  Woo-hoo!! I am so excited for him. It is a sweet phone, and I wish I had one. Unfortunately, I’m still locked into my cell phone contract, so I’ll have to live vicariously through him.   He loves the new phone! 🙂

I’m still holding out for a green (or pink, or any color) Nano!  I nearly bought it tonight while Ben was getting the iPhone – but I figured if I am getting it for my birthday, the least I can do is buy it closer to my actual birthday! 😉

For dinner we had Chinese food. We did not have much food in the house, so we decided on one entree, so that we would not waste anything. We had chicken and broccoli, veggie rice and Ben’s favorite scallion pancakes. It was all good – and I did not need anything else for the rest of the night.

While we had dinner, we watched one of our favorite holiday movies… Mixed Nuts. Have you seen this movie before? If not, try and check it out. It is a comedy – and it is special – but hilarious, thanks to the amazing cast.  For those of you who are fans of the Daily Show – don’t forget to check out John Stewart in his “oh so important” role in this movie – yes, he is a roller blader. Classic!

Here is another reason I like this movie so much…. I just went to IMBD to find a link to the movie, and realized for the first time that Nora Ephron was the writer and director of the film. I had no idea!  (Wow, I am realizing soo much more about NE right now. I did not know that she wrote and directed Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail [one of my all time favorite movies!] I did not know that she was married to Carl Bernstein!) This all just goes to show you that you definitely learn something new every day – sometimes the thing you learn is just more exciting or interesting. I consider my new information on Nora Ephron exciting – for sure.

Oh anyway – back on track.

Here are a couple of photos from Sunday, as I was lagging behind over the weekend.

Here I am with the snowman Ben and I made on Sunday afternoon:

And here is my breakfast of oatmeal on Sunday – it was fantastic!

Well, it is very late – so I am going to close. I promise to do a better job with the blog than I did over Thanksgiving break – when there was not a post for days 😦

Happy Holidays, everyone!