Merry Christmas! | Blogmas Day 25

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Today was so much fun, but I am *exhausted* and will need to tell you all about it another time.

I hope you all had a fantastic day, and enjoy our 8th annual awkward Christmas photo! 🎄

 

A Beachy Christmas Eve 🏖️ | Blogmas Day 24

 

Today was a whirlwind but it was full of making Christmas Eve memories! We started our day taking Snowy and Murphy to the dog park, and then I went for a run in the 78 degree Florida heat and humidity (fun!). Still chipping away at those miles! When my dad got off work we went to the beach, which was Snowy's very first trip to the ocean! She seemed like she was having a great time taking in the scenery, even if she wasn't the biggest fan of actually going in the ocean. 

After the beach we went to one of our favorite spots Rita's for some Christmas Eve custard. It's been a while since we've gone so we were extra excited to be there. We got there *right* as they were supposed to close, but the staff there was so kind and still allowed us to order. They even gave the pups a treat!

Snowy looking less than excited to model Brett's Santa hat on the way to Rita's 😂

Mango gelati! 🍦

After I whipped up a spread of appetizers (my mom saw the spread I made for our mini Christmas "party" a few weeks ago and asked me to make the exact same thing!), we went on our annual walk around the neighborhood to take a look at the Christmas lights. The neighborhood my parents live in has a little light display competition each year, and it's so cool to see what the neighbors come up with each year. It's been a fun little tradition ever since my parents moved to Florida and it's been warm enough to walk around on Christmas Eve!

For the rest of this evening, I'm going to wrap up my viewing of Dash & Lily on Netflix. It's actually such an adorable little series and I would 100% recommend it for some feel-good holiday cuteness. It's based on Dash and Lily's Book of Dares (a favorite YA Christmas book!) and I've been loving it. It's definitely been my favorite thing on my holiday watch list this season! Tomorrow will be a lot of fun - as Christmas tends to be - and I'll be sure to report back on what we get up to for Blogmas Day 25! Merry Christmas, y'all. I hope you have a fantastic holiday, and for those who might not celebrate, an incredible weekend!

Christmas 2019 Recap! | Blogmas Day 26

Happy day-after-Christmas, y'all! Christmas morning started out with me finally finishing up Fullmetal Alchemist. The manga had a great, explosive ending and everything wrapped up how I'd hoped. I'm excited to dive into the anime with Brett to see how it compares!

After a little while of lounging we had breakfast with my parents and sister and then opened up stockings and presents! Everyone gave such thoughtful gifts, and it seemed like everyone had a bit of a theme for the gifts they received 😂 For me I mainly asked for running gear and help toward my 50 states marathon goal and everyone definitely helped me out in that department! Here's what I received:

Stocking Gifts

-paintbrushes

-kinetic sand

-Swedish Fish

-mini travel mug

-multi tool

-owl tank top

Under-the-Tree Gifts

-dog piggy bank with a roll of quarters

-Hungry Hungry Hippos

-Harry Potter puzzle

-NoxGear LED running vest

-gift cards for travel expenses

-wooden box (art done by my sister) filled with candy and GUs

-spray water bottle

-Train Free vest

-Under Armour sweatshirts x2

-corgi & pizza socks

My parents specifically indicated what race I should use each gift card for, which I so appreciated! I feel like if someone doesn't tell me what to spend gifted money on I usually spend it on something boring like bills 😂

My sister also got me a carry-on rolling suitcase which I've been dying to have for a while! I travel so often for my races and I'm so tired of lugging my duffle bag around the airport. This baby will definitely get a lot of really great use!

After gifts were opened Brett and I tore into the puzzle I got. It took us less than an hour to get through 😂 We love a good puzzle! We did notice about halfway through the puzzle that it was misprinted. See if you can spot the difference!

Clearly upset with the misprint 😂

I've been trying to give Mikey some extra love this trip. He's an old boy - 13! - and losing Kiwi this year just makes me want to cherish every moment I have with him. He's still as cute as ever and always starved for attention, which I'm happy to shower him with (even if he's not a fan of selfies)!

