so nice to be away

Ahhhh...it really has been nice to be away from the ol' grind. It's amazing...and in the past few days I've accomplished some training, some family time, some shopping, seeing some friends, it's really REALLY, been great.

I was super SUPER lucky on my way across the country when I flew on Wednesday and didn't have any issues since I wasn't flying through CO as Wed was the day of the BIG snow storm in Denver, CO that shut the airport down for two days. Sometimes I do fly through that way, but I was fortunate and didn't have any problems.

As far as training, I got my run on over the past two days, 3.5 miles today and 2.5 miles yesterday with some Core work yesterday. Um...can we say WEAK core. It hurt to move today, it hurt to laugh and I knew that I might encounter such pain with the Core work so I kept it to a minimum. Some crunches, V-ball lifts, arm holds, I can't do push-ups off the fit ball to save my life so I skipped that after one attempt (OK it hurt my lower back so I decided to just keep to push-ups on the ground), fit-ball roll outs, ect. Anyhow...i did what I could. Tomorrow I'll either go downhill skiing with my dad or get my yoga moves on and then fight the whole shopping thing. Why did I wait so long to do this whole Christmas shopping thing this year? My whole family seems the same way, although there has been much going on with the fam recently so it is understandable.

I've had some time to reflect too on how things are, just around me in general. And it's amazing to realize how difficult parts of my life have been this year emotionally, yet how incredibly FULL and beautiful it is at the same time. I love my family and their nutti-ness and I have been able to see them a few times this year even with a sister with some small kids living overseas and the rest of the fam on the other side of the country from me. I have amazing housemates that can deal with my insanity with grad school and are willing to give me hugs when all I have are tears and all I want to do with my life is anything other than grad school. I've made great new friends and developed more in-depth friendships this year and managed to maintain many other friendships that mean so much to me. I have an amazing church that is my other family that are so close to my heart that come the day I have to move (which should be in the next 12 months) will be so hard to say goodbye. Sometimes when parts of my life aren't so hot, it is really hard to take in and breath in the beauty that is the rest of my life. I am so blessed and as I head towards 2007, I hope to remind myself more frequently of such blessings.

It's a little nutty being home, so I don't know if I will post in the next few days. So if I don't.... MERRY CHIRSTMAS!!