Vacation Day 2: Animal Kingdom

You may remember that we were in Florida for spring break, and although I am super behind on posts, I still want to document the things we did while we were there! Here is a link to Day 1.

I'm pretty sure we were all sleeping by 9, 10 at the latest, on Saturday night. It was a long day having been at the airport before 4am! Sunday we woke up, ate breakfast in our hotel room (we had groceries delivered from Garden Grocer so that we wouldn't have to eat out for every meal and snack). In hindsight, I heard you actually get way more food that you need when using a Disney dining plan, and I may go that route next time. Although it was also nice to have snacks and drinks that we didn't have to leave our room for. We packed up, and headed over to Animal Kingdom for adventure number 1!

Highlights: Expedition Everest roller coaster, Finding Nemo and Lion King shows, the safari, although all my pictures of that are on my big camera and I have uploaded them yet! (oops), the BBQ stand we at lunch at!, giving in and buying memory maker pictures!

We still missed things even though it is a smaller park! We never got to see some of the animals, and some of the characters.

Here are pictures from the day, somewhat in order but not completely! I thought I was keeping to just the big things, and still ended up loading 37 to share. That's how I roll!

first park; selfie on the way in.

she had Minnie ears and sunglasses within the first few minutes ...

this show was awesome!

I believe this was in Asia.

these two.

part of the jungle walk.

Lion King show.

Also very good, but I liked Finding Nemo better.

quick selfie as we were heading onto Expedition Everest for the third time!

just posing with statue.

I don't really know if we were on this ride, but fun picture regardless!

best way to make sure the rain will stay away? spend money on WDW ponchos! We used them on the water rapids ride!

Ava and I are back, left.

they almost look real, don't they?!?

goofy girl.

our hotel had a movie by the pool a couple times a week. Since Animal Kingdom closes earlier, we made it back for some. But we didn't actually sit outside for very long. It was windy and cool, and we were tired!

aren't we cute!?! Soaking up vacation, for sure!


Here are some of the pictures we got using the Memory Maker option. I didn't think it would be worth the money, so I didn't buy it in advance; I should've because I ended up paying for each day separately and that cost a little more. So worth it!

Ava is ducked down. I don't think this was her favorite ride.

This Pluto and Goofy were the best!

This picture makes me laugh! Her face doesn't show she was having as much fun as she said she did!

We still made it a second time!

and because it was so close to closing, we hopped on a third time!

Day 2 done!

MedCity2016: Training Catch Up (part 1)

Oh my. I have not posted a weekly training recap since Week 6, which ended Sunday, 3/6.

I haven't posted in general in at least another full week, even though I've sat down to write on multiple occasions! Tis the season, I guess. Between spring break and going on vacation, to assignments for my graduate classes, to grading and paperwork for work, being a mom, wife, runner, etc. - the last month plus has just flown by. This is a busy time of year in general, but lately I have been feeling really overwhelmed. Sadly, when I start feeling this way it shows in the fact that I get way less done than I need to. Which of course makes me feel even more stressed, overwhelmed, and crappy about myself and life in general. I think I just really stink at dealing with stress and pressure. It is so frustrating!

But I digress, because that was a really negative paragraph! Although why write if you can't be honest, right?

So anyway. I thought I would put together a quick recap of some recent weeks. Since it is going to get way too long to put in one post, I will split it into two!

Week 7:

Monday, 3/7: planned rest day

Tuesday, 3/8: kettle bells. I am so glad that I wrote down what we did this day, because seeing it written down make me remember how much I liked it. It was tough, but good! We did 20 swings followed by an exercise times 11! The exercises were things like jumping jacks, slow mountain climbers, squats, lunges, etc. I didn't write down what all of them were! We finished up with some core and abs works, and biceps!

Wednesday, 3/9: planned run; actual nothing. I've been able to get in weekend workouts, and Tuesday/Thursday classes with consistency. However, fitting in the 4th or 5th workout has been tough. Trying to accept it.