We spent most of the day lounging and watching basketball, but we also decided to bust out the cornhole set that we got for my dad for Father's Day. It always gets pretty competitive but we have a great time playing and laughing!

The day ended with a fantastic dinner (which Mikey joined in with a good round of begging for scraps). We were all pretty beat by the end of the day so most of us turned in fairly early. For whatever reason, early bedtimes are easy to achieve around the holidays 😂 Another Christmas has already come and gone - so wild! I hope everyone had a fantastic day yesterday - let me know in the comments what you got up to!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! 🎅 | Blogmas Day 25

Merry Christmas, everyone! 🎁

I hope you all had a fantastic day with your loved ones like we did! See you tomorrow for Day 26 of Blogmas (we're going through to New Year's Eve, y'all!) with an fun recap of our day. Stay tuned! 💖

Christmas Light Stroll ✨ | Blogmas Day 24

It's become a bit of a Christmas Eve tradition for us to take a walk around my parents' neighborhood with drinks and silly hats to look at the lights! We love enjoying the warm weather while we can and the novelty of walking around outside in December has yet to wear off. We wanted Mikey to come along with us but in his old age he's not one for walking for long periods of time, so we popped him in a wagon and pulled him along with us. He absolutely loved it! 💗 Another successful year of this fun tradition is in the books!

This is my parents' holiday display outside of their house! Their neighborhood does a decoration contest each year and they won an honorable mention this year (though tbh they should have gotten  a much higher award!) If you can't tell from the photos, their theme is "Owl Be Home for Christmas"! 🦉🎄

December 2019 At a Glance 🦌 | Blogmas Day 1

Happy December, first day of Blogmas, and last month of the 2010's! 

It's pretty apparent that 2019 has been an extremely challenging year for me and I'm hoping to end it on a positive note and move on to the roaring 2020's 😊 I'm really looking forward to the holiday season this year and doing all of the Christmassy things. I've already decorated the apartment to the best of my ability. Unfortunately, it doesn't include a full-size tree this year but I decorated our living room and even put some lights outside on our stoop for the first time! I love coming home to see our colorful lights outside our door. Here's a snap of our mini tree and our stockings hung up (the other two are for our roommate and his girlfriend)!

I also, of course, updated my blog layout for Christmas! I've really enjoyed "decorating" for the holidays over the last couple of months and for the end of the year I wanted to go with my favorite member of the Christmas decor family - lights! I'm thinking in the new year I'll be going back to a more neutral layout and maybe even changing things up a bit. We'll see! 😊

I know I haven't shared my bullet journal online in a LONG while, but I'm actually really excited with how my monthly spread came out for December and I wanted to show it off! Christmas time always makes me think of Harry Potter (let's be real, most things make me think of Harry Potter 😂) so I really wanted to do a ~Christmas at Hogwarts~ theme. However, I wasn't totally confident in making it work with a calendar spread and the amount of time I was willing to put into drawing a Hogwarts scene didn't bode well for what the end result would be, haha. So I used this illustration of Hedwig as inspiration, and this is what I came up with:

What do you think? 😊

December Plans

-Happy Holidays Half Merrython on the 1st (today! Hopefully I'm done running by the time you're reading this 😂)
-Chicago Marathon 2020 lottery results are announced on the 12th - cross your fingers for me! 🤞
-7 year anniversary with Brett on the 14th
-Traveling to Florida on the 21st to spend Christmas week with my family

December Goals

-Again, continue to hit all of my workouts for NOLA! I'm really happy with how November went so I'm hoping to continue to ride the wave of motivation.
-I want to do well with Blogmas without burning myself out like I did with BEDA. I'd love to have at least something to share with you every day, even if it's a couple of snapshots off my phone!

