What Went On in February 2016

February is normally the month when everyone is well and truly over winter and starting to succumb to winter depression. Not so much this year, thanks to the crazy-warm winter we’re having. I never get bummed out about February, though, because my birthday is at the end of the month! (No, not on the 29th – I just turned 38, not 9 and change.)

Let’s take a little look at my February in pictures! Some of these I shared on Instagram, so please come on over and follow me there if we aren’t already connected!

At the beginning of the month I took part in a challenge with prAna and Fit Approach for 5 days of Instagram yogi-ing. I may not be fabulous at it, but I was pretty happy with the progress here – the photo on the left was taken last summer when Brittany hosted an Instagram yoga challenge and the one on the right was early in February.

My boy Baby T loves a good workout – the baby giggles that ensue are amazing! 🙂 Here we’re about to start a Baby Strong workout. You can read my review of that workout here.

This month I also ran a huge giveaway for some of my favorite winter running gear! This was my biggest giveaway to date and I was so excited to be able to offer one of my readers some amazing products. 

Another giveaway of sorts this month was the the Momentum Jewelry campaign for its ambassadors. The ‘Share the Spark’ campaign launched on February 15 this year and we were all sent these amazing Motivate wraps with ‘You Got This!’ and ‘Never Give Up’ as the motivational sayings. The goal is to share these with people we think need to benefit from the motivational push they provide. The campaign is running until April 15 and I’ve sent off three of the four bracelet wraps to people who have inspired me. I’m hanging onto one for a little while – you never know when the right opportunity will present itself to share some motivation.

Despite the warm weather, we’ve had a few days of chilly temperatures and a little bit of snow. It occurred to me that while April is usually well and truly ‘mud season’ in Burlington, that may not be the case this spring, since there’s no snow to melt. In any event, Roman still needs to get outside and run around, so we’ve still been taking family walks when the weather is less than ideal. 

When we are stuck at home, Roman is all about his Lego. I swear, there is not a surface of my home that doesn’t have at least one piece of Lego on it at any time. The cats have adjusted and just sleep amidst the building blocks.

February was also the launch of the monthly workout round-up series I’m a part of, along with five other awesome running bloggers. Every month we will be sharing our workouts with you – February’s theme was living room workouts. Check it out here, in case you missed it! It’s basically 6 free workouts for you every month! We have some great ones coming up, so make sure you check in on the last Wednesday of every month.

My birthday was lovely this year! I went to a nearby yoga studio in the morning for a class, which was such a nice treat. It’s been a while since I practiced in a studio. The space is in an old mill right on the river, so as we were doing our standing work, we were looking out over the water. It was beautiful.

I also got out for a short run on the trails and Skyped with my parents and my brother, sister-in-law and nephews. I had birthday messages from so many friends and one of my best girlfriends back in New York sent me this gorgeous arrangement of tulips:

And of course there was cake! Vanilla cupcakes and I blew out the candle on one while I FaceTimed with a girlfriend in San Francisco (seriously, where would we be without technology when we’re far away from friends and family? It’s pretty amazing). I got to speak to her for about 5 minutes before Roman commandeered the phone and took her on a tour of our place, basically just keeping a steady monologue going the whole time. That boy can TALK.

We watched the Oscars at the end of the month and filled out Oscars pools – Fran and I both did terribly on guessing all the winners, but we ended up tied for correct picks! I thought Chris Rock did an awesome job as host. I was wondering how he was going to handle the whole Spike Lee led boycott of the Oscars due to there being no African-American nominees this year and I was happy that he didn’t tiptoe around it. I totally agree with him that it’s not so much the fact that there were no black nominees, as that there are just not as many opportunities for black actors in the industry. One thing he brought up which I had never really considered was the fact that there are separate male and female nominations for best actor and supporting actor – but should there be? It’s not like there is some gender specific reason there needs to be separation between the sexes for the awards. What do you think?

Since the groundhog predicted an early spring, hopefully my next monthly wrap up will have more outdoor adventures. This has been a surprisingly easy way to ease in to Vermont winters for our first cold season up here. Rather than cross country skiing or snowshoeing on the trails near our house, I’ve been running there all winter long pretty much snow-free.

What’s the winter been like where you are?

Have you even done an Instagram challenge?