Thursday, 3/10: would have preferred to be at kettle bells, but was at work for conferences.

Friday, 3/11: The note where I log all my workouts literally says, "phooey." Seeing as though I had conferences Thursday night, I planned to go to cycle box at the Y at 4:30. I just never leave work in time to go when I do that.

Saturday, 3/12: Long run of 10.48 miles; some miles were fast and others were really slow. I remember the last couple of miles being really tough! Thankfully over a month run a bad run is easier to stomach. I'm sure I'd have more to say if I would've recapped sooner!

Sunday, 3/13: The best thing about this day, likely due to the long run the day before, was the progress I saw on the scale. I weighed in at the lowest I can remember weighing in over a year, since I put the weight on last winter! After going to Florida, I've been bouncing around slightly higher again, but really hoping to get going on losing again soon.

Ended the week with the 20/20/20 class at the Y, where we usually do 20 minutes of cycling, 20 minutes kettle bells, and 20 minutes core or yoga. Debra actually switched up class this week, and we did some work on the bikes, then kettle bells, back to the bike for a tabata, and back to kettle bells. I liked it; it's fun to switch up the format from time to time!

Week 8:

Monday, 3/14: Girl Scouts and planned rest.

Tuesday, 3/15: Night two of conferences

Wednesday, 3/16: planned to go to cycle box to make up for some missed nights, but never made it. Worked on paperwork, and watched my Wednesday night shows. Sort of lame.

Thursday, 3/17: kettle bells; felt good to be back after missing the last two nights of class! We did battle ropes and kettle bells. I can't lie; doing the battle ropes make me feel pretty bad-ass. They are tough, but I have to say I don't get as sore as  would expect from them either.

Friday, 3/18: Off to the Cities, and ready to leave for Florida!

Saturday, 3/19: travel day - we flew out at 5:50am (central time), and didn't get to our hotel until after 2pm (eastern time)!

Sunday, 3/20: As much as I planned to workout while on vacation, the only exercise I got was all the time we spent on our feet. We started at Animal Kingdom.


Week 9:

Monday, 3/21: today's miles were put on at Hollywood Studios!

Tuesday, 3/22: THE day! Magic Kingdom! :)

Wednesday, 3/23: The warmest day we had in Florida, so saving Typhoon Lagoon worked in our favor. Ava and I also went to Disney Springs for dinner and shopping!

Thursday, 3/24: travel day back to Minnesota. We left the Sunshine State at 1:15 or so, and pulled into our drive way (which was packed with snow we got while we were gone) just before 10pm.

Friday, 3/25: Not going to lie; I was okay with weighing in at 189. After a week of vacation, to stay under 190 seemed like a small victory. I did not work out; Ava actually left with Chad's cousin to go see Grandma and Grandpa for Easter. I don't know how she had the energy, but we didn't. Chad and I barely moved from our respective couches! I was exhausted.

Saturday, 3/26: My plan was to get right back on track with a long run, since I hadn't done one since before Florida on March 12. Honestly though? I had another day of doing a lot of lounging around and resting.

Sunday, 3/27: The weekend of resting and recouping continued. We also went to church for Easter, made an Easter dinner to eat when Ava got home of ham and cheesy hash browns, did two weeks worth of laundry, and got ready to head back to work. Sigh .... I did weight in at 186.8 that morning, so I feel confident that most of the vacation bloat was gone.


Week 10:

Monday, 3/28: I knew I needed to get back on track this week; I didn't have an excuse to rest on this Monday! It was also a beautiful night outside. I ended up running, but with Ava on the bike. I thought she would be faster on the bike, but there was a lot of stop and go. It was slightly frustrating actually. Although slower than I'd want to go, I did finish 3.4 miles.

Tuesday, 3/29: kettle bells - an AMRAP workout. (AMRAP = as many rounds as possible) That is all I wrote down for that night; I think this might have been the night we did a couple rounds of AMRAP, with different exercises, but I honestly don't remember for sure!