...aaaand that's all the pressure I'm willing to put on myself this mornth and I think that's perfectly fair 😂

December TBR

My TBR is a little eclectic this month. I'll be participating in the 'Tis the Season-a-thon which starts tomorrow (see my TBR blog post for the readathon here), and for the rest of the month I took to Twitter to help me decide what to read! I had folks give me some random numbers that correlated with my TBR shelf on GoodReads. I wound up getting 21 different books to read (which of course would be impossible to accomplish 😂), so I divided up the books into 3 ~mystery piles~ of 7 and had everyone vote!

Turns out everyone voted for the most unique pile of the bunch with a mixture of historical fiction, sci fi, horror, and a YA contemporary set during the summer (which will be really interesting to read in the middle of December 😂). I really enjoyed doing this to pick my TBR for the month, though! I have books in this stack that I don't think I would have reached for if it hadn't been for you all, so I definitely want to do this again for future TBRs.

These are the books that you all picked!

The Hamilton Affair by Elizabeth Cobb

The Walled City by Ryan Graudin

Second Chance Summer by Morgan Matson

The Impossible Fortress by Jason Rekulak

The Power by Naomi Alderman

Perfect Little World by Kevin Wilson

Insomnia by Stephen King

 (and my 'Tis the Season-a-Thon  TBR if you were curious!)

Us Against Them by Fredrik Backman

North by Scott Jurek

What If It's Us by Becky Albertalli & Adam Silvera

Royal Holiday by Jasmine Guillory

Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak

10 Blind Dates by Ashley Elston

Grandpa Joe Life

Hello friends and Happy 2019! I totally intended to keep up with life updates while I was traveling but that was a huge fail. ‾\_(ツ)_/‾ Regular social media updates and vlogging were enough internet responsibility while I was away. I wanted to enjoy spending time with my people instead of spending time in front of the computer. #sorrynotsorry But don't worry - I took plenty of photos so I could to a big life update for you when I returned home! 😁 Let's take it waaaaay back to before Christmas, shall we?

Brett and I flew out of Boston on the Friday before Christmas. It was a pretty standard travel day, aside from the insane landing our pilot tried to pull off when we arrived in Orlando. 😱 It was extremely windy in Florida that day and our plane was swaying and bumping every which way throughout the landing. Definitely had my stomach tied up in knots with nerves through that landing. #yikes BUT we made it safely on the ground, grabbed our bags, and hopped in my mom's car to head home. We were greeted by Kiwi and Mikey as well as this adorable little snowman sign!

On Saturday my parents, Brett, and I all participated in the Run Run Santa 1-Miler, a 1 mile race where everyone is dressed up as Santa Claus! It was really cool and really funny being surrounded by so many Santas. It was basically the most epic game of Where's Waldo and so tough not to lose each other! 😂 I loved being able to run with my parents and especially Brett who ran his first race and earned his first medal! So proud. :')

After the race we headed over to the beach because SpaceX had scheduled a launch that day! My parents live on the "Space Coast" of Florida, near where a ton of NASA and other space exploration missions launch from and it seems like they get to see a launch about every other week. I was excited that this mission (the Falcon 9) lined up with our visit and I had hoped to see it take off! That day at the beach wasn't our day, and they scrubbed it ("scrubbed" = fancy space term for "cancelled") 4 minutes before launch time, due to wind. Stupid wind!

Luckily they rescheduled it for the next morning so we *still* had a chance to witness it, and good news - we did! We watched the launch from the driveway which was so cool. I caught a bit of it on my Happy Vlogidays video, but if you'd like to see the recorded live stream of the launch, you can find that here.

Kiwi & Mikey were happy to have us around - look at those smiles! 💖

After a bit of Christmas shopping with Brett and my dad, all of us went to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch the Patriots game, have a few beers, and eat wings! We were getting heckled left and right for our gear, but I guess that's the price you pay for supporting winners. 😉 We know it's all in good fun, though, and it was a blast cheering on our team all the way in Florida. There were even a few people there who were also rooting for the Pats!

It was fairly chilly during the first part of our visit (high forties to high fifties), and we had been trying (and struggling) to get the hot tub to a high enough temperature to enjoy. The hot tub at my parent's house has a dip in the wall that connects to the pool which makes it hard to heat when it's colder out, but we managed to get it warm enough to lounge a bit in the tub when we returned from lunch!

