WIAW, 17th Anniversary...

I swear, Wednesdays seem to get here faster and faster every week. Time really seems to speed up the older I get. Not that I am getting old.

My WIAW post is about what I ate on Saturday. After a Saturday morning 8 mile run that ended in lots of walking and a few tears in the car on the way home I was ready to do something more fun.

We went out for lunch with the kiddos to celebrate the end of the school year. Carson decided we were going to to to Red Robin.

We might be getting close to having kids that are too cool to take pictures with their parents.

Somehow I always end up sitting next to Carson.

Warm pretzle bites with beer cheese. The beer cheese was also good on the french fries I stole from Carson.

Hummus plate with carrots, cucumber and chips.

Saturday was also our wedding anniversary, 17 years of wedded bliss. We were going to be very exciting and stay home and do nothing, but at the last minute the girls ended up going to sleep over at a friend's house. Josh and I decided to go out to O Asian Fusion for dinner.

Tempura battered shrimp and veggies. We had never tried this before, but we will definitely have to have it again.

I had the spicy garlic veggies with fried rice. That is the Heavenly Veggie roll in the background. You must try it.

It was a special occasion so we had the chocolate cake. I'm not going to lie, we ate every bit of it and it was delicious. Lots of yummy food and a couple of drinks in martini shaped glasses and it was a nice anniversary celebration.

Here's to the next 17 years or so.

 

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Running and I are Breaking Up...

Part of my lack of posts this month has been in part because of the complete and utter horribleness of my running this month. It started a bout six weeks ago since we had a six mile run with an average pace at about 8:39, afterwards I had a small twinge in my right quad that has been mildly irritating since then. Over the past three weeks I have taken extra rest days to try to get back to normal, but it hasn't helped. Add to the rest, ice, compression and Advil and it has still gotten worse.

I have had a string of pretty awful runs, including 8-10 mile runs that I have not been able to finish without an embarrassing amount of walking, and ending with four miles of hill repeats where I was running with a noticeable limp.

I broke down and called my family doctor this morning, mostly because I can usually see him the same day. It's nice to have a doctor that is a former runner too. I thought I would see him first and if it was more serious I could always go see my favorite orthopedic doctor.

Dr. Stout has diagnosed me with a strained quad. He said I am lucky it's a strain and not a tear, because a tear would mean no running for a year. As it stands, it will be no running for two weeks, and after that I will be running in compression shorts until I can run without them with no pain.

So running and I are gonna have a little break. I have been cleared to swim, or spin or do yoga if I don't have pain. I can honestly say that after training pretty much non stop for the last year, I am okay with a short break. I have no races on my schedule right now, aside from the OU Medicine Corporate Challenge this weekend where I will not be doing the 10K on Sunday.

I think a couple weeks off will be good. I have not been loving running this month, and I want to love it again. It has been miserable and really hard these past few weeks. I don't want to dread getting up to pound the pavement, I am ready to feel strong again.

Two weeks will put me at being able to have a nice early run on my birthday. There is no better way to start a birthday than a run with my friends at the crack of dawn. I can't wait.

 

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What the Heck is Going On?

It has been hard to do any blogging lately. I like to talk about food, baking, running and other goings on in my life, and frankly the running has been spectacularly bad, there hasn't been much in the way of interesting foods or baking, and life has been pretty mundane.

I have been in a food funk for a while, and while I keep looking for interesting recipes on Pinterest, I have not been interested in actually cooking any of them. Lots of simple things like sandwiches going on around here. I did eat a whole seedless watermelon in less than a week. I can't figure out why my crazy family won't eat watermelon, but I'm kind of glad they don't want to.

Sprout's has had the best seedless watermelon. I forgot to get over there to get another one today and I am very sad that I will be without more of this yumminess tomorrow.

Penny thinks that every time I have the green bowl it's full of watermelon.

As for baking, while we haven't been buying Oreos lately, and I have not been depriving my family of all things sugar related, it has been a little uneventful on the baking front. Not that I would call rice krispy treats baking exactly.

