I hope everyone had a great weekend and a Merry Christmas! Shaboo observed the present opening closely after the first two opened were toys for her.
Seth had both Saturday and Sunday off so we spent a relaxing day at home and only left for a tiny bit to hit up the Culver’s drive thru. 
Then we headed back home and let the boys open a present that ended up being an Xbox game so my three boys played while I read a book.
Video games and me don’t work well together. The controllers make no sense!
Seth and I stayed up until nearly midnight watching movies and waiting for the boys to fall asleep. They let us have a few hours of sleep until Tucker woke us up at 4:10am. He couldn’t get Jackson to wake up so he played video games for two hours while we went back to sleep. Shhhh, don’t tell anyone that I let my kids spend so much time on mind sucking games.
After we all got up and opened presents, Seth’s parents came over for breakfast and more presents. (the blue stuff in the bowl are beads soaking in water for toy guns the boys got.)
Sethy and his mama.
This mostly dairy and meat free girl (who am I?? 2009 Anna wouldn’t even recognize herself) was in charge of bringing the Christmas potatoes to Erin’s so I whipped up a big batch full of butter, milk, sour cream, cream cheese and a little garlic salt.
Jackson hoovered a big bowl before I could finish filling the crockpot.
We spent the rest of the day at Erin and Jason’s house opening more presents, eating more food, and laughing until we (at least I) cried.
And, because I was super busy this year (read: extra lazy), no cards were sent out so here’s the family picture that I was planning to use. I’m pretty sure that our Christmas 2009 picture was also only on the blog and taken at the same lake…….
Now, let’s talk about storing all of the running gear that we runners like to accumulate. Isn’t it funny that running is such a simplistic sport and we still end up with so much stuff that we just HAVE to have?
I used to keep everything folded in piles on a shelf that was covered by all of my clothes on hangers but it was hard to keep organized and piles of short sleeve shirts would spill into piles of long sleeves or a favorite pair of shorts would be lost forever behind a pile of tights. One weekend, I was so fed up with the situation, that I packed the kids up, drove to Bed Bath & Beyond and bought some fabric containers and a tank hanger.
They basically rocked my world, changed my life for the better, and I have to share this with you because it’s so simple yet made a world of difference. Everything except tanks are now stored in four fabric bins on the top shelf of my closet and they even coordinate with the two bins that I was already using for out of season clothing!
My running gear was already sorted into piles so I stuck with the same order but combined a few piles. The first bin on the left is yoga pants, capris, running tights, and a pair of bike tights. The second bin holds sports bras at the back and running shorts, bike shorts, and two hats at the front. It’s hard to tell from the picture but the shorts are facing a different direction than the bras so that they don’t get mixed together. I haven’t had any trouble with this combination so far. 
These two bins are full of tops with pull overs, light jackets and vests on the left and the other bin holds short sleeves in the front and long in the back. I used to lay out my running clothes the night before and I haven’t had to since these bins came into my life. When I’m folding clean laundry, I make separate stacks by type of clothing and then just drop them in their bin as I put everything away. 
Last, but not least, is this awesome wire tank top hanger that was less than $6. I bought another one for my “real clothes” tanks because I love this so much.
So there you have it! My inner neat freak loves this system and I can’t tell you enough how much of a life changer it was. I feel the need to re-organize my entire house now!
How do you store your running clothes?
What about running shoes?
Mine are randomly mixed in with the rest of my casual shoes and one pair that I keep my yaktraks on are buried in the coat closet in the front entry. There has to be a better way!