Wednesday, 3/30: Between getting back into the swing of things at work, being super tired, and the rain - it easily became a rest night.

Thursday, 3/31: Paperwork Celebration, hosted by our Special Services Director = pay for 4 hours of paperwork. Can't pass these nights up!

Friday, 4/1: Chad headed out of town, and Ava and I headed to the Y for family fun night. We did an obstacle course in the group fitness room and spent some time in the pool!

Saturday, 4/2: Twas the day of running around! I took Ava and one of her friends to story hour at the library, made lunch, headed back out for the first lesson of the spring skating session, and then we headed to Rochester before the dealerships closed to do some truck shopping. Rewarded Ava for being a trooper through that with supper at Chuck E. Cheese!

Sunday, 4/3: The busy weekend continued; we headed out to church, out for brunch, and then to Ava's dance show. I did make it out for a 6 mile run before the evening ended, and it was fabulous! The weather was perfect, and my splits were much faster than most of my runs have been this training cycle!

****
In summary:

March ended with
- only 25.1 miles running, including two runs from Week 6 of training prior to this post!
-7 fitness classes
-two nights of conferences, and a paperwork celebration
-a week long vacation!

And the first three days of April held
-just over 6 miles of running
-family time
-truck shopping

It was a busy stretch! Overall, I feel like I did what I could, but there was room for improvement.


****
I'll bring you up to speed on the rest of April in the next update, including the half I ran last weekend!

Vacation Day 1: Traveling and Resort

I need to lift my spirits.

What better way than to relive vacation?

On Saturday, March 19, we were "up and at 'em" at 3:00. AM! I don't know if I've ever been awake at three in the fricken morning before! However, with the spring break traveling, we wanted to make sure we had plenty of time to get checked in and through security. It worked out. We got to the airport almost exactly two hours before our flight, and had time to search the airport for breakfast. The hour wait until take off went remarkably fast. What went super slow was having to wait for the plane to get deiced due to the snow that was coming down! I guess there is no better way to leave Minnesota for Florida than with snow!

Once we got to the resort, we looked around, ate the first real meal of the day while we waited for our room, did some swimming, and relaxed. It didn't take long to fall asleep that night!

Day 1 Pictures -

ah, yes. Chad's picture of me getting searched at the airport. Apparently it is frowned up to have a tad of water left in a water bottle! Because of that, I had to get searched and my whole bag had to get emptied and searched because the x-ray machine detected the water! If it wasn't the water, they never told me what it was! Frustrating!

Snow! Ick. Bring on Florida!

Somehow she stayed awake most of the morning! She was both excited and nervous for the flight,  I think.

We're on the plane!

Vacation has officially started!

We flew from Minneapolis to Atlanta, then Atlanta to Orlando. Here is what the second leg of the flight looked like. Zonked out!

Before we did anything else, I said we needed to walk around the resort and find where everything was! We were in one of the 101 Dalmatians buildings, so naturally posed with the statue!  

There were Toy Story themed rooms, too!

Ava with Woody and the dinosaur.

a very tall Buzz Lightyear!

Finally, swimming! Though it wasn't really that warm, she did swim for quite some time!

excited to be on vacation!

view at the pool.

I do love palm trees!

I was sitting all bundled up at the pool, and a lady commented that I looked cold! I said I shouldn't considering we just got here from Minnesota! It was cool and overcast though, but still around 70*!! Oh well!

dancing like goofy!

love when she wears her goggles!

for a moment, I was content to spend the whole week here and skip the parks!

we don't drink much, but I decided that adult beverages on our first night was mandatory! I don't even know what Chad ordered me, but I drank it anyway.  I told him to get me something fruity. I was thinking a daiquiri or something; he got some sort of wine drink - he thinks! It was okay!

I feel a little bit better now. Although I would rather go back to warmth and sunshine than face this silly balancing act of having less than two months of the school year left, training for a marathon, and having about a month of the semester left for my graduate classes. UGH.

Bring me back to vacation!