Happy Holidays!

We hope you’ve gotten everything your heart desires. If you were not able to afford to get your loved ones the gifts you wanted to get for them, remember that there is no better gift that you can give than your time, attention, support and unconditional love, not just on special holiday days, but 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days of the year. Just be there for your loved ones because people matter more than things. And if you didn’t get the things your heart desires, keep that in mind as well. Things are nice; but the best part of the holidays isn’t what you get in the boxes under the tree. It’s the time you spend with the people you love.

How did you start your day?

We are starting our morning with a little exercise to help us get off to a more awake start.

It’s a bit early still so we won’t start the day officially for another hour or two (closer to 2). Once we do get started for the day we’ll mostly be in the kitchen baking. This year we’re going to try baking some Christmas cookies. Hopefully we’ll be able to resist any temptation to eat them all.

How to enjoy your holiday meals without guilt…

We’re not going to be worrying too much about what we eat today. We have 300+ other days on which to do that.  1 day of indulgence can’t do irrecoverable damage.

But, while we won’t be worrying too much about what we eat , we’ll try not to go overboard, and we’ll try to do short workout sessions throughout the day, like squats and burpees and push-ups here, sets of jumping jacks there, weighted lunges with 15 pound dumbbells, lunging walk with 15 pound dumbbells. Doing enough of these throughout the day should ensure that we don’t wake up tomorrow needing to go up a size in our clothing.

The food is best part of the holidays…

We were discussing the holidays a couple of days ago and we agreed that today specifically, the actual day of celebration (December 25th), is more about having something good to eat for breakfast and dinner, and maybe lunch as well. In some places where people are too poor to exchange gifts, even to give gifts to their children, the holidays are still magical and wonderful, and it’s in large part because you get so many delicious things to eat. Of course there are people who don’t even get the nice things to eat. So we should all try to be grateful even if what we have amounts to very little because there are people who have nothing at all.

Dear friends and family, we would have liked to buy you the world, but as you know, we did not fulfill our dreams in 2015. We’re hopeful that in 2016 our hard work over the last several years will result in the achievement of the goals that we have set for ourselves. And maybe next year we will be able to make up for not giving any gifts this year.

In the meantime, we offer our pledge of love and support in the form of a song written and composed by our editor-in-chief and performed by husband and wife team Anna and Jared Cattoor. It doesn’t have an energetic holiday beat so if you’re only in the mood upbeat holiday songs you might want to postpone giving it a listen until after the holidays.

We hope your day is wonderful and we wish you a happy and properous New Year.

I’ll Hold You Through – Lyrics and music by Adela Lewis

Lead and Background Vocals Anna Yanova-Cattoor Guitars, Bass, Drums Jared Cattoor Musical Arrangement, Recording and Production Anna Yanova-Cattoor & Jared Cattoor

Tip for after dinner clean-up: Do the dishes as you go along so that you’ll have fewer dishes to clean after dinner. And if you have a willing family have everyone wash what they use throughout the day and wash what they used for dinner.