Especially the mint ones….
Someone dropped a mint m&m on the living room floor, and Lydia found it. And she liked it A LOT. 🙂
Year: 2011
November and I’m Still Running
Well here it is November, and I’m still making an effort to get out to run as often as I can. Which it’s a lot less often that I have been going out all summer long. During the summer I would be out there either running or on my bike every day of the week except Sunday. Now I’m lucky if I can get out 3 times a week. Sometimes it’s only once a week. It’s not that I’m being lazy either, I WANT to go out more often. But now that it’s colder and it’s dark early in the morning, and it gets dark earlier in the evening, there seems to be no time for me to go out while Kyle is home to watch the kids, unless he comes home super early.
Last year, I was trying to go out and ride my bike as far as my legs would go 5-6 days a week. I had mentioned a need to take up running. I even tried running to the corner of my street and back a few times. But I could never make it so I spent more time on my bike. But late in August or early in September, when I woke up early for my usual 5:30am bike ride, and it was pitch black outside, I felt that it just wasn’t safe to go out. I didn’t want to get hit by a car, or crash into a curb that I didn’t see in the dark, or have some coyote or cougar be startled by my whizzing by on a bike and have it jump out and attack me, so I just stopped going out.
This year I started going out for walks and then out on my bike in June after Lydia turned 6 weeks old. Then I got started on running, and was more serious about it than last year. I also had a better plan than I did last year. Last year I just went out and wanted to run as far as my legs would go, which I could barely make it to the corner which is only 6 or 7 houses down (it’s really not far at all). This year a friend got me started by walking for a 10 minute warm up first THEN only run for 1 minute and then walk 4 minutes and alternate that all the way out and all the way till I got back home. I went out mostly by myself and slowly over time reduced my walking time. Now I have been able to go out and walk my warm up and then run the rest of my entire route! So exciting. BUT the changing of the season is throwing me some challenges. I was determined that when I woke up for my 6am run (or bike ride) and it was pitch black outside, that that wouldn’t be the end of my running for this year. I had to get creative. Basically I switched to going out in the evening, after the heat of the day wore off, but early enough that I could get back before dark.
Now it’s getting darker and darker earlier and earlier, so I don’t get out as often as I would like. But I do still get out sometimes. But I think running in the cold is also harder on my lungs. The most difficult part about running, for me, has been to figure out how to breathe! I always feel like I am breathing but I’m not getting enough oxygen. I think I have overcome that in the past couple of months. I think my breathing once I get running has kind of found a groove and it’s easier to get the oxygen that I need. But now the cold air makes it harder than ever to breathe. The air is freezing, which means my nose freezes and my lungs feel frozen too. So I still go out, but if I need to walk because I can’t breathe I allow myself to do so. I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to keep up with going out for a run. Especially since we will continue to loose a little bit more daylight every day for at least the next month. Weather permitting I will be able to go out at least once a week (on Saturday when Kyle is home all day). I just don’t want to have to start all the way back at the beginning next spring. But I’m glad that I’ve kept up with it so much longer than I did last year, and that in itself makes me happy.
Remember all those apples?
I finally finished them! But I bought myself a new toy to help me get through them:
It’s a food strainer. It’s really awesome too. I just quartered the apples (cut off any pieces that looked yucky) and then steamed them and ran them through the strainer. No standing there FOREVER pealing apples while my hand cramps up. And the applesauce came out smooth and an even consistency! Love it! It helped me make a whole bunch of applesauce, and made a quick job of it.
So this year I made some apple mint jam, candy apple jam, apple pie jam, cinnamon apple rings, apple pie filling, unsweetened applesauce, cinnamon applesauce, and blueberry applesauce.
I love making yummy things!
Halloween 2011
Today started off bright and early getting kids dressed in their costumes for school. I sent Ethan and Tyra off, and then I got Jeremy and the little girls all dressed up so that we could go down to the school. Right after B track started the parade was scheduled to start, so we waited in the kindergarten yard for the bell to ring, and then I took the little girls inside to find a seat to wait for the parade to start.