Monday was Christmas Eve and we all woke up early to go to our new favorite festive event, Surfing Santas in Cocoa Beach! It's essentially what it sounds like - a beach party where everyone dresses up, drinks at sunrise, and watches people surf in Santa suits. It's always a blast! My mom made this amazing Christmas Punch (cranberry juice/pineapple juice/orange juice/vodka/ginger ale/grenadine) which we devoured and we enjoyed the people watching for a majority of the morning. We made a Rita's stop on the way home, and spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing.

Total side note, but earlier that weekend we picked up this awesome IPA called Bear Lasers and the packaging/name/beer was all amazing. Brett pointed out that this IPA may have called to me because 1. it was called Bear Lasers - both of those things being the mascots of my undergraduate and graduate alma maters, and 2. the can was Lasell Laser blue. It was just meant to be I guess! 😂 I cracked into a couple cans that afternoon and was a big fan of the taste, which of course is the most important part. Seriously, though, I could not get enough the packaging! I had to snap some photos. 😂

After dark my parents and I took Kiwi and Mikey on a little Christmas Eve walk to look at the lights in the neighborhood, then went to a nearby park which was all lit up for Christmas. We drove through the light show while listening to Christmas tunes and it put us all in a festive spirit heading into the big day! I don't have any photos from the light show, but I took a ton of video which you can find in my Happy Vlogidays video!

Then it was Christmas Day! We spent the morning Skyping with my sister, who unfortunately couldn't be there with us as she had to work, and cooking and eating breakfast. Eventually we got around to opening stockings and gifts which is always so much fun. I got some amazing gifts which I'm so grateful for, and everyone seemed to enjoy the gifts I gave as well!

-Under Armour jacket

-Christmas leggings

-Socks on socks on socks

-Patriots bag

-Pokemon cards!

-Harry Potter mug

-Candy!

-Gryffindor blanket

-Elephant string craft, made by my mom!

-Decorative plate

-Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban necklace

-Harry Potter Funko Pop

-Dog sneakers from Bobs

-Headphone beanie

-Born to Run by Christopher McDougall

-An ornament from my great aunt

-Headlamp

-Hat and gloves

-And this ornament that my mom made!

I think my two favorite gifts that I was giver were the dog sneakers and the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban necklace! I'm seriously so obsessed with the sneakers. I've been wearing them a ton over the last few days and being ultra precious with them. They're already a bit scuffed on the toes and I want to clean them!! I've never felt this way about shoes before 😂 And the necklace is just so beautiful and intricate! If you open it up there are actual excerpts from the story. Love it! I took some close ups of each of these gifts - click to get a better look!

We did our Christmas meal in the afternoon, full of all of my favorite holiday fixin's - turkey, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce! I don't think you can ever go wrong with that combo during the holidays. Shout out to my dad for doing most of the heavy lifting on this meal! We ate and chatted outside because that's the only way to do Christmas in Florida if we're really being honest. 😉

The rest of our time in Florida included a lot of lounging, a 5-6 mile bike ride with Brett and my mom, and a run across the Melbourne Causeways - the same route I will be running during the Florida Marathon next month(!!!). It was so cool to be able to run a section of the course *before* race day, which I've never had the opportunity to do, so I'm happy to have some knowledge of what to expect on race day!

Pre-run selfie with the FL Marathon sign! See you soon!

Post-5K victory selfie with my mom. We crushed it!

Pssst... I also helped my mom set up her very own blog, so go and check it out!!!

Then it was time to head up to Pittsburgh to spend the last few days of 2018 with our good friends Erin & Cullen! We got into PGH around midnight on Thursday so we came back to their apartment and quickly jumped into pajamas, but couldn't go to bed before showing them the latest episode of SMACKDOWN! We were going to see Smackdown Live that Saturday so Brett and I were doing some educating on what to expect from the WWE. Basically, just a lot of ridiculousness.

