Loving Life

Today is Ana's 9th birthday.  But before I get to the celebration of the day for her - here are two exciting (to me) pictures for you to enjoy.  This first one is from David's bling he won last night in the 5K Fun Run he ran in.  He's been training to get a new PR in the 5K - he's previously run two.  His previous best time was around 36:20ish.  Last night, he ran a speedy 26:48 - finishing 3rd in his age division and thereby making him the proud owner of this medal. The other exciting thing was a phone call I got from my in-laws this morning.  They were at a garage sale and called me to let me know there was a whole pile of maternity clothes for sale.  I quickly grabbed my shoes and wallet and zoomed on out.  I found these two bags stuffed full for only $28 - some single shirts cost more than that!  It made me happy! And now to the main event of the day - my birthday girl!  We started off the morning with an early morning mother-da...

I love the month of August.  It's the time of fresh tomatoes and corn on the cob.  I finally got my first taste of the season of corn. If I had to wait much longer, bad things may have happened.  I also love August because it's my birthday month!  My birthday isn't until the end of the month, but I've taken cues from my dear husband and declare a "birthday season" for myself.  Aaron was born 10 days before Christmas, so his birthday is always getting lumped together with Christmas, so he solved that problem by giving himself a whole birthday season.  It's basically an excuse to do all sorts of fun things for yourself in the name of your birthday.  I fought the concept with him for a number of years before giving in and going along with him as long as I could have my own season as well.  It's been a great thing.  I must admist, he's on to something. So last Thursday, my Mom and I kicked off the official start of my birthday season together....

So I had meant to take pictures of my latest summer garden creations so you could drool and feel jealous, but apparently I couldn't control the urge to eat it all before the camera made it out.  So you'll have to imagine a fresh peach pie piled high with whipped topping - made from peaches off our own tree.  Then I realized that I had everything ready in my garden to make some fresh salsa.  I used home-grown tomatoes, peppers, jalapenos, onion, and garlic.  I didn't have any cilantro on hand, so I had to use store bought along with some lemon juice and salt.  YUM!  I LOVE fresh salsa and could eat a lot of it.  That's why there is no picture of it.  Because I did eat a lot of it.  And then Aaron ate the rest of it.  Today is grocery getting day as we are out of most staples.  I don't think I've gone grocery shopping since before we left on vacation.  The cupboard/fridge pickings are pretty bare right now.  Time to...

We went on a field trip yesterday.  It was a learn to canoe field trip for David's age group.  Ana's age group had indoor activities at the nature center and Abby stayed with a friend.  The weather was fine all morning until about 15 minutes before we arrived at the destination.  It decided to start raining.  By the time we were ready to canoe (after watching two snakes eat some mice in the conservation center), the rain had become an annoying cold drizzle.  We survived and David learned to steer a little bit better.  Ana had fun indoors staying warm and toasty.  David and I were cold and wet and ready to get warm by the end.  Before heading home, we stopped by Walmart for a few necessities.  We scored a few more things than I was planning on getting.  Score #1 - Half price Easter candy!  I hadn't gotten the kids their usual chocolate Easter bunny from me because the few times I looked prior to Easter, they only had the ginor...

Well, it's been awhile since I last posted.  So I thought I'd try to catch up with our doings.  We had a tragedy strike this week.  Abby came to me in tears the other day when she found Prince Charming had been cut in half.  He is Snow White's Prince Charming.  Cinderella's Prince Charming is still intact.  He is awaiting surgery.  I must say that Abby has gotten every cent's worth of money out of these little dolls.  She plays with them so much.  She has a lot of these little dolls - not all are princess related.  They all have names and characters and are involved in all sorts of scenarios in her little play world.  I do need to fix Prince Charming soon as there is a shortage of males in her doll world.  I'm hoping a little hot glue gun action will keep him together. Well, Aaron finally succombed to the sickness that pervaded our house.  He had the fever and everything for the past two days and even stayed home from wo...

I received a complaint yesterday that after going so many posts without any pictures that when I did finally post some pictures, it was only of my fridge.  So, I took that complaint seriously and in honor of it, I decided to post another picture of my fridge.  This one's for you, Sara.  Notice the shelves teeming with produce?  Makes my heart happy. I could have also taken a picture of the two bags of cutie mandarin oranges I got (though it's already depleted from yesterday), the pile of pairs sitting on my counter, the avocados, bananas and tomatoes.  I'm a happy girl.  Can't wait to eat it all. So I came home from my grocery shopping excursion to a heavenly sight sitting on my stove.  A pot of noodles and chicken.  My friend Kim makes these and since we were having our Bible study group over last night, she brought them over early on her way through town.  If you've never had Kim's homemade noodles before, here's what...

It's time to get some groceries.  Things are getting pretty bare in the fridge.  With the exception of condiments and a container of juice (not shown), I have in my fridge at this moment:  a carton of cottage cheese, a bit of leftover chili, a small bit of applesauce, a container of hummus, a grapefruit, 5 hard boiled eggs, 2 1/2 dozen regular eggs, one apple, one lemon, three peppers, and one beet.  Here's proof: Apparently I didn't judge my produce properly the last time I went grocery shopping two weeks ago.  I usually try to last three weeks in between shopping excursions.  Aaron and I have greatly upped our fresh produce consumption this past month and I am still learning just how much we need to buy.  I will not last another week without fresh fruits and veggies.  I'm even out of things like potatoes and onions too.  Makes cooking a little difficult since we don't eat a whole lot of meat either.  I guess we could eat eggs fo...

