After a good night of rest, I headed out to the gym with one single goal: destroy my legs. Prior to this morning it had been three weeks since I last trained legs due to the GORUCK event followed by two weekends back in CT. 

I ended up having to mix up the order I prefer to lift. By the time I finished with the deadlifts I had nothing left in the gas tank.  

Here is what my workout turned out to be: 

• Kettlebell Goblet Squat - 1 x 12 reps (20 kg), 3 x 8 reps (36 kg) 
• Alternating Dumbbell Lunge - 3 x 12 reps (50 lb dumbbells)
• Standing Calf Raise - 4 x 15 reps (215 lbs, 235 lbs, 255 lbs, 275 lbs)
• Squat Press - 3 x 10 reps (270 lbs, 360 lbs, 450 lbs)
• Dumbbell Romanian Deadlift - 3 x 12 reps (155 lbs, 165 lbs, 165 lbs)

I increased the weight in every exercise, even though on the goblet squats the weight was only increased on the warm-up set. 

I need to hold the weight steady on lunges for a few weeks so that I can focus on form. Due to how exhausted my legs were, my balance wasn’t as good as it should have been. 

When I came home we headed out for what we originally thought would be a quick trip to a Christmas tree lot up the street to pick out our tree. 

After stopping at two Christmas tree lots and, not only not finding any trees we liked, but also seeing how much they were charging for their trees, we decided to head 30 minutes south into Los Gatos to go to a tree farm. 

We ended up hiking through their fields looking for the perfect Christmas tree. It took a while of hunting around but eventually we found one.  

Instead of bringing our car to where it was, I decided to carry it the 1/4 mile or so back. The tree wasn’t too heavy and it was like a second workout for me. 

While we tied it onto our roof Laura accidentally tied the passenger side down with the doors closed so when we were ready to leave she had to climb in through the driver’s side. Such the adventure continued. 

We made it home and brought the tree upstairs without issue. I fetched our older tree stand out of our storage closet. We didn’t need it for the past four years because our really tall trees came with custom stands. 

After trying to get the stand to work, we realized that the bolts weren’t long enough to hold the tree upright. Laura had seen a small tree lot next door in the grocery store parking lot so off I went to try finding a new tree stand. 

When I got over to the small lot I realized that they didn’t sell tree stands. I decided to keep walking up the street to Home Depot where I finally found a tree stand that would work. I walked it back home and we were able to get the tree up. 

And with that, the Christmas tree saga of 2015 came to a close (hopefully).  

We plan on readjusting and decorating the tree tomorrow since we didn’t finish with everything until after 4:00p when we though it would only take us until lunchtime. 

With all of the tree drama done we headed out for dinner and a movie. We enjoyed going to see the final Hunger Games movie which turned out to be really good. 

All in all it was a fun day with a few unexpected bumps along the way.