Thanksgiving Week

I didn't want my previous post to get too long....

I am so glad it is December - I love Christmas time! And I am always so glad when Thanksgiving is over.

To me, Thanksgiving isn't a big deal. We host, so I do all the cooking, but I don't love the food - We eat at 2:00 so I don't even provide appetizers, it is one meal and it is over....though I did have quite a bit of leftovers on Saturday :)  I don't really like the colors and I am so sick of Fall by that time, so I am just ready to bring on Christmas. That is why I love it when Thanksgiving is the latest it can be like this year, when December comes even before the long weekend is over. I hate, hate it when it is as early as it can be like last year when December is 8 days away.

We don't go overboard early. While it was early last year, we did put up our lights over Thanksgiving weekend because we were excited for the new house. This year we did the same, but mainly because it was so late. We never, ever get our tree Thanksgiving weekend - we'll get it next weekend, and the years Thanksgiving is really early, it may be 2 weeks after Thanksgiving before we get it.

The outside lights are up, our Elf on the Shelf arrives on December 1st every year, the 2 advent calendars are out, but that is it. But next weekend our house will be throwing up Christmas!

But back to last week. I felt pretty out of control over last weekend and into the beginning of the week. Work was stressful and I found myself eating cafeteria food both days even though I had packed my lunch. But I was more calm once I could work from home on Wednesday and got a lot of the food prep done.

Thankgiving I had my normal breakfast, and I always have a cup of eggnog to welcome Santa during the Macy's Day Parade - but I measured out the 1/2 cup (5 points!) which didn't even fill 1/2 of our smallest cups. I had one normal size plate of food and a small helping of dessert (after a walk) and 1 glass of wine. Knowing I had to run in the morning and had WW on Saturday kept me sane. I had a PB&J sandwich for dinner for fuel for the race.

It was chilly! 30 degrees maybe? It was hard to run in the cold, but I still PRed! I don't know my exact time - I double hit my Garmin so I didn't stop as I finished the line, and the official results had my Gun Time and my Chip Time the same. I could have been as little as 33:20 or as much as 34:05, but since my previous PR was 34:28, I PRed no matter what. It was the first time that me and my running friend actually raced against each other. I knew she would be faster (she ran a 1/2 marathon back in October), but I don't care.

I ate pretty well the rest of the day - again, knowing I had WW the next day. And I only had run 3.14 miles so I didn't need to re-fuel. But after WW I did go a little overboard. I spent a bundle at Target (made sure to eat well before I went) and when I came back I was starving even though it was only 11:30 and I had the house to myself so I had enjoyed lots of leftovers (including dessert) before heading back out for more shopping.

Today was a pajama day, so there was some grazing going on, but the Thanksgiving food is gone (a lot thrown away) and the pantry and freezer and fridge full of good foods). I've planned menus for the rest of the month - trying to minimize the number of days I could do real damage (and tried to plan as most of them for Saturdays - in the past I've done cheese fondue on New Year's Eve - this year we will do it December 28th as a final "hurrah" for Christmas, and we'll just do a pasta meal on NYE since I will most likely be running the next morning).

Happy December!