I'll start first with some pictures of outside yesterday.  We shoveled a path up our back steps.  Here is Abby standing in the snow path.  David's comment about all the snow was that it was the most he's ever seen in his life. Ana going down the slide into the snowpile at the bottom. Abby was excited to be so high up in the trees. After this picture, Ana hopped the fence to play on the other side where there was a huge mountain of snow from Casey's parking lot.  The simple joys of life. I realized I don't have any pictures of David outside.  He was in the process of hunting for his glove when I was taking these pictures.  My hand got cold holding the camera (hard to push buttons with mittens on), so I took the camera inside before we played some more. We went down the street to a friend's house.  He shovels his driveway all winter long into a huge pile on the side of his yard.  The kids use this pile to sled down and occasionally snowb...

Yeah!  I got my picture issue resolved!  So here are some random pictures of my life the last week or two.  Abby has grown out of her shoes, so we went shoe shopping last week.  Despite my desires to stay strong against commercial hype, I have such a weak spot for Abby and her princess stuff.  Buying into the whole commericialism of various products has always irritated me and I've never done it (possibly a reason why I wasn't considered super cool in school - not that I wanted to be super cool, I could care less if I had all the stuff), until now.  So Abby saw these shoes and immediately fell in love with them.  I decided to indulge her shoe love after seeing the look of infatuation on her face with them.  Only once I got them home, did I realize mistake number two.  They light up.  Can I just say now how much I despise light up shoes?  This fact made these shoes all the more glorious in Abby's sight.  I must admit that s...

So here I sit, blogging, when I need to be doing 30,000 other things.  I had glorious hopes to have my house all shiny clean by the time I picked up my mom-in-law from the airport tonight.  Instead, I have shiny clean spots in my house.  For example, my microwave is gleaming inside and out.  My fridge got a good cleaning too inside, should you ever want to look inside of it.  I put up a new shower curtain to replace the highly torn up, rust covered old one.  Other random things got cleaned.  I guess I wasn't dealing with big picture this week - just little projects that have irritated me for the past several months.  I would try to download some pictures to show you, but I'm still having issues with that and don't have the time to figure it out.  Maybe later.  I was grocery shopping at Aldi's yesterday and saw some Thanksgiving pies deeply discounted there.  Deeply discounted as in 25 CENTS EACH.  So I bought three.  I k...

I had a very great weekend (sorry for not posting - I was too busy having fun).  In honor of our upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, here are ten things I'm thankful for from the weekend, in no particular order. Coffee House - I spent two hours there on Friday morning by myself while the kids were at their classes.  I took along my Bible, my journal, and a notebook.  Can't go wrong with that while sipping coffee and eating a monster cookie.  It was two hours of extreme happiness Ice Cream - I have eaten a lot of it this weekend.  Flavors: Rocky Road, Turtle Tracks, Peanut Butter Panic (more on this later), Vanilla, Chocolate, Raspberry, and a peanut butter chocolate mixer at Culvers.  (I told you I ate a lot of ice cream this weekend, do you believe me now?).  Running - I ran 8 miles on Saturday morning.  My foot felt great and I felt great.  Yardwork - I finished cleaning off my garden and mowed up the bazillion leaves in our tiny ya...

I got news this morning that I won a $45 giveaway to an online store.  Yea!  It was through the blog of a good friend of mine - Kim .  I knew her husband while we were living in Indiana (he was still in high school at that time and hadn't met his lovely wife yet).  Anyway, Kim and I have become good friends over the last half year.  You should check out her blog in the link above.  If you like me, you'll like her.  As Aaron likes to say, "Melissa and Kim are redundant."  But there are some slight differences to us such as she's a psycho running chick who will soon be completing her fourth marathon since June of this year.  I think there may have been a half marathon in that time period as well.  She mainly likes me because I have access to fresh raspberries all summer long.  Anyway, Kim is cool.  And because of her blog giveaway, I am now $45 richer in merchandise.  Not sure what I will get yet.  I struggle with open ...

I had quite the whirlwind of a day yesterday - hence no post until today. Today is a little more sane. Yesterday, I woke up bright and early for an early morning bike ride - we're giving our running muscles a break for a bit and doing some cross training. I, however, do not recommend biking downhill on gravel at dawn. It's very nervewracking trying to see where you're going in the pre-sunrise "light", trying to miss the loose gravel, and avoiding the enormously large and loud combine overtaking you from behind you. But I made it home in one piece. Once there, I got supper going in the crockpot for our small group later on in the evening, got things ready for school - which included waking up three very sleepy children. We did a quick morning of school, then off to take David to his science/writing class with other homeschool kids. I dropped my girls off at my grandma's house where they were to eat lunch before heading to Grandma Cindy's house (they "d...