Oh my goodness, it’s Christmas tomorrow. That hasn’t quite hit me yet…

Fortunately, the cold slowly seems to be dissipating. Here’s hoping it’s completely out of my system! I knew cookies were the cure. Although it means I’m going into Christmas with a little bit of a sugar hangover, I’m ok with that. Tis the season, right?

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As I stated yesterday, today Eric and I are attending his family Christmas with his mom, his brother and his sister-in-law. Then Christmas day is my family (parents, brother, his girlfriend, and my aunt) followed by my extended family on Boxing Day. It’ll be busy, but I’m so excited to see everyone!

When you move away from home, you really start to appreciate the family time when you can get it. When I was living in London, my mom’s office was 5 minutes away from me, so I could see her every day if I wanted to. Now going for weeks at a time without seeing her or other family members really makes me appreciate holidays that much more.

The Workouts

So today marks the beginning of my two deload weeks. Carrie has put up her Elite Slim and Sculpt program, so I will be purchasing that to start the first Monday of the new year. Until then, I will be enjoying my vacation and giving my muscles a much needed break. For cardio, I won’t be doing anything more strenuous than a walk. I plan on doing some yoga and foam rolling as well – I have the tightest hip flexors AND hamstrings ever. I do yoga for a while and it helps, and then I fall off the bandwagon and I tighten up again. Here’s hoping I can finally stretch them out a bit over the next couple of weeks.

My last week of workouts:

• Sunday: Phase 3 Workout 1
• Monday: Upper Body Weights Workout
• Tuesday: Off
• Wednesday: Upper Body Weights + 15 minutes elliptical
• Thursday: off
• Friday: P90X Cardio Kenpo
• Saturday: off
• Sunday: at-home Crossfit workout

At the beginning of the week, I stuck with upper body workouts so I could continue resting my knee. It had stopped bothering me by that point, but I didn’t want to push it. It’s been fine all week, thankfully.

After Wednesday the gym at school closed, so I was stuck with at-home workouts. That’s cool, I can work with those. I used to love kickboxing-type workouts, so Kenpo at home was a lot of fun!

As for yesterday’s workout…I was looking for an at-home workout on my Pinterest Board, when it led me back to this page on Katrina Runs For Food. I decided to give WOD# 6 a try, which was:

7 rounds of:

• 7 burpees
• 7 squats
• 7 situps

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After a bit of a warm up, I jumped right in. What did I think?

Holy crap…suddenly, I see why people think Crossfit is so intense. I got the workout done in 6-7 minutes (I didn’t time it) and I’ve never had a workout like that before. Only a few minutes long and I was dying. Yea…wow. I can see why people drink that Kool-Aid!

Dinner

Fortunately, that workout was so short I did it while dinner was is the oven. I wanted to make chicken breasts a little more interesting, so I stuffed them with cheddar and spinach.

(I apologize for showing you pictures of raw chicken…it looks pretty nasty, doesn’t it?)

Well, fortunately it worked out well. Served with purple sweet potato fries, ketchup, and steamed broccoli.

I hadn’t bought the purple sweet potato fries before, so I was curious to see if they tasted any different from orange ones. I thought they did – less sweet, more starchy.

And now, to bring the Christmas Challenge to an end.

I don’t think I have one tradition that applies specifically to Christmas Eve. I’ll do one thing for a couple of years, than move on to something else. I remember when I was really little my family and I would go to a family friend’s house, than go to church that night. Since then, I’ve gone to various open houses and parties that different friends have had. The plan this year is the same as it was last year, so maybe this is the new Christmas Eve tradition?

I’m likely going to be stepping away from the blog for a few days to enjoy time with my family. Have a fabulous holiday everyone, and I’ll talk to you soon! <3

<— Any exciting plans tonight?

<— Have you tried Crossfit yet? Do you want to? I know there’s a box in Brantford, I would love to check it out sometime.