Andelin Adventures

Tyra started Girl Scouts late again this year. Last year her troop leader had said that they were going to be meeting on Monday nights this year, and I kind of wanted to keep Monday night open so we can have family home evening. Even though we aren’t very good at holding FHE regularly, I didn’t want to sabotage it by having Tyra gone on Monday nights! So I asked her troop leader if she would get information for other brownie troops in the area for me. I waited all summer and she never got information for me. I called her in October to ask if she had ever gotten information for me and she still hadn’t. So she told me to ask the girl scout council if there are other troops around. In a way now was a good time for Tyra to switch troops anyways. She just finished Daisy’s, and is just starting Brownies. Last year wasn’t the best for her last troop anyways. Her leader canceled so many meetings in a row that I began to expect a phone call on Thursday afternoons to tell me that there was going to be no meeting that night. There were, easily, two full months of NO meetings and they weren’t all cancelled for the same reason. There was always a different reason: the leader is sick, leaders whole family is sick, leader is in school working on her degree and has a project due that she needs to work on, leader just moved and the house isn’t ready for a meeting yet….Getting sick happens, but really the leader should have done some better planning in the other situations.

Over the course of a few weeks, I called the girl scout council several times, before I saw a friend on facebook mention that she just became a GS co-leader and she gave me the contact information for the lady at the council that I needed to talk to. After that things picked up quickly. However there weren’t any troops around here that we could just join so that means that *I* am the new Girl Scout leader! The council gave me the phone number of someone else out in my area that was looking for a troop, and also just happened to be coming from the same troop that Tyra was coming from! She also knew some other people that were interested in girl scouts and so we got a troop organized! Honestly, I knew that someday I would join the ranks as a girl scout leader, I just didn’t expect it right now! I feel like my house is still very cluttered and therefore, it’s very easy for me to feel overwhelmed. But as I get more into this leader business, the more I think this has been a really good thing for ME. I am really having to come out of my shell to stand up and lead these girls.

We had our first meeting today. We made some bread, and then we made some cookie turkeys, and then we let the girls make butter. That was lots of fun. Each girl got a small container with cream in it and they got to shake it, until it turned into butter. We only had one major spill and one container sprinkle a little. Then we finished off the meeting by passing out the hot bread and spreading their butter on it so they could eat it. It was a fun little Thanksgiving activity. And talking with my co-leaders we decided we are going to have the girls help collect toys for Toys for Tots. This is going to be a fun group of girls, and an amazing year of girl scouts! (Not to mention the fact that I get patch happy and being the leader means I get to pick what patches the girls get to add to their vests. 😉 )

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.

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!