I hope you had a great Thanksgiving!  Guess what it was finally time for?

Eggnog latte! My goal was no nog before Thanksgiving.  I don’t do shopping on Thanksgiving or Black Friday, but I do partake in the latte.  It’s surprising to me how many coffee shops are open on Thanksgiving. However, our other local one was closed, so it was Starbucks.  I love the nog latte. Worth the wait.

As per tradition, dinner was at my sister’s house. They have a nice big table.

John and I brought a corn pudding, some sparkling cider and John made his crack nuts. 

We also had the roast turkey, mashed potatoes, roasted veggies, sweet potatoes, venison meatballs, cranberry bread and sauce. 

There was also stuffing and rolls, but I ended up not having any of that. Like I have said before, you will never starve when my family gets together 😀

I got to play with Pheonix – or Fifi, as he gets called.  He loves to be held like a baby.

I was trying to hold him in one arm and take a picture with the other.  His face says, “Please don’t drop me!!”

Phoenix also loves the fishies.  He is behind the fish tank chasing the fish.

Then we had the usual game time.  Several to choose from here.

Of course, I had to snack on the crack nuts since they were on the table. I didn’t overeat anything but the nuts on Thanksgiving.

I call them crack nuts. John wants to call them ‘John’s Magic Nuts’, but we are so not going there. At all.

After games it was time for dessert:

Fruit in whipped cream and my dad’s pumpkin pie! (and a piece of chocolate)

All in all, I ate pretty well on the holiday. I didn’t get stuffed and I got in exercise.  Plus had fun with the family.  Very good day indeed.  Other than losing 2 of the 3 football picks on the day – now I am behind for this week already LOL!

What a great Thanksgiving!  The weather was beautiful, food plentiful and lots of fun was had.

John and I did a 2 mile power walk in the morning.  This was to participate in Alissa’s 5K.  I actually did not run this (for many reasons I won’t get into now).  So, the plan was to power walk 2 miles, and then drag any family members out later after dinner for the last mile. 

John made Alton Brown’s cornbread pudding:

We went on the power walk while that was baking (do not be like us and do this). Good incentive to keep the pace up.  Glad the house was not on fire when we got back .

I made sure Pixie and Billy had their Thanksgiving meal.

(barf).

Then it was off to our Thanksgiving tradition of eggnog lattes!  We stopped at Saratoga Coffee Traders to get ours.

It was very, very busy there, too.  Guess everyone wants a latte before eating turkey!

Arrival at my sister’s house and we helped finish out cooking.  My sister and her youngest.

Me and the youngest niece.

Our turkey was smaller this year at only 23 pounds   It actually fit in the roasting pan.

John’s duty for any dinner with a bird is to carve the meat.  Only we forgot the electric carving knife set, so he had to do it by hand.  Ooops!

My sister’s lovely dishware.  This is from the wedding 20 years ago.

I couldn’t quite get everyone in the shot here.  We had 9 for dinner.

My parents are ghosts!

My plate:

I like the little asparagus like this – more tender than the big stalks. We had roasted sweet potatoes this year instead of sweet, which is how I like them best!

My side plate with my mom’s cranberry bread and my cranberry sauce:

I had 2 of these plates.

After dinner, we recruited walkers to get out and enjoy the nice weather! Saw lots of deer tracks.

We went by the pond and spent time throwing sticks on the thin ice.  Yep, doesn’t take much to entertain us.

The sun was starting to set over the water.

A nice half hour walk/hike.  Not quite sure how far we went, probably a mile and a half?

Then it was time for dessert and games!  My trifle:

This was actually really good, but I think the recipe can easily be cut in half. It made so much!  We also had several pies – pumpkin, apple and coconut.  Dave’s (my BIL) brother works at Entemann’s and he brought apple and coconut pies to dinner.  I actually didn’t have any pie, but had 2 servings of trifle. Yum!

We broke out Telestrations.  What a fun game!  You start with a secret word, which you draw. Then you pass your drawing on to the next person who had to guess what your drawing is (without knowing the secret word). Everyone has a booklet and they travel around the circle with drawing and guessing until you get your book back.  Then laugh at how far off the guesses are!  For example – my secret word was:

And drawing of said nachos by John:

He said he was trying to draw a picture of Mexico surrounding the nachos.  Not sure I believe that.  I think my booklet came back with the final guess of pie or something like that. Anyway, it was a lot of fun.  Good call on getting that game.

I do love the football on Turkey day, but I just kept an ear on the games in the other room because I love board games on holidays!

Very thankful for all that I have.

I did not totally stuff my face.  I ate a few too many cashews (okay, a lot of cashews),  but there was no point where I felt to full. Good day.

Happy Turkey Eve!  It was cold and windy this morning.  Brrr….  The gym was surprisingly busy today.  Think people are getting in that last workout. Here was mine.

I got on the treadmill afterward and started yakking with the woman next to me.  We talked for 30 minutes before I knew it!  Then it was time for the Wednesday edition of Bagel Day! Back to the Adirondack Coffee Cafe:

They were out of wheat bagels, so I had a sesame with some snickerdoodle coffee.  Yay!

