Fall is baking season.

FINALLY, I woke up this morning to a lovely 62 cool degrees.  It's still cool, overcast, and lovely outside.  I enjoyed (well, not sure if I really enjoyed it) a 2.5 mile run, showered, and sat outside with a cup of coffee.  I am in heaven.

Seeing that it finally feels like fall around here, I got the baking bug yesterday.  Here's what we accomplished:


Pumpkin muffins. 


They are really good.  :)  My mom sent the stand down in our annual Halloween box.  Thank you!  The girls go nuts over the Halloween box.  I think it might be their favorite thing about Halloween!


No, I did not make these!  Amazon had a HUGE sale on Yummy Earth stuff (thanks for the heads-up, Pat!!).  I was just about to order some for Kali before I found out about the sale.  Thank goodness I waited.  Yummy Earth makes all natural, dye free lollipops and they're not exactly cheap.  However, I managed to score 700 lollipops, delivered, for just over $19.00  What a deal!  Kali is thrilled to be stocked up on lollipops for the next million years, too.  Well, we all are - those things are fantastic!

Okay, back to the baking.....


Publix has a sale on these right now.  Somehow, 4 bags of them ended up in my cart yesterday.  ;)  Then I read the back of one of the bags.  Oh my.  A recipe for chocolate caramel popcorn.  How could I not do that?!  Alex and the girls got in on the action and we all made it together.




Hannah was melting the caramels.

Still had her sucker, too.  ;) 


What a silly kid.


She loves cooking with me.  I love that she cooks with me.  :)


Just after the chocolate started melting on it.  My butt is feeling larger already.


You know you want some.


Cooling off on the table.  I need to stay far away from this stuff.  There's not enough miles in the world that can take off what that would put on; but I will have a little bit.

Today we are off to the pumpkin farm.  I cannot wait to be outside and not sweat like a little piggy!

A jam session.

It's that time of year again.  Time to make some jam.  I kept putting it off for, well, way too long.  I just got lazy on the jam making and decided it was time to fix the situation. 

First I made a batch of Dutch Apple Pie jam.  OMG.  Can I just drink this stuff, please?


Seriously, this stuff rocks!  I have some that was leftover from the canning batch and it's sitting in my fridge.  Tomorrow morning it will be lovingly poured on top of some pancakes.  Oh yeah, baby!

Then yesterday I decided to make a batch of peach jam.


I used larger jars for these, so I ended up with only 3 of them.


And here they were this morning all wiped off and labeled.  Awwwwwwwwwww.


Mmmmmm........I wish we had smell-o-vision.



I think I'm going to do another batch of each one and then I might do some strawberry jam.  I did find a recipe (with really good reviews) for banana nut butter.  I'm still deciding if I want to try that one.

World Wide Festival of Races

This weekend is the World Wide Festival of Races weekend.  I had originally signed up for the 10K a few months ago.  Then some freak-ass illness got me, (I swear it was swine) the weather was constantly ugly, (read - really hot with unrelenting humidity) and my hamstring was giving me issues.  Running was not my friend for the past 6 weeks, or maybe it was me who was not a friend to my running.  So I got on the WWFoR website and changed it to their 5K.  Then I sat and thought about it.  I mean, really, why should I take the easy out on it?  Sure, my training had suffered greatly, and I was in no way ready or in no mood to run a 10K (insert bitching about pain and weather here).  But what fun is it if you don't try and push yourself?  So I got back on the website and signed up for the 10K again.

And then I didn't run yesterday. 

But I got my iPod ready with a few running podcasts, got my running clothes ready, stuck my G2 in the fridge, and went to bed early last night. 

I finally got out of bed at 5:12 this morning.

I had 1/2 of a bagel, some juice, and got ready to go.  Thankfully there is no picture of this because you all would be horrified to see what I look like at 5:15 in the morning.  It's not pretty.  This is why I wear a hat.  My hat, my hat, my funky, funky hat!  I tucked my bib number into my arm band that holds my phone, strapped on my iPod, my Garmin, my knee bands, and grabbed my water bottle (which is never really filled with water) and out the door I went.  OMG, can I just tell you it was already 72 and with about 95% humidity.  Ack!  This was not going to be pretty.

