2 Day Winter Workout Program

If you live in Ontario, or somewhere where it snows, then you know you better learn to embrace the snow or the winter can seem like a death sentence. I have to admit I’m a warm weather kind of girl, but this winter we have been loving the cold and snow. We built a ice rink for the first time this year and it’s been great. The kids are out on it most days, and loving it.

Last week my oldest daughter (12) came to my husband and I and asked if 3 of her friends could sleep over on Friday. I’m not a fan of sleepovers, especially at that age, because they just don’t want to go to sleep! Well to guarantee she had a sleep over, she tells my husband she wants to build a quinzee and they all sleep in it. What!! That for sure will work. My husband was all over it. Of course, you can do that. How many will be sleeping in it? Of course you can…..that was it, done deal.

Well, he was busy with a meeting so Thursday evening, I went out with Kendyll and started shoveling the snow into a huge pile. This was quite the chore. After an hour my back was killing me, even after telling myself to pull my belly button in and use my legs. It was a slow process. After about an hour and a half, I sent Kendyll to bed and my husband came out to help. We still had a long way to go. The problem was, even though we had a fair amount of snow, we ran out of it in the back yard. So we dug out the tarp, and headed to the front yard.

I’m sure our neighbours thought we were crazy, shoveling our front yard onto a tarp. We then would drag that around the side of the house. Talk about using your legs and core muscles. Whew! Snow is really heavy. We did that for another hour and a half. Now both of us were exhausted. As we stepped back to look at our pile of snow, I knew it was killing my husband. He had to work the next day and then that meant it was left to me to dig it out. These are the kinds of things he loves to do, not me. We had to let the snow sit before we began digging it out so that job would wait until tomorrow.

Around 2pm I headed out back, gathered my sticks to use and broke them into 1 foot pieces. I stuck them all over the snow pile and then I began. At first it seemed like I would never even make a dent, but then I started to notice a difference. I few times I got snow in the face, but it was coming along. With all the pushing and pulling, I could totally feel my back, shoulders and triceps–I was getting double workout! After 2 hours of digging and dragging out snow, I thought I was done. I tested to make sure 4 of them could fit in there and I thought it would be tight but doable.

As we were piling in tarps, foam mats, sleeping bags and then the girls themselves, I thought cool, they were really going to sleep in it. Once you are in there, it’s actually quite warm. There wasn’t a ton of room to move around but definitely enough room to sleep. Ready with extra hats, mitts and even sleeping bags the girls actually got a decent sleep…me on the other hand, stayed up most of night worrying and checking to make sure everything was ok. Of course it was and in the morning that was all I heard about. How cool it was to sleep outside in the quinzee.

The first picture is actually not of our quinzee, but ours looked very much like that(without the dog). I was slow enough not to get a picture the following day. Then we got unusually warm weather and everything began to melt. Before it completely collapsed I did manage to get a pic. It was actually tall enough that I could completely sit up and wide enough for the 4 girls to sleep. I had placed a tarp over the door so the cold air would stay out. So as you can see, getting in a workout doesn’t have to be traditional. This took me 2 days to do and believe me when I say it was hard work! Think outside the box. You will not only have fun discovering something new, but you may build a lifetime of memories:)

Committed to your fitness success,

Kelly Parker

www.fitmommakeover.net