It was a Happy Christmas in my household this morning. We were not all together, because my sister is currently on an airplane to Asia at the moment, but mom and I still had a nice morning opening our gifts and we got together with our extended family in the afternoon for dinner and in the evening for Canasta! (My favorite card game. We played for hours!)

Mom and I both received new gym bags for Christmas today. We love Lululemon and both of us had been using large purses for gym bags, so we figured this would be a good way to remedy the situation. I was so happy when I opened my new bag this morning:

I am so excited to start using mine tomorrow, it’s all packed up and ready to go:

I just hope that the weather cooperates so that I can get another outdoor run in tomorrow. I ran 3 1/2 miles on Saturday before all of the Christmas Eve festivities began (including a great win by the Patriots!).

Even though this week was busy with holiday preparation, me not feeling 100% well most of the time, and lots of family time I was still able to work out four times this week. Twice at the gym and then decent outdoor runs on Thursday afternoon and Saturday morning. (Saturday’s run was a lot better because it was at the beginning of the day, but Thursday’s was still a nice surprise – and it was dark when I finished the 3 1/2 miles that evening – yuck!)

Another two of my favorite things are:

My new iPhone case: I am a huge fan of Keep Calm and Carry On. It’s my motto.

I also received this:

Have you heard of FitBit yet?? It is a new device that functions as sort of an electronic pedometer and it tracks your calories burned, steps taken, stairs climbed and it can even monitor your sleep. There is a web component to it as well where you can enter your activities of the day and even the food you have eaten. It can help you achieve goals such as being more active or help / track a weight loss goal. I am really excited to see how this all works, and I will report back and let you know what I think of FitBit soon! I cannot wait to try it tomorrow for a full day.

I was in charge of bringing an hors d’oeuvres for our Christmas family meal today. Mom helped me come up with an idea. She even cooked the bacon that went into our dish… I handled the rest of it.

These are little pastry doughs that I filled with green onions, bacon, monterey jack cheese, and an egg and cream mixture (1 tablespoon per pastry).

The filling and layering process took a little bit, but everything came together easily:

After baking for 10 minutes:

These were very popular at Christmas dinner during cocktail hour. They went very quickly! Overall there was a lot of food around the last few days. Thankfully I got some Larabars and Luna Bars in the mix of the gift giving that might try and even things out when it comes to my choice of normal chocolate vs. chocolate with some extra calcium and vitamins thrown into the mix (Luna bars have a lot of calcium and vitamin D – my doctor actually recommends I eat one regularly since I never have quite enough calcium in my diet) or some uber natural food bars, like Larabars 🙂

All in all it was a really nice day with my family. When my sister returns from Asia in January we are going to have Family Christmas Part II. Stay tuned for that – I am sure it will be interesting!

Happy Holidays, everyone!