It wasn't.  There was more walking than I really thought would happen, but it was good.  Listening to The Extra Mile  and Pheddipidations podcast for the race was really nice.  They were funny, motivating, and kept reminding me that there were many other people in at least 44 different countries running this weekend, too.  Hopefully someone was running at the same time I was.  And if they were, they were definitely running faster than me!  My legs were on fire and felt like rubber but I was not, was not, was not going to not finish. 

So I finished.  6.2 miles in as much time as it probably would have taken me to walk the whole thing.  Seriously.  But I'm really glad I didn't settle for the 5K and do what was easy.  Doing things with the least amount of effort is, well, it's probably not a good thing most times.  Plus, I promised myself that I would do this, and I don't break promises unless it's beyond my control. 

Here's the route I ran:



Once again, I am desperately hoping for cooler weather so that running this route won't cause me to wish for a speeding meteor to take me out.

For those of you that ran the WWFoR this weekend, congratulations.  It was a pleasure to run with you.

An update in pictures.

Here's a few recent pictures for y'all.  :)  Hope you enjoy them!


Mary came for the night last weekend and the girls insisted that she sleep in their room on the floor.  Of course, they miss her so much that they slept with her, too.  Awwwwwww. 


Playing outside.  If you're up north, it's nice and cool/cold by you.  By us, it's still summer.


Hannah thinks that something is funny.  Not sure what it was though.


We had a little cold front last week.  It was so nice outside that we did all of our schoolwork on the lanai.  The girls were doing their math here. 


Pizza!!!!!  I love pizza.   I love making pizza.  My scale does not like the fact that I love pizza.


But it's oh-so good and fairly inexpensive to make.  I'm drooling now.

Hannah and Kali decided that they wanted to debunk their bunk beds.  :)  Kali has been having some problems sleeping at night, so I'm hoping this helps her out. 


Cleaning out under the bed.  They piled everything in the middle of the room. 


Gosh I have cute kids!  Seriously, how did that happen?! 


Helping daddy out.


Success!!!!


Kali was very happy when it was all done. 


So was Hannah.


Really, is there anything sexier than a man vacuuming?!  :) 




I guess Hannah felt it necessary to make signs for their beds.  It's not like they're going to forget which bed is theirs, but you never know!


Lady was hiding from Tramp. 

JoAnn's is having a pattern sale next weekend.  I need to get over there and find a pajama pattern for Hannah.  She'll need new jammies, and I need to use up this flannel I have here!  Eventually it will cool off enough for flannel jammies down here.  It's time to open up the holiday workshop in my office.  Kali's Christmas pajamas are nearly done.  I just have to do the hugely time-consuming ruffle along the bottom.  Maybe I'll get to that tomorrow.

I also need to start making some jam.  On my list is dutch apple pie, peach, and strawberry.  I might make some more pumpkin butter, too.  Mmmmmm.   Speaking of pumpkin, I made some pumpkin pancakes yesterday.  They were soooooo good.  My scale won't like the fact that I ate those, either!  Damn you, scale!

Next weekend is the World Wide Festival of Races weekend.  I'm signed up to do the 10k, and though my running has been wayyyy off lately and my hamstring is bugging me, I'm still hoping to finish it without falling over.  Of course, there's no cool weather for next weekend, either.  Ugh.  And once I finish it, I will put up the map from my Garmin to prove it.  ;) 

My computer.

Well, seems as though my computer finally gave up on me.  Thankfully, Alex had one that had issues, too, but his friend was able to fix it.  (Thank you, Ben!).  Plus, I didn't loose too much of my stuff, either.  The only thing I wish I still had was photoshop (wasn't my copy of it).  Of course, there will be a few more things that I'll figure out that I'm missing when I go to look for them!

However, my Outlook had all of my email addresses in it!  And goofy me did not write those down anywhere.  Ugh.  So, if you're not getting any emails from me (and you know you want them!) now you know why.

So keep your fingers crossed that karma likes me and keeps this one running for a long time.  At least until the MacBook fairy comes to visit me!  (They are real, right!?) 

This morning it was 52 degrees.  Yes, 52 degrees in Florida in the morning.  I was deliriously happy.  I enjoyed a 4 mile run in that wonderful weather.  Thankfully it was still dark outside and no one could see the goofy grin on my face while I was running.  I seriously think I smiled the whole time because of the weather.  And I seriously think I pulled a butt muscle, too.  Ouchee!  Maybe my butt is telling me that I've been sitting on it wayyyyy too much these past few weeks.  Sorry butt muscles.  I will be out there again in the morning; hopefully it will still be nice and cool.