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Around the Web in 3 Min (or longer if you read slowly)

The things that have caught my eye in the past couple of weeks … a complete list of my shared items is, as always, here.

• trade in unwanted gift cards or buy fresh ones cheaper than face value at Gift Card Rescue
• XKCD recently did a very interesting (and funny) survey on color and people's perception of it and names for it
• this one was a LOL for me: fun with identity verification “secret questions”
• a nice post about finding your online running community
• Romp.Com might just be my new favorite online store … check out the blank board books and the glitter letters
• cool hack for drilling upwards without mess
• 12 things you can do with your microwave
• the web has now brought us a service that endures musical hold for us … oh internet, what CAN'T you do?
• unusual, cool, foldable, reusable water bottles and a good deal cheaper than those SIGG ones
• love the idea for these personalized cookies – many possibilities
• Matt and I are turning (*gulp*) 30 this year, but a Great Gatsby Birthday Picnic might just take the sting out of it!!
• oh the cuteness: hobbit doll house
• from hipster to hippie, tee-he-he
• beautiful felt dahlia corsage, for Mother's day or any day
• Say it ain't so!!!
• Maragarita Cupcakes, need I say more?

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What's Cooking: Volume 12

Well by far the biggest success we had last week homemade pizza dough … and I hadn't even really planned to make it. But through a course of uninteresting circumstances and a recipe I happened to see on a new favorite food blog, I made up two recipes of Jim Lehey's pizza dough, which turned out awesome. It was some of the best pizza dough I've made and definitely the easiest. You mix it up in a bowl and leave it to rise for two hours and that's it. Use it or freeze it. Yum. We made three pizzas, a plain ol' peppperoni and cheese for the kiddos and a pesto, chicken, tomato (that most of the kids ate) and then a bbq chicken with gouda. All were delish. All the recipes we tried last week went well, though none were especially note-worthy. I don't know if I'll ever buy ground beef again … I really like buffalo (bison, properly).

Tabby is enamored with “camping out” or, in other words, making s'mores in the backyard. She got to do this no less than TWICE this weekend and when her second go was initially thwarted, she almost lost it. I'm kicking myself for not taking photos.

Next week we have a ton of things going on, leading up to a b'day party for Ben (justamonthlate, thankyouverymuch). So I think I'll focus on things I can make up this weekend and things I can pull together *real* easily. Stuffed peppers, fritatta, maybe some tortellini with some turkey meatballs. It's our version of fast food.

Anyone have any favorite summer recipes you want to share? Grilled things, cool things, drinks, desserts? I have a very good repertoire of fallish and wintery things, but I feel like I fall short in summer! Do share if you can.

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Bad Blogger

What is up with my blogging lately? Or lack there of, I should say. I think I’m in one of those whirlpools of overwhelm right now, just swimming hard to keep my head above water and not get pulled down further. Nothing is wrong, just busy as usual. An update:

• Spent most of Friday at home with the kids, cleaning while they played. I got some messy corners here and there cleaned out and it felt pretty good.
• Had friends over Friday, Saturday AND Sunday night. Guess what my “clean” house looks like now. Haha.
• Did NOT get planting done, but from the looks of our weather forecast, that might not be a bad thing.
• Ran my Mother’s Day race on Sunday. It is billed as a 9K and I didn’t know that it WASN’T until I got to the 9K mark and saw the finish line almost another K away (it’s apparently become a 9.9K since I last ran it). Fun race though and great race shirt.
• Got to spend Mother’s day with my sweet family. We went to breakfast, grocery shopped, the normal stuff. Tabby told me “Happy Mother’s Day!” about 100x.
• We got new sheets for our bed as a combo mother’s day/Matt’s birthday present.
• Matt’s birthday was also yesterday … we did next to nothing to celebrate it. We will have to celebrate later.
• We did a quick tour through the zoo on Saturday morning.
• Tabby and her uncle Andrew built a ginormous fort in our family room that everyone played in.
• We ate pizza twice: once homemade and once from the awesome pizzeria down the block.
• We got cupcakes from The Shoppe, however my peanut butter/chocolate cupcake mysteriously disappeared before I could eat it … my best guess is that Loki munched it down.
• This is week 3 of Tabby’s swim lessons. Thank goodness there’s only 4 … two nights a week is difficult.

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Jim Lahey's Pizza Dough

from:

Ingredients
3 3/4 cups flour
2 1/2 teaspoons instant or other active dry yeast
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon sugar
1 1/3 cup room-temperature water

Directions
Combine dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Add water, reserving the last 1/3 cup until you are sure the dough won't be too wet. Mix thoroughly for at least 30 seconds. Dough should be stiff and not sticky.

Form dough into a ball and leave in the bowl to rise until more than doubled in volume, about 2 hours. Split into two even pieces and use immediately or freeze for later.

Pizza bakes with raw crust, topped, for 15 minutes at 500 degrees.

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Digging, Watching, Reading

I can't believe it's been March since I wrote one of these posts. Where the heck did April go?? Oh RIGHT … mommying, training, working. Anyhoo …

Digging
So with all the training, I've found a couple of sites I really love. Sporty Pal is great because it hooks up with your phone and tracks your runs via GPS. It would be perfect if it was just a wee bit more accurate (it tracked me as being in Macon, GA during part of the half and said I ran like 300 + miles at a pace of 173 MPH). I also love MapMyRun, which has you plot your course on a map to tell you how far you've been. You can share your routes, etc. Though I think my fave is DailyMile which is sort of like Facebook for athletic pursuits. It also has a run-mapping feature that's cool. All of the above also sync-up with Facebook.

