August Foodie Pen Pals...

This month my Foodie Pen Pal, Amanda, sent me a box from Houston. I know I say this every month but I just love when my box shows up.

I just love the cupcake tissue paper I found inside.

I should seriously work on my photography skills.

Inside was a nice note explaining all the goodies she sent me.

And the goodies:

• I just love jellies and jams, not just the old Welch's grape jelly I grew up eating. Makes me want to make some toast.
• Granola, perfect to mic with Greek yogurt and bananas or kiwi.
• Quinoa, I discovered this not too long ago. I just love the texture and taste. Better than just having rice.
• Dark chocolate, oh how I love all kinds of chocolate. This one was wonderful. Carson and Camy and I cracked this open as soon as we saw it.

I love getting a box full of Someone else's favorites. It's funny that Amanda spent her freshman year in collage at Oklahoma State University. As a die hard Sooner fan, I must say I don't blame her for leaving after a year. :-)

 

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How About a WIAW Post...

I have been completely slacking on these WIAW posts. That and going to the gym, but who needs cross training?

After the killer hill repeats we did Tuesday I certainly wanted to eat everything in sight. What is it about hills that make me so hungry? And what would possess grown women to run up and down a hill at the crack of dawn? At least this week three of us had headlamps on to light the way.

Have you ever noticed how hard it is to talk to someone wearing a headlamp? Or to talk to someone when you are wearing a headlamp? You are either going to blind someone or be blinded, it's a no win situation.

Anyway, my WIAW post is just gonna be my, what did I eat that I took pictures of with my phone that I can post on my blog on a Wednesday.

Here we go...

On Sunday, the one that happened ten days ago, I meet some of my favorite girls for a wine tasting at Blu. They do this once a month and we are so planning to go back next month. We got to sample six different wines and had some appetizers. I did not get any pictures of this yummy food, I was too busy eating it, but I did get a picture of our wine glasses.

 

Oh wait, there are plates of food in there.

Here's a description of one appatizer we had...

maytag blu cheese potato chips - 8
chips, cheese, cilantro

There was also hummus, cheese, apple slices, it was all yummy.

How about overnight oats? I had heard mention of these on many a food blog lately and decided to to do a Google search to find out what the heck it was. I found a recipe here and gave it a try.

I used oats, almond milk, chia seeds, and Greek yogurt with honey. I have to be honest, I have never been an oatmeal eater. Sure I make homemade granola, and my double chocolate chip cookies with flaxseed have oatmeal in them. But when it comes to not cereal I'm a cream of wheat girl (I did Google overnight cream of wheat and came up with nothin'.)

I made these twice, the second time I ground up the oats in the food processor, something I do when I put oats in my cookies, and I kinda liked it better that way.

To sum up, I am not sold on the overnight oats, but I'll try it again.

Finally, Josh was out of town last week and I wanted chickpea tacos, but I was too lazy to make them. Luckily I had this in my pantry...

I have been a fan of Rick Batless since I saw him on Top Chef Masters, and I lobe his products I can buy at the grocery store. So I grabbed a can of chickpeas, rinsed them and heated them up with this sauce, add some refrained black beans, a little shredded cheddar and tomato and I had this for dinner three times last week.

Not the most exciting eats, but all very yummy.

 

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New Shoes, a Long Run, Softball and a Snake...

For the last few weeks my knees have been bothering me when I've been running. For me that means its time for some new shoes.

I have run through four pairs of the Brooks Adrenalines, but after consulting with an expert at OK Runner, I went with a new pair of the Brooks Ravenna 3's.

They are super cute too.

I laced them up yesterday morning and headed out for a long run. It was brutal. It was about 78 degrees out, which wasn't bad by itself, the 89% humidity was a killer though. There was multiple times during the run that I considered heading back early, but my need to not miss out on the fun forced me to stick with it. We got 9.5 miles total (Ro got 10, but that's because she is super awesome) and I haven't been that happy to be done wi a run in a long time.

Maybe the fact that I spent four hours at the ballpark watching Camy play softball Friday night had something to do with it. Pb&j with chips probably isn't the best pre long run meal. But Carson and I had fun spectating.

The weather was wonderful all evening, and we got to see Camy play centerfield for the first time.

After my long run I headed home and got ready to head back to the ballpark for a day full of games. In the second game Camy got to bat.

She was walked but ended up on third base, they called the game for time before she had a chance to run home. In the third game she got to bat again and after getting hit in the head by the catcher, I guess it's hard to throw when you have a left handed batter, she got a real hit and even had a RBI and got all the way to third again. The inning was over before she got to run home.

