Reasons to be Cheerful

It's been a wonderful few weeks; after all the waiting, we got to spend two weeks living the life I love, exploring, relaxing and breathing fresh air in New Zealand.

But all too soon, we were homeward bound and dark nights, cold weather and work were looming.

It's definitely been a week to be relying on my inner Pollyanna and trying to find a few things to be glad about... it's not been as hard as I thought it might be!

Despite sub-zero temperatures when we landed in Manchester, there was a beautiful sunrise as we journeyed home... and our fabulous view (and frozen canal) was waiting for us when we got here and the sun shone most of the day too.

On my first day back at work, the sun was still shining, so I took my time on my walk to the office, looking for pretty reflections, watching the sunrise and going with the flow. If you don't look too closely, it could be a castle with a moat rather than a factory being demolished (or that could just be the jetlag talking).

And being back home meant another week with a Friday Five with Liz and that's always something to celebrate. We took a slight detour from our usual routes and started and finished from Sainsbury's in Stoke - I think the last time we did that was in 2013 and it was snowing!

On Saturday, there was a casserole in the slow cooker before I left home for Hanley Park - not letting the jetlag get me down, I got up and did some cooking.

It was lovely to be back at Hanley parkrun for the first time in six weeks and I just about managed to remember how to process the results after that big gap. There was another lovely sunrise to watch too.

I got to catch up with friends at a Christmas party and joined the Potters Trotters for part of my Sunday run (the café chat lasted almost as long as the run). I've even managed to set personal records on 8 different Strava segments today - jetlag may finally be fading!

And to cap off a week of Pollyanna cheeriness, my Sunday afternoon has been devoted to binge watching all the missed episodes of Strictly whilst drinking tea and eating hokey pokey chocolate brought home from New Zealand; only one more episode to go now. No spoilers please.

It's been a challenge readjusting but it's not been all bad.

Lots of reasons to be cheerful... just got to keep being positive.

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