I did make these last night.

Chocolate chip brownie bars. These are really good. I used a bigger mix for the brownies than the recipe called for so they are pretty thick, but that just means more chocolate, right?

As far as running goes, it has been pretty horrific. I will talk about it more tomorrow, but it has been really, really bad all month.

For the holiday I decided to get in a spin class. My favorite teacher was teaching today and Rochelle, Kelly, Anne and I decided the best way to celebrate the holiday was to go torture ourselves and kick out booties for a little over an hour.

It's all smiles before we got started.

I think I lost about ten pounds in sweat by the end of the class. Notice how dark Ro looks next to me. I like to stay out of the sun as much as possible so Ro will look even more tan when I stand next to her in pictures.

As for life, I finally got out to go help with some of the clean up going on in Moore. I have driven through the devastation all last week on I-35, but today we actually drove down 4th Street and got to see the damage up close. It really is unimaginable. It made my heart hurt to drive through and see neighborhoods completely decimated. I just don't think that you can compare it to anything really. 200 mile an hour winds packs a punch that you just have to see in person to believe.

We helped a friend of a friend get the remains of his house cleaned up and ready for the city to come by and pick up the debris. It was overcast and windy out, we were covered in a layer of fiberglass by the time we got home.

I was so proud of Camy, she came with us and worked very hard, without complaint. This was a house a little ways down from the one we were working at. I was amazed at the number of volunteers out. There was a constant stream of people coming by offering water and differet kinds of food for everyone working. I am sure that in the same circumstances it would be like this anywhere, but it made me very proud of the state I have called home since 1985.

So that's the short version of what's been going on. The longer explination about running will come tomorrow.

 

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Tornados and WIAW...

I feel like this past week has flown by. I can't believe it's already Wednesday again and time for another WIAW post.

In all honesty, I did not manage to get any pictures of food on my phone this week. We did go out for pizza Friday night at one of our favorite restaurants here in Norman.

Pizza by the slice an mozarella sticks, it's a win win situation for every picky person in my family. Sadly, I don't think my pizza helped to fuel my horrific Saturday morning run. There has not been that much walking in ten miles since the Cowtown Marathon in February. My tweeked right quad muscle has demanded rest and compression so I haven't laced up my beloved Brooks Ravennas since then.

There was also pizza on Sunday night, because what else should you eat during a tornado watch party? The crazy weather started on Sunday afternoon. The girls and I went to the Warren Theater in Moore and saw the new Star Trek movie. When we got out of the theater at a little after four the clouds had rolled in and the wind had picked up. The Brown's had arrived by the time we got home and we were glued to the tv watching the storms roll in.

We got some good sized hail.

Our storm shelter is in the garage. It is in the garage underneath my car. Because of this, when the bad weather rolls in my car gets rolled out of the safety of the garage. I got some minor hail damage on my car.

We answered the question "how many people can you fit in your storm shelter".

That would be four kids, four adults, one French bulldog, and one very nervous Boston Terrier. It was a tight squeeze.

It was a pretty scary looking storm as it rolled through. The girls had a friend that had some damage near her house from the resulting tornado.

Round two happened on Monday afternoon. By now you have heard about the tornado in Moore, OK, and you have probably seen pictures of the destruction. Moore is just north of Norman. I went to school there from sixth grade until I graduated from Moore High School. We have friends and family that live there. The movie theater the girls were at on Sunday afternoon is the one that suffered damage from the tornado, and my daily commute takes me along the interstate where cars were damaged.

My old junior high was damaged. I used to ride my bike to babysit in the summer to one of the neighborhoods that suffered significant damage. Thankfully everyone we know in the area is safe, sadly the same cannot be said for their homes.

Scenes from my commute this morning.

This used to be a neighborhood right off I-35, not it's just a path of destruction.

This used to be a bowling alley, and a credit union and a few other buildings that also took a direct hit from yeserdays monster tornado.

