Snow Days and Freakishly Hot Yoga

I'll admit, I was skeptical about the threat of "White Death 2011." Let's face it- our weather folks aren't always known for their reliability in predicting winter weather and after the millions of news stories, runs to the grocery store, "Breaking News" reports about schools and businesses closing, by the time the weather does or does not make it here, I'm over it. This time though, they got it right. I think the last report I heard was that we got 4 inches of snow and some ice. More about that in a second...

This weekend, Jeff and I got in cleaning mode. I am one of those people that keeps Christmas decorations up through the new year, so it was time to take everything down. Along with that, comes cleaning up the floor where the tree has been and if you're doing that, why not just clean all the floors in the house? And, if you're organizing stuff that will be in storage until next November, but know you want to get rid of some items, why not start that garage sale pile now? I'm also participating in a consignment sale of kids' clothes, so since we're organizing everything else in the house, why not get going on that, too?

In between all this cleaning and organizing, Jeff and I put together chicken taco soup and I can safely say we've added a new recipe to the rotation, thanks to Caroline over on the Simply Smithwick blog. Once we got Cooper down for the night, Jeff and I enjoyed dinner, then I made Heath Bar Cake to take to my parents' house Sunday night.

Cooper and Jeff stayed home Sunday morning while I went to church, then met my friend Leigh for Bikram Yoga. As mentioned before, I've been wanting to try yoga, but didn't really want to go by myself. Leigh found a deal for Bikram (hot) Yoga, so we decided to give it a try. The room starts out at maybe 90 degrees, then as the class goes on, the instructor bumps the temperature up past 100 degrees. Leigh and I kept looking at each other like, "What have we gotten ourselves into?" It seemed like a good idea at the time, but before we were finished with the first 3 positions, I was sweating like crazy. The guy next to me was turning red, the guy next to Leigh is sitting back against that wall, and the instructor is calling us out: "Leigh, relax your hand just a little." "Jana, move your leg just a little to the left." What? Remember, we're first-timers! Shouldn't we get a gold star for even staying in the room and ATTEMPTING this stuff? It wasn't the relaxing yoga experience I was thinking I'd have, but it was interesting. Now, I work-out everyday and Leigh ran a half-marathon in December. We're not couch potatoes, so when I woke up this morning and was really sore, I thought I was just being a wuss. Nope, my first text this morning was from Leigh, saying she could barely move. "No pain, no gain" certainly applies for this!

Cooper and I had a snow day today! Thankfully, school was cancelled last night, so we slept in a little this morning. It snowed quite a bit last winter, but because Cooper was so young, we didn't take him out in it. Jeff did have to work today, but before he left, we took Cooper out for his first snow experience. Because of his refusal to wear mittens, we had to fold over the sleeves of his snowsuit. After the first few steps, he faceplanted, then had trouble getting up, so he didn't last that long outside (and I can't blame him). When we took him inside, he wanted to go back out! We've stayed inside the rest of the day, playing, taking a long nap, and chasing Avery around. Here are a few pictures from this morning:





Stay warm!