After the last week of COLD, COLD Christmas week weather, I was longing to jump ship and head right back to Palm Springs! It was hard to believe that we were lounging in deck chairs one day and freezing our butts off the next. Christmas was sooooo COLD! This year, we opted out of our huge seafood feast and BBQ'd for Christmas Eve instead. It was nice to have a home cooked meal for a change (did I really just say that??). After eating out, three meals a day for the entire vacation, we were longing for some of our own comfort food. Everyone made it for Christmas Eve and we opened a few gifts, had a few drinks, ate a lot of food and enjoyed Mom's homemade candy and chocolates. Christmas Day, we ate more, drank more and totally over did everything! So, on Boxing Day, I headed to the gym, with Megan, for "Turkey Buster". It was three hours of sweat and pain, but boy did I ever feel good afterwords. I did Zumba, Spin Class, Ripped Core, and then Yoga. By the time that I was done, I felt great! The strain of carrying my purse around for a week on vacation had started the whole neck pain thing up again and the Yoga was just the right thing to straighten it up. I should have known that a little thing like a purse was enough set things off, even lightening the contents of my purse didn't help, so I came home with a pain in the neck that even Simone could not diminish after a two hour massage. I didn't really want to start doing inventory right after Christmas, but we had to give up a couple of days of the holidays to get it done. That didn't help my neck pain either! I have decided that 2013 is going to be the year that I tame that beast. I have been living with this inflamation for too long. If I have to go to Yoga every day of 2013, then I am going to get'r'done. For me, that means, no blood sugar spikes that fuel the inflamation. Which means no sugar or white flour in my diet. While the acupuncture treatment was very effective to stop the sugar cravings, it only worked when I was going for acupuncture, and about three weeks after my last treatment, the cravings returned. Hence, I am going to have to go every month as long as I am still feeling the pull. Because Mike has to be careful about what he eats, I am going to execute a RADICAL change in both of our diets. Most of my New Year's Resolutions this week revolve around diet and lifestyle changes for 2013. I have also decided to make my Project Life album about the proposed "health" plan, in the hopes that by keeping a weekly record of our successes and failures (I expect it will take some doing to weed out the salt, sugar and white flour from our diet) it will keep me on track and out of trouble. Time will tell! Tonight for supper, I am making Fisherman's stew, as we are supposed to be eating way more fish. Mike does not know it, but there are olives in the mix. He would not eat it if he knew, so I chopped them up really small and hid the jar in the garbage. It smells good, but looks a little funny. I'll report back!

Well, we arrived back in Alberta to the cold weather - at least 100 degrees colder than our average day while on vacation. We went from shorts and bikinis (not me!) to gloves, ear muffs and snow boots in about two and a half hours...one minute we were sitting in the "way cool" outdoor airport in Palm Springs and the next thing, we were warming up our truck and scraping ice off the windshield in Calgary. I hate winter, just hate it! If I was a "trust fund" baby, or a lottery winner, I would be living in the desert for the whole Canadian winter, with the exception of Christmas. I can't imagine spending the holidays in a warm, palm tree studded place - it just wouldn't be the same. In my opinion, the only thing that our Canadian winter has going for it IS Christmas. The highlight event of our trip was the hot air balloon ride over the city of Indio, California. We were fortunate enough to find a company that had a big enough balloon to take all six of us up in the air at the same time. It was AMAZING!!! I didn't even know that we were rising in the air until we were waaaay up - it so smooth that you have no idea that you are floating away. I was not even nervous, not even one little bit...until...we stopped floating. We lost the breeze and we came to a complete and total stop. Have you ever just STOPPED, and hung, motionless, thousands of feet in the air? It is f------ scary! I had not one slight fear, until that balloon came to a stop. Then panic started to take over! It started in my stomach and felt like it was going to come out my mouth! I was crazy scared...everyone else was looking around and exploring the landscape, listening to the balloonist explain about the Fault Line, while my mind was trying to think up a Plan B. Frick! There is no Plan B when you are that high up in the air! About the time that I thought I was going to have to scream out my concern, we started dropping down. Then I had even a little more panic! I didn't know that the balloon commander guy was just ducking down a little to catch another breeze - I just thought we were going to die in someone's back yard! As soon as a breeze grabbed the balloon, we were off again, floating merrily along and all of my concerns drained away. It was amazing to me to see that I would react that way, I learned something about myself on that trip. If I am going to die, I will die with class and not utter one single word while doing it! The second thing that I learned is that a messy yard shows up from space. Not that there are many balloons floating around Southern Alberta that might fly over our yard, but I am going to take that into consideration next year!

Just three more sleeps and I am off to the desert...heat, heat and more heat, I hope! I am going to find me a nice little spot in the sun (with a cold Corona) and cook this cold virus right out of my body. What an ordeal to organize nine people to go on vacation and I am predicting that this might just be the first and the last Trodden Christmas Family Vacation. One thing that has me a little freaked out is that my ENTIRE family is going to be in one large hot air balloon at the same time. Talk about putting all of your eggs in one basket - quite literally! My fantastic, almost daughter in law came up with the idea of going hot air ballooning and my fantastic travel agent found a company that can take us all up at one time. Coming from a family of roofers, I don't think we will have any issue with the heights! California, here we come!