It has been a very sad day. But in case you haven't heard, Oklahomans are strong. They pick themselves up, help their neighbors up, dust themselves off and rebuild. This is not the first devastating tornado to hit Moore, and chances are it won't be the last.

For now they could use your help.

To donate $10 to the Redcross text REDCROSS to 90999, or to donate $10 to the OKC Foodbank, text FOOD to 32333.

 

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Is It WIAW Already...

It's Wednesday again, so that means it's time for another WIAW post.

Let's talk about eats. I am sure you don't need another picture of an avocado & egg salad sandwich I have been eating for weeks. I temporarily trade it for this the end of last week.

Two egg whites, American cheese and strawberry jam on wheat bread. Who would have thought? So good.

I picked up a few of these at Target, and they are super tasty! I am a big fan of key lime.

(source)

When I baked up these Black Bean & Sweet Potato Flautas on Monday night, they didn't look this fabulous, but they sure tasted good. I love the combination of black beans and sweet potatoes.

Last night after Camy's end of the year orchestra concert we went out for Mexican food at Tarahumara's. I don't eat shrimp very often {I love it but it doesn't agree with my cholesterol level} but I went with the shrimp fajitas. Of course I went with the spicy shrimp. Good food and good company.

I had all kinds of fruit this morning. Not pictured: banana, apple and the watermelon I had with my lunch. There was also some dried mango in there somewhere.

I was thinking ahead and made some tortellini pasta salad on Monday so we had this for dinner tonight. Yummy! I marinated the tomatoes overnight with pesto, and they were so good.

More watermelon afterwards, so good.

So it was a good week, with some good new eats.

 

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Hardest Run Ever...

We went camping in the Wichita Mountains Friday night. It was a camping trip planned around a little running.

After no sleep, I got up at the crack of dawn and put my running shoes that Penny either peed on or right next to in the middle of the night and we headed out to run to the top of Mount Scott. I didn't know until we got down there Friday night what the running plan was. I thought we were running trails, and I was a little relieved that we were not. I had not run for five days to give my previously sprained, rolled on the trails left ankle. After being swollen for two days I self prescribed five full days of no running.

I was a little relieved to not be running on trails, the road up Mount Scott was paved, and it was not open to traffic until 9am, so we got there at about 6:30 to begin our adventure.

This is what it looked like at 6:30 in the morning. The weekend was all about learning from our mistakes. Our major mistake before tackling this monster was that we didn't get ay warm-up miles in first. It was, after all, only three miles to the top. Only three miles, just a 5k, that's not even worth the dirty clothes. It's a good thing we had to run back down.

Right from the start we were going straight up. I thought I had done hills before, but this was different. It was amazingly hard. I love the feeling of running up a hill, right when you get to the top and you can feel gravity shift from behind you to in front of you when you start the downhill. Well that didn't happen for three whole miles. For the first half, we managed to run a half mile at a time before we needed a break and took some picture. The walk breaks after that were a little more frequent, and would sometimes only be a few steps.

Did I mention that there were people on bikes riding up and flying down as well? You know that sound, when you are riding up a tough hill, when you are using your granny gear, and you only have one gear left? When you switch to it, your chain makes a sound that could either be switching gears, or could be the chain giving up all toghether? We heard that sound a few times. There are not enough gears on my bike to get me up that hill. If I ever managed to get up on a bike, someone would have to drive to the top to pick me up because I would never get up the courage to actually ride my bike down the mountain. I am not exaggerating at all when I say they were flying.

We made it to the top and ran into our friend Julie. She had to give us a minute before she took this picture. I told her I didn't want to look like I was dying. The top was the only flat part of the route, after that it was ALL downhill.

Rochelle loves the downhill. I do not. My body doesn't handle the downhill very well, and I have to focus alot on standing up straight, shortening my stride and being careful to not make my IT band angry. Rochelle would run ahead and then run back up to meet me. She can be such a showoff. :-)

It really was a beautiful morning. Perfect temps and beautiful views. To bad it was complete torture to get them.

