Hello my long lost friends. The beginning of 2025 has been such a whirlwind (in mostly great ways!) that I have been absent from this space. As you can imagine, January is a busy month in my line of work and I’ve been logging lots of hours in the gym and yoga studio training clients, teaching classes and leading trainings.
I have transitioned more of my work to in-person over the last couple of years, especially in regards to personal training. When I decided to start personal training again it was mostly to get out of my house and plugged back into the fitness/gym world. My vision was to train 4-5 clients a week similar to how I teach about 4-5 yoga classes a week. Well, that has slowly grown to upwards of 15-20 sessions per week and a roster of 16 clients. I feel insanely fortunate to train such incredible women (seriously, my clients are the best!) but it’s turned into quite the part-time job when you also factor in yoga!
Overall, it’s been a really positive shift for me but I do miss spending time writing and creating. Hopefully that is something that I can achieve a better balance with in 2025! I’d be happy if I could find of flow of sharing 2-3 posts per week here on my blog. Ideally that would look like one food-focused post (recipe, recent eats, nutrition topics, etc), one fitness focused post (running, strength training, yoga, workouts, etc) and one general life post (day in the life, travel, momming, reading, etc). To be honest, I would like to spend less time on Instagram and social media and take the energy I put there and focus it on my website. We shall see and I’m open to any and all suggestions, feedback and requests from you guys!
Alrighty, this post is going to be a big catch up of what life has looked like over the last two weeks!
MOM/FAMILY LIFE
We were scheduled to leave Florida on December 29 but ended up embarking on a 24 hour journey home that included a delayed flight due to weather, a flight attendant who went to the hospital for an injured ankle she sustained in-flight, waiting on another flight attendant to fly in from Charlotte to take her place and finally boarding after a seven hour delay only to have to deplane because they couldn’t get our luggage loaded in time and the pilots timed out. FUN TIMES!
We said goodbye to Mema not knowing we’d be back again shortly after midnight haha.
Finn in the cockpit at 11:30p after they finally cancelled our flight. My poor, sweet and selfless dad got out of bed at midnight to come pick us up. The good news is that we were all rescheduled to fly out at noon the next day after the crew had their required rest break. We got to have one last breakfast and coffee with Mema before heading back to the airport.
My child wins the gold star traveler award. He was so chill throughout the whole 24 hour debacle. I honestly couldn’t believe it. I will say we both lost our marbles a bit when we arrived back in CLT and they couldn’t find the bag that had Finn’s Christmas presents in it despite the bag status being “arrived in CLT” but after an hour of searching, it was located and all was well.
These types of travel days are few and far between. I was so grateful to have the extended time with my family over the holidays so a little trouble getting home was well worth it. I can’t imagine the logistical nightmare managing holiday travel is for the airlines – especially when you throw a severe weather system in there!
I am making walking a priority again. I always love to walk but let busy schedules put it on the back burner. I find that an afternoon walk during these cold months with short days really does wonders for all of us so we’ve been bundling and making it happen!
The love that these two have for each other.
My grandmother ordered Finn a breakfast tray and it’s made all of his morning relaxation dreams come true. This kid loves a slow and gentle wake up and to lounge in bed with a show before staring the day.
This was our first week back at school in three weeks. Finn missed the week before Christmas due to illness and then had two weeks off for winter break. I swear he grew over break. All the sudden he’s looking so mature and his pants are getting too short! P.S. – we love being at a uniform school!
RINGING IN THE NEW YEAR WITH THE AVETT BROTHERS
I went to see The Avett Brothers on New Year’s Eve and it was THE BEST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What a way to ring in 2025!
I was a huge Avett Brothers fan in my 20s and saw them live probably upwards of 20 times. I never stopped liking the Avetts but I haven’t been to a show in over 10 years. It was everything to see them again – and they do the best new year’s show!
They came on around 10p and played until about 12:30a. There was a break for the countdown with lots of confetti and balloons. They finished with an encore.
They sound just as amazing as ever but I did note that we are all getting older – the Avetts and the fans. A very 40+ crowd and lots of sitting down that never used to happen. Haha. It absolutely will not be 10 years until I see them again. My love for them has been reignited.
WORKOUTS
My big focus right now is on strength training. I am lifting 3-4x/week. I think I did a really good job maintaining strength through marathon training but I knew I needed to do a build focus once I made it through the race. I’ll do this for 8-12 weeks total before I roll into my next marathon training cycle. I’m hoping for a late spring marathon and then I have a crazy race this summer that I can’t wait to tell you more about.
Don’t forget – you can strength train with me in my app! I share four full-body workouts every week and the first week is FREE!
But of course I’m still running. I’m averaging 2-3 runs/week right now mostly in the 5-8 mile range. I’m starting to add more speed work in and will begin to building mileage again soon for that next marathon training cycle.
WORK
We started talking about work and we’ll end with that too! Personal training has been busy, busy! Most of my clients are one-on-one but I have two small groups of four and one semi-private that I do every week. They’re all so fun to work with! The group in the photo above is my hiking friends!
I am forever grateful for my yoga fam at Charlotte Yoga. This January marks 6 years that I’ve been back at the studio and I’m grateful every time I step into the room to teach or roll my mat out in another instructor’s class. We are led so beautifully by our owner and given so much autonomy to share yoga in a way that is true to us. Classes have been full and spirits high as we’ve entered the new year.
I’m also grateful for new opportunities and have been working hard this month on creating a yoga program at a new facility. It’s been wonderful to be back in the training arena – and I always cherish being able to help teachers grow and expand.
THAT’S ALL FRIENDS
I think that’s a pretty proper catch up! I will leave you with this photo of Finn and I from New Year’s Day when I cooked a 10 pound ham for the two of us. Safe to say I am off ham for a while now!
HAPPY NEW YEAR! Wishing you all well. xoxo
Jen