It was a very long day, but Camy had lots of fun.

This morning we had a little excitement here. Penny was up barking pretty early for some unknown reason. Turns out we think she was barking at a snake, we found it in our bedroom a little while later.

Now I'm off to continue my nice lazy Sunday.

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Do You Ragnar...

Have you heard of Ragnar? Up until six months ago I had not. Relays seem to be all the rage right now. I heard about the granddaddy of them all Hood to Coast last year.

What could be more fun than a twelve person relay that lasts for 200 miles? A course that is not closed, not supported the whole way, and a race that lasts for 24ish hours? I am totally going to be in Oregon for HTC one day, but for now I am perfectly happy to stay a little closer to home and get the whole relay experience.

So, what is Ragnar?

Ragnar is the overnight running relay race that makes testing your limits a team sport. A team is made up of 6-12 individuals; each individual runs 3 legs. The legs of the race vary in difficulty and distance, from 3-8 miles, allowing elite and novice runners to run together. Over 2 days and 1 night, teams run across 200 miles of the country’s most scenic terrain. Pair that with crazy costumes, inside jokes, a great finish line party and unforgettable stories. Some call it a slumber party without sleep, pillows or deodorant. We call it Ragnar.

In two weeks, I'll be heading to Colorado for Ragnar with these girls.

Patti, Rochelle, Kim (okay, Kim isn't going, but she was drinking wine with us on Sunday when we were talking about it so of course she's in the picture), Kelsey and me.

We are van #1, for the Starbucks All-Stars/OK Runner team. If they are giving out awards for the most boring team name, we are definitely in the running. We are a sponsored team though, so our name has to give a shout out to the people paying the bill. When there are teams named "I can't feel my Aspen" and "50 shades of altitude sickness" and " the assess chaps and six cowgirls" it just makes you wish you seemed a little more creative.

Oh well, life goes on, no matter what your team name is. Flights are booked and legs have been decided. So here's the deal, there are twelve of us, six from Oklahoma, including this guy, and six from California. We have been segregated by state, not sure if Okies (which I don't claim to be) and west coasters would mix, and we have decided who is running what.

The hardest part of the process is looking at the leg descriptions and then deciding what you want to do. I am much better at being told what to do, so having to decide which runner I want to be when the legs have descriptions like "very hard", "hard" or "easy" is not an easy task.

It has been decided and I am going to be known as Runner #4 from now on. I so need a t-shirt that says "I am #4". So here is how my responsibilities work out.

4	6.6 miles | Hard	5.9 miles | Hard	2.1 miles | Easy	14.6 miles

I'll be looking forward to that 2.1 easy miles at the end. I have to survive the 5.9 hard miles in the middle of the night. Yes, I am scared. Mostly because things like this happen in familiar places when it's dark outside. You can imagine that I might be a little worried about running in the dark in unfamiliar territory. I have been promised that I will have either a bike pacer or someone willing to run with me during the nighttime leg.

It should be pretty interesting, it could get pretty smelly in the van too. Luckily, the girls will,outnumber the boys in van #1, so I'm hoping that will help.

How do you prepare for altitude when you like in Oklahoma? You run as many hills as possible and hope the heat you ran in all summer prepares you to be a little miserable. We will see if that plan works out for us. Kelsey is worried about bears, I'm mostly worried about ax murderers.

It should be an interesting 200 miles.

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Let's Talk About July...

It is August, and we are about two thirds through the month, but let's talk about July.

Not a bad month, considering 84 miles for the month are my highest since February. Based on the fact that it was hotter than the surface of the sun here in Oklahoma in July, it was a damn good total.

There were many mornings where it was in the mid 80s at 5:15 am. It has not been easy building up my miles during this heat. I keep telling myself that it's allmgonna pay off this fall when the weather starts to cool off.

No running races in July, only the Norman Conquest bike ride. It's hard to think about raves in the heat.

So I have suffered through the hot summer and the rewards are just around the corner.

September is coming which means:

Brookhaven 5k

Ragnar, Co

Tie Dye Tri

Redman (at least that's the plan)

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Birthday Celebration Continued...

I took the day off from work, don't you love birthdays that fall on Fridays? My niece, Hailey, was spending the weekend with us so she wouldn't miss the slumber party on Saturday, so I took the three of them and Caeli to Andy Alligator's water park.

Let me start by saying that I had bought a Groupon a few weeks before, or this little outing would never have happened. The Groupon was for four people so I only had to pay for one of us. They don't price it by age either, so the one extra person was $20.51 with tax. (Tickets to White Water are $25.99.)