Every year that I’ve gone to see the Halloween parade, I think I’ve got a good seat in the big entrance hall, but then all the people that come in late, just kind of come in and stand in front of everyone that was there early. So it ends up being hard for me to see and take pictures of the parade, and if it’s hard for me to see, it’s pretty near impossible for my little kiddos to see their siblings. This year, however, the school got smart. They decided to set up chairs in the gym in such a way that every person had a front row seat. Then when the parade came through they just wove up and down the rows of chair. It was great!
Before the parade started Dinah asked me if we would see Ethan, Tyra AND Jeremy. I said “Yes, I hope so.” Which ends up being a funny thing. Tyra’s class was the first of my kiddos classes to come through, but notice how Tyra’s teacher, Mrs. Gustafson, is looking behind her (I find out why in a minute).
Only half of Tyra’s class ended up passing us, and I was starting to get concerned that my daughter wasn’t with her class like she should be. So I started looking all over the place for her. She ended up leading the half of the class that was behind her, a different way and they caught up with the rest of the class in the row behind mine. So Dinah and Chloe didn’t see Tyra. Stinker, I just told Dinah that we would see them all, and THAT is why Mrs Gustafson was looking behind her looking like something wasn’t right! After school when we were all in the car heading to Kyle’s work Tyra cried that I wasn’t there. I had to tell her that I WAS there, but since she had gone the wrong way she ended up NOT passing me. She was kind of surprised to hear that. We did see Ethan and Jeremy when their classes came by, so that was good. 🙂 Ethan’s teacher was dressed as a baby, and Jeremy’s teacher was dressed up as ‘Fancy Nancy’.
After school got out, we got to go into town to trick-or-treat at Symantec, where Kyle works. The kids love trick-or-treating at daddy’s work, and they look forward to it every year. This year I’m grateful that Halloween is on Monday which is ‘early out day’ for the school, so we were able to leave earlier and be at Symantec right when trick-or-treating time started.
Isn’t Lydia such a cute Tenderheart Bear? My mom made this costume when Jenny and I were little. Of course this is the one Jenny wore and mom can’t find the Friend Bear costume that she made for me to wear. Oh well, at least almost every one of my kids has worn this one. 🙂
Here is a picture of all the kids when we were done at Symantec:
Tyra the kitty cat, Dinah the furry lion, Lydia the sweet care bear, Chloe the witch, Jeremy the pumpkin, and Ethan the kangaroo. Tyra, Dinah, Jeremy and Ethan’s costumes were additions to our collection this year. We got them at DI for a few dollars apiece. I LOVE that Ethan used his pouch to hold his pumpkin. That was totally awesome!
Then we came home to pass out candy to trick or treaters in the neighborhood. Kyle ordered and picked up pizza on his way home. But when he got home rather than having everyone sit down to eat, Kyle decided to just take the kids around the neighborhood to show off their costumes. Lydia was SO done, so she stayed home with me to pass out candy and clean house. When Kyle and the kiddos came back, we ate. And I noticed that Chloe was missing her cape. It must have fallen off somewhere, and Kyle didn’t notice. I’m so bummed that now we have an incomplete costume. Other than that we had a great day.
Pumpkins
We went to WinCo yesterday to let the kids pick out their pumpkins, and Kyle thought it would be nice to do the grocery shopping there as well. Halfway there Kyle realized he didn’t have his wallet, and wanted to know if I had mine, of course I did. So we kept going. The kids had a great time picking out their pumpkins, and the pumpkins were on sale nice and cheap.
Some of the kids changed their minds a few times before settling their minds. As you see, Dinah is carrying an orange pumpkin, she ends up picking a white pumpkin and this orange one became Lydia’s. 🙂
Jeremy climbed on top to get closer to all the pumpkins so he could better choose.
We decided that we either needed to carve our pumpkins tonight or it just wasn’t going to happen. There are a ton of things planned for tomorrow, so there just won’t be time to get the pumpkins done and out on the porch. So here are all the kiddos waiting to get started with their pumpkins:
The girls pumpkins were all easy because they picked the potato head sets. So we had Tyra, Dinah, and Chloe’s pumpkins all done in less than 10 minutes. The boys, however, wanted to CARVE their pumpkins.
I don’t know how Jeremy escaped without having a picture taken with his finished pumpkin. And the zucchini clown was Kyle’s idea. 😉