January Un-Blues

 

A lot of people get the blues in January. Not me. I love it. The craziness of the holiday season is over. I have a few gift cards to spend. The plans with friends dwindle down to once every few weeks instead of something every weekend. We get back into a healthy eating routine, and my family hibernates in sweats and hoodies, under blankets watching tv cuddled up on the couch with a very often loudly snoring bulldog.

Plus the chances of snow get higher this time of year too. I love the snow. Not so much going out and playing in it anymore, but getting the little guy dressed and all toasty, then making him hot chocolate when he comes in and his cute little face is all red. I love seeing my mom’s old wooden drying rack we always used growing up, set up in my dining room in front of the heater vent drying everything out for the next round of snow play. The lunches on these days always taste better too. Something about grilled cheese and homemade soup on snowy days makes me happy. I cook a lot on days that it snows. Thankfully for the most part if the little guy is off school my work is closed too.  But considering the temperatures here recently, we won’t be getting any of the white stuff any time soon. Everyone keeps saying it will happen, but I’m not holding my breath.

OCD- The Disney Addition

So Chris and I are taking our little guy to Disney World for the first time. We leave in a few very short weeks and I am more pumped about this trip than if we would have gone to Aruba as we originally planned.

See we are a bit spoiled. My parents own a 5 star timeshare that we can use at about a million places worldwide for a small transfer fee.  We normally go to Aruba as a huge family in April, but my parents won a cruise last year so they aren’t going, my younger brother is getting married in October, two of my siblings are not beachy people and my youngest is currently unemployed. So with my big 3-0 looming, we decided we would go anyway, just the three of us and move it to January instead of April. Hey, they were going to lose that week that was already paid for if we didn’t use it.

That’s where the trouble started. We had to trade in a week of my parent’s timeshare and hope that someone would be willing to give up their week in Aruba in January so we could slide on in there. Please, WTF were we thinking expecting someone to give up their week in paradise in January? Especially since a huge majority of Americans coming to Aruba are from the frozen Northeast. So we expanded to the entire Caribbean within flight cost reasoning. Nothing. Zero. So we moved a little further north. Southern Florida. Not quite the 85 degrees we were aiming for, but it still better than the before mentioned frozen northeast. Nothing. At this point we were willing to go anywhere that had a temperature above 60.

I casually mention Disney World. Chris who is not a fan of crowds or small children that don’t share a house or DNA with him said, sure why the hell not? Can’t be any worse than being stuck here in February. This of course was after quite the side eye and after telling him about the week we are going, historically being the lowest attendance rating of the entire year. This same Chris, who is anti-Disney to the fullest extent, whom I have been trying to convince for almost 9 years to take Chase to Disney World, is finally admitting defeat. We are now locked, stocked and loaded for a non-stop trip from DC to hopefully a sunnier, warmer climate of Orlando Florida. 

Now entering, my obsessive compulsive desire to plan this trip. I booked our plane tickets and car rental within 10 minutes of each other, about 10 minutes after we got our hotel confirmation. I ordered maps pinpointing the activities we wanted to do in each park, wrote down everything in a notebook, obsessed over the website looking at the parks, checking the weather everyday (its February so you never know what it’s going to be like one day to the next) started a packing list, adjusting and readjusting our park/day itinerary, figuring out other things in the area to do, you know in case a 5 full days in amusement parks isn’t enough. 

To add even more non-stop craziness, the Sunday after we land, we are driving an hour and 15 minutes to visit family in southeastern, FL. Then depending on the weather, another 35 minutes to the beach.  We plan to watch the Super Bowl there and stay the night then drive back to Orlando to begin our Disney extravaganza the next morning.  We are also going to Seaworld one of those days too, THANKS MIL!! Cannot wait!

Last night after cruising Pintrest while cooking dinner, I happened upon a blog where this woman successfully packs 2 weeks’ worth of clothing (very cute stylish clothing) into her carry on. Thus, avoiding the ridiculous bag checking fees.  I have always found packing things to gain more space very gratifying. After some scouring I found out that we have a washer and dryer in our hotel unit, as well as basic toiletries. So now I am on a serious mission to get all of our stuff into our three rolling carryon suitcases and our personal items. That will save us $120 round trip! $120 might not be a lot of money to some people, but it’s still a nice chunk just to put your bag on a plane. Basically you are buying a cheap, cold, abusive ride for your Samsonite friend. My baggage prefers the comfy ride in the overhead compartment. That way we won’t have to wait at baggage claim and hopefully can get to the car rental place before everyone else bombards the place. Chris is still giving me the side eye every time I mention carry-ons only and says lets take at least one checked bag. Maybe, we will see.

Weight Watchers and Wedding Plans

 

Well, my little brother is getting married in about 9 months. I am one of two girls in the wedding and I am going to try my damndest to not look like a whale in my pretty pool colored dress. You know what makes this even more difficult for me? The maid of honor looks like Tinkerbelle. She’s a teeny tiny little thing standing at about 5 foot 2 inches. Then there is me, at 5 foot 9 inches and 6 foot in heels certainly not petite in any way. On top of the fact that MOH is pregnant and will deliver her baby in June, she will still look better than me in October after my 9 months of dieting. This should be amusing. I feel very pretty in my dress and its super comfortable as long as I’m not standing next to Jess.

But 9 months is a long time. Many people I know have had great success with Weight Watchers. WW has offered my employer an amazing option of being able to offer us employees the ability to join with no joiner fee and a discount on our monthly membership. It was too easy to say yes and sign up. I used the excuse before that I didn’t want to pay for it because it was $70 to sign up and for the first month. But only paying $16 a month? There were no excuses left. So I joined and I am super excited about it.

I have a close friend that has been a member for quite some time so I can always bounce questions off her since she goes to the actual real people meetings as opposed to my online membership.

I spent 5 hours in my kitchen yesterday planning, washing, cleaning, cutting, cooking, packaging and calculating my entire weeks’ worth of food.  I’m not going to change my dinner meals too much because that would be forcing my family to also submit to meals they might not be so keen on. I also want to make sure that I am sticking to our weekly grocery budget and not only buying food for myself. So that shopping trip was a little tricky. I’m sure it will get easier the longer I am with the program.

I also joined Zumba. Two nights a week for an hour each night. My first class was last Thursday evening and I am fully willing to admit that I was terrified. I have not actively worked out at all in about 4 years. Bike rides here and there and the occasional whorl on the treadmill for a few weeks is about all I have done. Being in a class of women of all shapes and sizes, all ages and all abilities was very encouraging. It also made me keep moving even when I wanted to stop and I would have if I was at home doing a workout. So I’m hoping this mild winter will also give me the option of a few nice days to be able to take a bike ride with my little guy just to move around on my days off Zumba.

Oh, that reminds me, I need to take monthly pictures!