We spent most of the day Friday lounging, catching up, and hitting up our favorite Pittsburgh eateries, including Baby Love Tacos and Industry (which has an amazing giant pretzel that is basically the pretzel of my dreams). We also stopped by GameStop to pick up Mario Party for the Switch because we knew it would be an amazing party game for the four of us to play. I also found a Baby Funko Pop, so Erin suggested I put her in a corner.

I don't think anyone got this joke on my InstaStory haha

Saturday was SMACKDOWN DAY and omg... it was amazing. Unfortunately I was feeling quite sick before we left for the event, but I managed to power through and ended up having an amazing time. We got to see so many of our faves - The New Day, Jeff Hardy, Naomi, and my ultimate fave, Becky Lynch, tagging with FREAKING JOHN CENA!!! I can't believe we were able to be there for that match. It was awesome. We were a little bummed that we only got to see a backstage clip of The Miz, but that just means we gotta go back to Smackdown again in the future. If you want to see the whole show we were there for, you can watch the episode on Hulu. 😉

Sunday was another lazy day that was complete with what we starting to call "Grandpa Joe"-ing. Essentially, Erin & Cullen's couch was pulled into a bed the entire time we were there and the four of us would watch TV under one giant blanket together and we felt like the grandparents from Charlie & the Choloate factory. It became sort of a lifestyle for us during the trip. 😂 We spent the whole day watching football and playing Mario Party, which was the perfect lazy Sunday after a crazy night at Smackdown. 😂

Grandpa Joe Life

OBSESSED with my dog shoes

Then it was New Year's Eve! I spent most of the morning scrambling to get book #150 of 2018 read (which I successfully did!) but in the evening it was party time! We had originally planned to go to a particular bar, but when we arrived there was no space, so we instead headed to a local dive and wound up having SO MUCH FUN playing pool! We even came up with lightening round pool where each player gets 10 seconds to take their shot which was amazing and had me dying laughing. 😂

After a few hours we picked up a whole boatload of Chinese food and headed home to (you guessed it) play more MARIO PARTY! Seriously, it is such a fun game and we spent a majority of the night playing it. We rang in the New Year with drinks and laughter and it was the perfect way to say goodbye to 2018 and hello to 2019! I think it needs to be an annual tradition.

New Year's Day was SUPER lazy, as it was designed to be. We were headed home to Boston that day, so we just hung out and Grandpa Joe-d it up. Erin and Cullen showed us Overcooked on the Switch which was surprisingly fun and a game that I would love to get and play more for myself! Our flight home got delayed until 11:15 (x_x) but it was good to have some extra time to chill with our friends before heading home.

Aaaaand now we're back to reality, but not for long for me because tomorrow morning I'm back on a plane. This time I'm flying across the country to a conference in southern California. It should be really great and educational, but I'm not gonna lie, I just got a taste of my own bed last night and I'm not super pumped to be leaving it again tomorrow. 😂 I will be vlogging my trip to California and of course taking photos for the blog, so stay tuned for updates on my trip! Also make sure you're following me on Twitter and Instagram for real-time updates as well!

I hope everyone had a fantastic ending to their 2018. 

Let me know how you rang in the new year in the comments!

LINKS I LOVED THIS WEEK

"Did You Just Call Me a Mudblood?" Um, Actually S2, E13 from College Humor

Guinea Pig Olympics from Parry Gripp

Baby attempts to eat banana while wearing floaties from Rumble Virals

100 Babies Challenge from Buzzfeed Multiplayer

23 Hilarious Tumblr Posts for Anyone Who Wears Glasses from Buzzfeed

Meet the Dog Who Rides the Bus to the Dog Park from 3MillionDogs

How to Scottish Terriers Become Agility Champions? from Animal Planet

Triangle Solo from The Florida Orchestra

18 Illustrations Every Person with Anxiety Should See Immediately from Huffington Post

Have one on us this holiday season from Humans of Higher Ed

19 Tumblr Posts That Prove the "Harry Potter" Books Are Way Better Than the Movies from Buzzfeed

Playful dog discovers Sea Otters at the Beach from 3MillionDogs