Hi there everyone!

How have your last few days been? My days have been ok. I have a case of the blahs right now which might be combining with a cold… I’m not quite sure yet. I woke up feeling very congested today which was not a welcome thing first thing on a Monday morning. Paired with the fact that I got no sleep last night – it made for a challenging day.

Anyhow.

This past weekend mom and I did a couple of things to try and get into the holiday spirit. One thing we did was pick up a Christmas tree:

We are waiting to bring it into the house next weekend when my sister is home to help decorate it. So, right now it is sitting outside by our deck in a bucket of water 🙂 I hope it makes it!

My mom went to Trader Joe’s on Saturday and picked up a couple of special holiday treats – and I received my first birthday present of the season, which was super exciting!! These three things made up a great Trader Joe’s trilogy:

A huge thanks to my great friend Sarah D who mailed me dark chocolate sea salt caramels for my birthday! I have enjoyed two already and I love them. She so sweetly remembered that last year I was day dreaming of these caramels, but of course I was not able to eat any food – especially rich caramels. This makes them even more special this year 🙂

The winter blend coffee is amazing!! It has a great blend of spices and the coffee smells and tastes so good. Also, if you have not tried the Trader Joe’s cookie butter yet – you do not know what you are missing!! Hurry. It is a-mazing. (Mom and I like putting it on graham crackers)

On Sunday morning I made breakfast of egg and a bagel. It was very good:

A couple of hours after breakfast I went for a run. I covered 5 miles but my main focus was a 5K right in the middle of the run (thinking of it as a one mile warm up, one mile cool down after). The only goal I had was to run the 5K in under 30 minutes. I am a slow running – this is no secret. It is horrible that I was so thankful for running a 5K in 29:10. I just hope I can break the 30 minute mark this weekend at the holiday 5K. Overall it was a good outing. I accomplished my goal of running 3.1 miles in under 30 minutes and then I came home and had some whole wheat pasta and a Boca burger for lunch around 3 o’clock. Then I showered, changed into sweat pants and a long sleeve tee shirt and climbed into bed and watched a couple of episodes of Felicity on my computer. There were other things accomplished yesterday, but nothing worth mentioning.

Today I woke up feeling horrible but some how I got out of bed and got to work. The only thing I could remember was that I had a 9 o’clock meeting and I really wanted to make it for that. Of course I got to work and learned that the meeting was cancelled. I was feeling stuffy, sneezing and just kind of crumby. But somehow I managed to work until a little after 2. Then I called it a day and right now I am fighting the urge to go to bed immediately.

On my way home I stopped by Seven Stars because do you know what helps me when I’m feeling somewhat unwell??? Sour dough bread from my favorite bakery 🙂 Of course! Tonight I am in charge of dinner – but thankfully it is easy because mom picked up pasta from Trader Joe’s. This is what we are having tonight:

Hopefully they will be good – but I have high hopes. I’ll report back at some point soon.

Good night everyone – here’s to the hopes that tomorrow will be a better day!