So… we’re on vacation this week. It’s a thrilling experience in Fabulous Las Vegas!

But wait, we live in Las Vegas… so it’s not that thrilling. This is the culmination of my child’s school being closed this week, forcing our hand to take vacation this week and our vacation rental that we had secured getting cancelled on us. So we just stayed home.

It’s taken me about 10 minutes to type those first two paragraphs so far. It’s hard to do stuff with my kiddo around. We’ve had to type her name in TextEdit several times, we’ve had to find new video clips to watch in the YouTube Kids app and we’ve had to close videos that are stupid. There is sooooo much garbage out there. Not bad like “that’s too adult” but bad like “someone wasted their time to crappily animate this thing and put it to a song and yet they still sing robot “rubut“?! Stupid is my label for them, not hers. And it’s just my label in my head, and on this site. 

I’ve also got in about 2 hours of work so far today, just because this is kind of a crappy time for me to be off work. There’s a lot of stuff happening in the next couple of weeks at work and people are realizing “OHNOES! We need to get things ready for everything that is happening and we need you to work on it.” It’s all good, I don’t have to actually post the info myself, I can give it to my staff (I have awesome employees right now!) but I still have to direct it out. But we have spent about 2 hours in the car today anyway, so I can play email traffic director at that time.

Our excursion today was to the Lion Habitat Ranch here in Las Vegas. #AwesomeA was so excited to get going to this, and hearing her say “lion habitat” is adorable. We had about 5 minutes of our drive where she asked “Where’s the lion habitat?” before she fell asleep. She should be tired because she was up at 6am yelling “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! I’m up now Mommy!” So we watched The Little Mermaid while I ran on the Zero Runner.

I don’t always watch The Little Mermaid when I #run, but when I do my #2yo woke up too early, before I can even sneak out. #running #shoeselfie #runselfie

A photo posted by Jill (@jillwillrun) on Aug 10, 2015 at 7:01am PDT

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Okay, so back to the lions. She was excited, she dozed on the drive, we arrived. There is a little trailer/modular office building that visitors are supposed to enter at one end, shuffle through and pay admission and then step out at the other end to enter the habitat. She stepped out the door, didn’t realize it was a fairly big step and fell onto the ground. And started to cry… and well, the lion habitat pretty much wasn’t any fun anymore at that point. So we paid our admission fee to have her be sad the whole time. At least she’s free and we got in with discounted rates for World Lion Day. She didn’t want to look at the ostriches, the first animals you see upon entry. So we walked toward a staffer who had some ostrich feathers and an ostrich egg for people to look at and she started to scream/scramble out of my arms saying she was scared of them. So ostrich feathers and egg are a ‘NO WAY JOSE!’ ticket item. We walked around to look at the various lions but she really wasn’t as interested in them as I had assumed. We walked over to see the baby giraffe and she didn’t want to get anywhere near that either. She thought the lion cubs were cute for a moment, but she just really wanted to “get out of here.”

So we went to lunch at Jason’s Deli. She didn’t want any of their kids meals, even though they have a fairly large menu. She said she wanted chips and fruit. So we ordered her a fruit cup and baked chips. She devoured the fruit and ate a couple of chips and then she got to have a tiny ice cream cone for dessert. (Jason’s Deli = free ice cream for everybody!)

We eat ice cream cones with a spoon cause we’re classy like that. #AwesomeA #VegasStaycation2015

A photo posted by Jill (@jillwillrun) on Aug 10, 2015 at 12:36pm PDT

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And then we drove home and we’re having “quiet time” on the couch. Which means mommy and daddy are on their computers and she’s on the iPad. Kind of exactly what I wanted to avoid during vacation, but I give up today. We planned something, it didn’t really pan out how I hoped and it’s too hot to go outside and do anything. I tried to convince her to play with play-doh or color or something with me but she said, “No thanks, I’ll just watch my iPad. When it’s cooler we can go to the park.”

This may be a long week… But I do have something new that I hope to get in a few workouts on this week… provided I’m ever given a moment to myself.*

TRX is in the house! I can’t wait to give it a try and share what I figure out with you! Recent studies have shown that suspension training is just as effective, if not MORE effective, than traditional weight lifting.  And there are runner-specific routines for TRX that I can’t wait to try. Because when I do strength training, my goals are to be healthier all-around and to have it help my running. I don’t need to build presentational muscles to be in a sparkly-bikini-lady-competition-thingamajig. (My friend is training for one of those… she’s getting super ripped and her dedication is amazing. But man… her life/training/feeding schedule for that sounds like torture. I don’t believe some of these people I see on social media who just say “It’s a lifestyle.” No… I’m pretty sure it’s a form of sadomasochism. There doesn’t seem to be any fun in it! Plus, there’s no way that would fit into my life with a small kid and a career.)

*I love my child more than anyone/anything in the whole wide world… but she’s exhausting sometimes!