Friday

Wow.....2nd week of school done for my kids and also the 2nd full week of getting back to running/training for my Disney Marathon!!  I got in 25 miles this past week.  After 6 this morning, I was actually quite tired...........although staying up past midnight every night this week certainly contributed, too. Yawn!  This morning we had TEN LADIES in our running group!!

I actually made the baked in an iron skillet berry cobbler recipe from Southern Living that I posted a few blogs back....i used two 12 ounce bags of frozen raspberries....it turned out great....served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream of course..........it was SUPER easy, too!!  I was trying to figure out how I could get a sugary film on the bready part like Heidi (Everyday Cookies) puts on her blackberry pie crust.  Yum!!

A friend told me today about how many women runners do not get enough magnesium.  Searched a little online and found a good list of natural food sources.  I put it up in my pantry, but I think I may go buy some low dose supplements, too.  I've decided that extra B6, iron, and vitamin C are working well for me.

Here's some deer in my backyard:

 

Flowers on my table

You may or mat not know that I really love flowers....and I love to have fresh flowers on my table.  I try to buy long lasting ones to be more thrifty.  My mother once told me an old saying about buying flowers..............It meant so much to me that I had her write it in my Bible!  Here it is for you to read:

     

So here's my flowers on the table today!

            

"Feed body and spirit!" ......Go put some flowers on your table.  :)

 

 

Back to running!

Okay, I must really want to get this blog out, because this is my FOURTH attempt!  I have several links in here, and somehow in looking for the links, I inadvertently closed this box and lost my work....three times!!!!.  But I really believe in "If at first you don't succeed try, try, (and try and try) again!

So today was the first day of school....now, I do LOVE summer, but I also do very much enjoy the routine of our back-to-school schedule.  This morning after breakfast, getting ready, first day of school photos, and dropping off my four children at their respective school, I got to go RUNNING!!!

I ran six miles on the trail...the first three with friends (RUNNING WITH A BUDDY IS ALWAYS EASIER!.  The last half of the second three got a little harder....it was quite hot out and my knees started hurting (my Achilles heel).  So, I let myself walk a bit.

Then I went and got my favorite granola on vanilla yogurt, and under fresh strawberries and bananas.  When I finished, I took my van straight to the car wash, as the last thing my older daughter said when she got out of the van and got her stuff from the trunk was, "Mom, you really need to get your van cleaned!!)

So, I have a HEALTHY  RECIPE for you!!  I was at the dentist office waiting for three of my four kids to get their teeth cleaned, when I ran across a recipe for Edamame Succotash in Southern Living (March 2007, I think).  http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1589379   Now, I just had tried edamame at my sister-in-law Elizabeth's house a couple weeks ago.  Go visit her over at e.beck.artist. http://ebeckartist.blogspot.com/  I had heard of it, and knew it was good for you, but never really had an opportunity to try it.  Anyway, I liked it........plain even.   But the following recipe is not plain.....easy, delicious, very colorful.....but not plain!

Edamame Succotash - Roberta style

1 yellow onion, chopped

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 large red bell pepper, diced

1 large yellow bell pepper, diced

1 bag frozen steam-in-the bag yellow sweet corn (2 1/2 cups)

1 bag frozen edamame (16 ounces)

2-3 tablespoons butter

garlic powder (about 1/2 teaspoon)

salt and crushed black pepper to taste

Microwave the corn until warm.   Microwave the edamame until warm. Saute the onion in the olive oil in a skillet until tender.  Add diced red and yellow bell peppers. Cook until tender.  Add the corn, the edamame, the butter, the garlic powder.  Stir until thoroughly heated.  Salt and pepper to taste.  Serve immediately.

In the same issue there was a recipe for BLACKBERRY COBBLER in a skillet....

http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1589380

Now, I know HEIDI over at Everyday Cookies, may want to try that recipe!  http://journals.aol.com/hwoodred/everyday-cookies/  I don't hink she'll mind if I share a picture of her freshly picked WILD BLACKBERRIES!

The photos in the magazine made it look very tempting.  I bought two bags of frozen blackberries, but then couldn't find the recipe online....but today I stumbled across it while looking for the edamame recipe.  So, let me know if you try either of these recipes.

And remember, running (or even just walking) is always more fun with a buddy.....go find a buddy and give it a try.  :)

Camping

So we went camping this past weekend, and I thought I'd share a few photos that I just discovered on my daughter's camera........ah, HOT DOGS!!!  At least I bought wheat buns!  We didn't have much time to prepare for this trip, so we had an easy dinner of grapes, carrot, hot dogs---self-serve-cook-on-a-stick, and hamburgers for the grown-ups.