We did take time to get some pictures.

This was not too close to the side of the mountain, but we had to climb out to the rocks we were standing on.

Do we look like we were having a good time?

Six miles in about an hour and nine minutes. I will let you do the math to figure out the average pace. This was the hardest run I have ever done. I think it was harder than the last six miles of Cowtown, and those miles were unspeakably hard. There was another runner out there that was going to run this three times. Three! We did go back up for about a quarter mile after we got to the bottom, because we are crazy like that, and because we hate leaving our Garmins on a not round number. I told Ro that if she wanted to run it again I would wait for her in the car. Maybe we will do that next time, and I will be sure to not have two dogs in my tent that keep me awake the night before.

Oh yes, there will be a next time. That's the thing about runners, we love a good story. I would love to be able to run to the top of the mountain and not feel like it was killing me for three miles. Hills do make us stronger.

 

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These Dogs Cannot Camp...

I was at work Friday morning and Rochelle texted me to see if I wanted to go camping. It is widely known that I am not much of a camper, but sometimes you have friends that make anything sound like a good time. After some talk we decided that we would go, and I met Josh at Academy after work and we bought a new tent and some other camping supplies and came home and packed up and headed down to the Wichita Mountains.

We got to the campsite a little before 8, and got our tent set up.

I do love a good campfire. Austin was manning the fire, and managed to not burn himself or anyone else.

Camy was almost smiling for this picture.

We bought a six person tent this time, and once we put it up we realized that our queen air mattress and two twin mattresses would not all fit comfortably. So that was our first mistake. We did have a second mistake.

This is Rocky.

This is Penny.

Penny was trying to attack my iPad when I was trying to take this picture. She is crazy.

For some crazy reason, we thought it would be okay to take these two crazy dogs camping with us. I don't know what we were thinking. Rocky was terrified from the moment we got there. When the girls andI decided to go to bed, we took the dogs with us. Rocky just paced around and around in the tent and didn't settle down until we put him in his kennel. Unfortunately, his kennel was on some uneven ground and the kennel shook everytime he moved around, all night.

Penny, on the other hand, is convinced she is a watch dog. All 20 odd pounds of her. When Josh walked up to the tent a little later she was barking and growling, I guess it was good that no one was asleep yet. After that, she kept me up all night. She moved around the tent the entire night. A while later, she was getting after something that was near my bag which was right by my air mattress. After she spazed out for a little bit, I finally turned on a light to make sure there wasn't anything dangerous inside the tent. There was a big black bug on top of my bag, I ended up brushing it off my stuff thinking that Penny would let it go.

I didn't know where the bug was, and that kinda freaked me out too. Instead of Penny settling down, she went hunting for the bug. Then she went back to crawling all over the tent, from one person to the next, she did actually suggle up with me for about 20 minutes or so and I thought I was going to get some sleep. No such luck. Sometime later Penny peed in the tent, on my running shoes. She is a fabulously stubborn, crazy wanna be watch dog.

After no sleep, I was up at 5:45 so Rochelle and I could go for a run. More on that later.

It's hard to tell but this was a frog in the bathroom on Saturday night. The girls thought it was really funny.

We camped in the wildlife refuge, so we got to see buffalo and longhorns right on the side of the road.

We packed up pretty early on Saturday, with Josh in his boot because of his injured ankle, and we didn't really plan far enough ahead to go for a hike or anything. Plus the dogs had had enough.

We did drive to the top of Mount Scott before we left. Josh didn't want to get out of the car, not sure if it was his ankle or his fear of heights.

Camy spotted this huge caterpillar when we got out of the car. It was moving pretty fast so I didn't get a very good picture of it.

Such a beautiful view. I did a fantastic job of getting my finger in the shot.

The girls didn't complain and even smiled for me here.

It definitely was an adventure. I would definitely go back to the Wichita Mountains. Next time we will take two queen air mattresses, and leave the dogs at home. So, who wants to dog sit?

 

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