Anyway, I had to get a picture before we went inside...

After they went through our bags and made us dump the water out of our water bottles, seriously. You can't take in any outside food or drinks, a fact that I couldn't find on their website. We went inside and discovered that they had two big slides, three little ones, a play area with the smaller sides and a lazy river. Really, no pool?

Luckily, we were able to get free ice water at the concession stand to refill our water bottles, and the girls liked the pizza we got.

Carson and Caeli.

Camy and Hailey. Camy has decided she wants to be called Cam from now on. I am having trouble getting used to that.

The white girl is me. That grassy spot behind me would be perfect for a pool.

We ended up,staying for about five hours, and only had minor drama. Thankfully, we found a shady spot to sit so I got to hang out and read part of the time. I was reading a book called Night Road, and it is hard to read a sad book in public without crying. It was so good I just couldn't put it down.

After a couple more pictures we packed it up and headed out. We had to go by the store for slumber party supplies and we had planned to go out for a birthday dinner. More on that in a bit.

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Birthday Celebrating Begins...

My babies were born on August 10, 2000. They aren't babies anymore. We celebrated their 12th birthday this weekend. It turned into a four day celebration. It started on Thursday when their Gammy came down and took them back to school shopping.

It's always nice to have a last minute lunch with this group. Plus we meet at Pepperoni Grill in Penn Square Mall. When we lived in north OKC Josh and I used to eat there all the time.

Later that afternoon,mthe girls came and hung out with me at work for a little bit.

I posted this pic on Facebook and a friend of mine thought Carson was holding a tazer. I think Cam (she doesn't want to be called Camy anymore) is way too cool to have her mom take her picture now.

Then before we knew it, it was Friday and my babies were twelve.

First picture as twelve-year-olds, it was not easy getting them to smile, or pretend to smile for this one.

Next up, the water park...

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Penny Loves the Olympics...

By Olympics I mean the water events. Did you know French Bulldogs don't swim? Clearly Penny didn't get that memo.

When we got the girls a pool two summers ago we were shocked the day Penny climbed up the ladder because she wanted to swim. We bought her her own life jacket and she became quite the swimmer.

Here's a video...

So now back to 2012 and the London Olympics. We've been watching almost every night. Penny has been watching too.

So this was a running event and it doesn't really support my claim about her love for swimming, at this very moment she is watching women's beach volleyball final.

Here she is watching swimming. I feel like we should get her her own doggie recliner with her own remote to watch all her sports. She did get a little freaked out when we were watching breast stroke. When the swimmers would go underwater and pop back out it was like she couldn't figure it all out.

The best was when we got her on video. I believe we were watching the men's 50 free.

She is a funny dog. Maybe we should find a swim team for her to join.

 

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WIAW #12...

Let's start with what I really ate Wednesday. Haven't done that in a while. After work this evening I headed to the Y for my Wednesday brick workout. I was feeling a little tired and wasn't sure if I was gonna be up for both parts of a brick, guess I couldn't call it a brick workout if I didn't do both parts. I would have to just call it a swim.

Brick part one was 1,650 yards in the pool. I warmed up with 500 free, and then did 10x50 free sprints with fins on a minute. I definitely was feeling the workouts I've done so far this week, there was not as much get up and go in my legs. I followed up the sprints with 6x100 mixing in a little backstroke and breaststroke. After that it was an easy 50 to get to the mile mark.

I got out of the pool and got ready for the spin class. I had a few tense moments when I didn't know if I would be able to get my sports bra on. I need to remember to take one of my new Moving Comfort sports bras with the clasp in the back next week. If you have to pull it over your head when you are hot after being in the pool it's not an easy thing.

I don't know why we keep going back to Donna's spin classes. they are so freaking hard. I lobe them. Tonight she did some sprints and some tabatas and some other equally hard things that I seemed to have blocked out.

I got home and was starving. I pulled out some spaghetti sauce that was in the freezer and made some penne pasta and garlic bread. Not too unbearable to whip this up when it's a million degrees outside.

Can you tell my plate is on my lap? It's the Olympics, I have to watch.

I followed up my pasta with a little watermelon. My friend Patti gave two half of watermelon this weekend. I've been eating the regular watermelon all week and tonight I broke out the yellow one. It's pretty tasty too.

Yep, still eating in the living room watching the Olympics. I got to tell Carson that if you swallow watermelon seeds you will have watermelon growing out your ears. Gotta love that.

I just might have a monster cookie later.

Peanut butter, oats, chocolate chips and M&M's. I haven't made these in a while and they are amazing. You can find the recipe I started with here.

So not a bad Wednesday.

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