                

Here is my kitchen set up:

               

I've got all our camping stuff packed up and ready to go on a permanent basis.  The royal blue tub on the left is my kitchen in a box.  It's got silverware, plates, cups, cooking pots and pans, bowls, cleaning tubs, towels and wash clothes, table clothes, and table cloth holder clamps,Dawn dish soap, even salt, pepper, and cinnamon....it had garlic, but that was stinking up the utensils box, and I just threw that out this weekend.  I also have an electric griddle and an electric fry pan (We usually camp at electric sites). Oh, and of course I have metal s'more/ hot dog long skewer sticks, and anything else you might need (cutting board, sharp knife, scissors, foil, baggies,tongs, spatula, measuring cup, mugs for hot drinks, can opener). When we get home I just wash all the towels and put them back in and WALL AH! I'm ready to go camping again!  So much easier than scrambling to get all those little items packed up each time (and remembering what you need).  On the right, the big black box is for all our dry foods---to keep them locked  up from all those night (and day) critters!  Behind that on the right is my "utility" container for batteries, fuel, rope, hammers & mallets, stakes, matches, bug spray, glow in the dark sticks (FUN!), clothes pins and such....I keep that stocked after each trip by replacing it with new fuel and glow in the dark sticks and batteries ....  The box on the left behind my kitchen box is for miscellaneous.....games, fans, citronella candles, paper products, etc.

Here's a picture of 3 of the 4 tents we had on our site (a double site).  We camped with another family of 5 bringing the total on our site to 11.

So that's our set-up......we may not be a true boating family yet.....but I think we qualify in the camping department!!!!

My main reason for going camping: S'MORES

Two in one day!

This may be my first time blogging twice in one day.......but this afternoon a big FIRST happened , and it seems mentionable:

I handed the keys to my van to my 16 year old son who just got his license today.  He was surprised, I think, that I let him drive on day 1----but he's been driving regularly for over a year with me.  So, with a little trust and short prayer, I let my little birdie try out his wings.  :)

 

Oh, and one more thing, I found a cool online Bible website:

http://bible.cc/

You can enter a verse and see it in quite a few translations all at once. It also has quite a few other tools like a concordance and cross referencing.

Here's to trying out new wings!

HOT!

Red....that seems like a good color to type in when you're going to talk about HOT it's supposed to be this week in North Carolina.  Whew!  Are we ever fortunate that's it's the coming week and not the past week---we just returned from a camping trip and thankfully the weather wasn't unbearable.  Of course we were prepared for anything and brought TONS OF DRINKS and ELECTRIC FANS!  And this year we even got to bring a BOAT!!!!!!  It is super fun to swim in the middle of the lake off your boat (life jackets on, of course).  You're out there and you swim through pockets of bath water warm spots and then ice cold spots-----right next to each other.....go figure!  It's like it didn't get stirred to just luke warm.

Our other boating experience this week was a trip up the POTOMAC RIVER to Washington, D.C. with my sister and her family.  Now that was awesome!!  Wide open and no one out there.....we got to go really fast and do random circles in the water. Plus we boated by all these really amazing place and sites! 

 

We were riding next to my sister's boat-----reminded me of the boat pictures on the front of the boat magazines we get monthly (a gift from a friend).  Funny thing though, every month the picture looks exactly the same.  David & I have decided that we must not really be boat people or we'd know right off what kind of boat was on the cover each month.....instead all we notice are the beautiful people on the cover with wind blown hair and the blue water spraying up behind. 

So we got our boat last year----around September 1 I  think.....we had had a smaller 4 person bass boat that was adequate, but slow.  We figured our kids were at the age to enjoy tubing and such, so we bought a bigger and a faster boat.  I mean, how would we ever know if we really were a boating family if we didn't a boat.  So our boat hold 6 and goes FAST!  It's a Skeeter - which is a "Fish and Ski".  So you can ski and tube and stuff from it, but it also converts to a bass boat with a platform seat at the front and a the back----it even has 2 live wells (for you non-fisher people, that's a place with water in it that you put your fish in after you catch them). AND it has a cooler and drink holders and all these nifty storage places to hold random things you might need like fishing poles, sunglasses, sunscreen, life jackets, rubber tubie things that you hang outside the boat when you're docking, rope, snacks, etc.  AND it even has a CD player/radio so you can play your favorite tunes out on the water.

 

So, we're definitely seeing if we're boating people.....we feel like we passed Level One on the Potomac trip-----we rescued another boat.  We were just about to head home, back down the river when we went under a bridge and we both got stuck in shallow water.  We were under the middle of the bridge, but the channel was more off to one side.....we didn't go that way because there was a huge crane doing construction work there.....anyway, we pushed and paddled our way out (Boating Rule #1 - always have a paddle).  We got unstuck and the my nephew swam a rope over from my brother-in-laws boat and we pulled them out.  Once we back in deep water, however, his boat would not start.  So we ended up towing them all the way back --- over 21 miles!!!!  It took 5 hours and every last drop of gas that we had (thankfully, we had just filled up as we left D.C.----yes, there are gas stations on the water for boats).  And thankfully, we had bought a few more drinks and a bag of ice at that stop.

The trip was like Man vs Wild (have you seen that show on the Discovery channel??). It was so HOT......you stay much cooler on a boat when you're moving fast enough to blow your hair. We got down to even drinking the melted ice cooler water.  We scrounged for every drop of food and candy we had on board.  By the time we got back to the dock (which we had trouble finding in the dark), it was pitch black out.  What a memorable trip!!  So, that's how we passed Level One of boating!  Are we a boating family yet?? I'm not sure. :)

I've taken the last 2 weeks off from running - trips to Atlanta, D.C. and the lake instead.  I'll start up again soon. :)