Since it is holiday eve, I won’t do a lifting move of the week, but will answer a couple questions:

Shelley asked

Just curious, do you write down your workout routine and bring it with you to the gym?

and Jan asked:

How do you decide what your workout will consist of?

After I finished New Rules last year, I spent some time thinking about what kind of strength workouts I wanted to do and settled on full body 3 days a week. When I first did this, I wrote out my workout the night before. Then I just got lazy and stopped doing that as it became routine. I now write it down as I go so I remember what I did.  I try to hit each muscle group at least  once (no biceps, though), which equates to 8 to 10 moves per workout.   I have a staple of exercises I like to do for each muscle group. What I do is go in with my sheet of paper to see what I did before and do something different.

Pretty official, eh?  There are some days where I am fuzzy and just kind of stand there trying to think of what move to do next and wished I had written it out ahead of time LOL!  That is just the routine I kind of fell in and I am not really trying to develop any specific part of my body, so I work the whole thing.

So why do I not work my biceps?  Well – everybody has a body part that responds better than others to training.  Mine happen to be my biceps.  When you do good lifting and do multiple muscle exercises, you may not need to isolate certain areas.  I think this picture I took the other day shows why I don’t work my biceps:

They are pumped a little bit because I am pressing down on the handlebars, but I don’t want to build them up any more.  I could also be leaner  😳

Anyhoo, that’s just a little more on the lifting!

Now on for the news you all want to hear – the winners of the Febreeze Laundry Odor Eliminator Coupons! Chosen by random.org

Jan:

“I am not a big sweater but right now I am having problems getting the smell of baby puke out of my clothes. I babysit my granddaughter once a week and she nails me every time. LOL”

and

Kim!

My stinky clothes could REALLY use some help! It’s my shorts or pants that are the worst after running! (I know – yuck!)

Congrats and please send me an email at javaqueen(at)yahoo.com with your snail mail address so Febreeze can send your coupons!

Look at what I got into today:

Mint and dark chips! Eeeek!  They are quite good, but I do much better with the cups than the chips.  For whatever reason, my mind just works that way.  These are kept up high.

Now in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I wanted to share some of the things I am thankful for!

My family.  I love that we all live near each other now after years of living in different states.  It’s so nice to be able to spend holidays together or just get together for a cup of coffee without a big rigamarole.

Blog Land. I am so thankful to all of my readers.  I cherish all the comments with advice, and cheers, and some tough love talk.  It’s all good, and I have been able to “meet” people that I never would have without the internet.  I hope to match blogs to real people as well (Fitbloggin??).  And reading all of your blogs as well has given me much food for thought (harhar) over the past year.

Selling my rental house.  I am so thankful I do not have this property anymore!  It really has brought a noticeable relief to me and my bank account.

John.  Yeah, he’s family, but every day I think about how lucky I am to have John around.  Even after 14 years of marriage, he is the person I want to talk to first thing in the morning and the last one to talk to at night. 😀

I have some baking and cooking to do for tomorrow.  We are heading down to my sister’s house.  John and I are bringing cornbread stuffing, my famous cranberry sauce, and gingerbread cupcakes.  Gotta do it tonight because I have to work tomorrow and run the virtual run! Even though I have to work some tomorrow, it is only half a day, and only if there is work.

Don’t worry, Pixie is getting her Thanksgiving meal tomorrow – with giblets!

She can’t wait for this.  Barf…

Now I need to go charge the camera battery and start cooking! Have a safe and wonderful  Thanksgiving!

What a wonderful day!

I want to thank all of you readers who have read this blog and supported me, or pepped me up when I needed it. Blogs are very personal, and sharing this journey has been fun and interesting to do on the ‘net.
I also want you to know that reading all your blogs also helps keep me motivated!

Today’s race was the biggest one I have attended yet. I was think a few hundred people at 8:30 am on Thanksgiving, but no – it was 2000, yes, two thousand people! And it also was a casual race, so no time starts – we all just went as one clog, not to mention the walkers that started at the head of the pack slowing us down, so I threw timing out the window right away. It was around 30 minutes or thereabouts.
Anyway, it turned out to be pretty awesome weather, even though it was a bit cold. It was sunny and gorgeous, and above freezing (but not by much LOL!).
Here is me ducking into a building just prior to the race.

I finished the race and just felt so good, and so thankful that I can be fit and able to take part in activities like this. John said something to me after the race that he had been looking at some pictures of me from a few years ago 100 pounds heavier, and how back then a day like today wouldn’t even have been possible (let alone even crossed my mind). And how fit I have become since then. Heck, even a year ago I wasn’t thinking about running.

So, I was able to pass off some food today with the phrase “Well, I ran 3 miles today”, however, that probably lasted as long as the cheese and crackers 😀
I’m all right with that. These days are few and far between for me. I didn’t really have any second helping of things, but a bit too much grazing. One thing I am thankful about now is not having guilt when I eat.