Malcolm family Christmas vacation

I had a wonderful Christmas with my family in Oregon. Cam and I left with the girls Friday afternoon to make the long drive to the coast. The girls were excited, can you tell????

A smile worth a thousand words

My mom was much more festive than me and decorated. The girls were very good and didn't bother the tree once.

Woke up on a Saturday to an absolutely beautiful winter morning. It felt like it was spring outside! I went for an easy 5 mile run along the beach in Manzanita and through the Nehalem Bay State Park. It was perfect and my knee felt pretty good.

Manzanita Beach, Christmas Eve morning

Nehalem Bay State Park

Nehalem Bay

We all lounged on Saturday, but Cam and I took the girls to the beach to play. They had a blast- the beach is their favorite place to go! After the beach excursion everyone was exhausted. We went back to my parent's house and ate lots of holiday treats, napped, and watched the Seahawks game. Later Saturday night we went to church and came home to eat delicious homemade cherry pie  and opened gifts with my parents. It was a fun day. I learned that it pays to be on your best behavior all year because Santa was very good to me! :-)

Yep, they are excited to go to the beach

Momma and the girls

Cam and the girls with Neah-Kah-Nie Mtn. in the background

We let Tia do her own thing :-)

I wasn't sure how many miles I was going to run on Sunday. Since I hadn't been running much, I didn't want to drastically increase my mileage so I figured I would just run as much as my body would allow. My goal was at least 6 miles, but no more than 10. I woke up to a nasty coastal storm. 40mph wind gusts with a torrential down pour. GREAT. I almost backed out, but decided not too because I knew I would be stuffing my face for the rest of the afternoon and probably wouldn't feel like running. It ended up being one of the worst runs I have ever done. The wind was so strong that I was barely moving. 1 mile felt like 5 miles. I was drenched and I was cold. It was not fun! After about 5 miles the weather got better so I kept trucking along and ended up running a full 10. I felt satisfied and felt like the wind/rain gave me an extra workout on top of the running. It was a slow 10 miles (1 hour 18 minutes), but I blame that on the wind.

Don't forget to enter my contest "The incredible shrinking Healthy Diva"....it ends soon!

--Tasha