Watching
My new Tivo is so cool! I love the dual-tuner thing (records 2 at once), but my favorite thing by far is the Netflix and Amazon streaming!!! We got S3 of Chuck from Amazon and I've watched a few movies as well (I usually eschew movies since I can hardly ever sit down for 2 hours straight and then I forget about them). I finally watched Food, Inc. – good, thought provoking, though clearly had an agenda. I also really enjoyed Outsourced, a movie about a guy whose company decides to outsource their customer service to India and he has to go there and train the personnel. It's funny and sweet. Netflix has also brought Inspector Gadget to our home and Tabby and I are both very grateful. Continue reading “Digging, Watching, Reading”

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What's Cooking: Volume 11

We had a lovely time on our vacation. Since we lived in Nashville for 4 years (me) and 22 years (Matt), we have some favorite places we like to go while we're there. Restaurant Zola, which had excellent gourmet food with a Mediterranean bend to it is sadly, gone. A couple of our other favorites, Monell's and The Loveless Cafe, serve up excellent southern food. Loveless has superb fried chicken and biscuits and Monell's is all-around good home cooking. The Loveless Cafe was where we ate after the race and fried chicken has never looked so tasty. It was, too.

Mostly, though, we dined at my in-law's abode. My step-mom-in-law was kind enough to have excellent things all ready for us, such as muffins and fruit salad, cold cuts and regular salad. It made feeding the kids (and me!) in the morning extremely nice and easy. Breakfast is always a bit challenging when traveling with smalls.

Back home, we're trying to get back in the groove. I just purchased The Biggest Loser Family Cookbook, which has some kind of fun family friendly ideas. I'm making the pizza burgers this week (with bison) and the baked ziti. It's nice for a bit more variation.

Green monster reins supreme at breakfast. Today I used frozen peaches instead of berries, which tastes great. I had a bad experience last week when I didn't get the spinach ground up finely enough and it was icky. So now I've been very careful to put the spinach only in with the milk and blend for a long time and then add the fruit. I've also added ground chia seeds which are supposed to be quite beneficial.

We hit Costco this week and got some falafel (shaped into balls) that I'm having as part of my salads to turn them into more of an entree. We also picked up some of their excellent egg white quiches. YUM. Those will be heated up on swim-lesson night with some freshly baked blueberry muffins.

After we're done with the garden this weekend, I'm looking forward to firing up the grill and making some jerk chicken and maybe roasting some marshmallows in our fire pit. Summer is within reach!!

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WeekEND Update

This time of year is so busy! And I really have a love/hate relationship with it. Tons of graduations, birthdays, other holidays, end-of-school things, plus the start of summer which means YARD WORK. Guess which part I hate?

This weekend was a shorter one since I did “make up” hours on Friday. I usually work four 10s which means that when I take an 8-hour vacation day, there are 2 to make up. So after taking the kids to their 1 and 3 year checkups, we dropped them off at the sitters and I settled into working at home. I did get to go out to lunch with my best guy, though, so that was pretty nice.

Saturday, my awesome cousin, Ryan, watched the kids so we could do YARD WORK. And that is exactly what we did. We cleaned up the backyard, pruning, etc. All we have to do back there before we plant (hopefully next weekend) is to lay down mulch, rock and some more top soil and fix the sprinkler system where Loki (or one of his friends) mangled it a bit. Grrr. Same deal in the front yard, though we didn't quite finish up there – we have an entire flower bed left and thanks to the leaves we didn't rake last fall and the encroaching grass, those beds take FOREVER to prep for planting. Anyway, hopefully we can finish that stuff up and plant next weekend.

Sunday was a really nice day. We had our gym time, followed by errand-running and lunch. Ben was in a super good mood after being super cranky the previous day from his shots and while Matt and Tabby napped, I cut up strawberries, listened to my book on CD and played with Ben who was cavorting around the kitchen doing his funny drunken walk and smiling and cooing at me and bringing me blocks. It was very nice to hang out with just my little guy.

It was a very nice weekend.

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Done with 13.1

I’m happy to report that we managed to finish our first half marathon. My official race time was 2:48:33, which, while definitely not stellar, is acceptable and something to improve upon. Matt, after sprinting off around mile 7 after running with my slow self, finished in 2:34:09, which is great. And a shout-out to our buddy, Patrick, who finished in under 2 hours, making him a rockstar in my book!!

The race itself was perhaps more grueling than I thought it would be. I’d done 10 miles before and adding 3 more with race-day adrenaline didn’t seem to be too big of a deal, but it was no joke. I probably ran about 90% of it, but I walked here and there, especially on hills and there were quite a few of those. The overall elevation gain was small, but it was a rolling course and there were plenty of ups and downs. Mentally it was a tough course too … there was a long out-and-back section where I kept expecting the turn-around at any moment, but it didn’t come for miles. I got so disoriented that when we finally had turned around, I had no idea and thought the on-coming traffic was still the people in front of me. Then right as we got near the end, they ran us around tons of corners, amusement park style … you felt like you were right there and still 2 miles to go. I also thought I might get a slight elevation advantage, but the humidity of Nashville easily canceled that out, especially after two days of acclimatization.

After the race, Matt and I were both sore and tired, for sure. Chiefly, my feet felt awful. The buckets of rain we’d been promised, held off until just as I finished, but we were preoccupied with getting to the car and didn’t stretch worth a darn.

And as there is no rest for the wicked, Ben had an upset tummy that night and we were up with him until 3:15 and then he and Tabby were up for the day about 3 hours later. Ugh. To make matters worse, as I rushed Ben to the facilities for stomach emptying bout #2, I slipped and fell (thank goodness Ben didn’t get hurt!) and further pulled a muscle in my leg that has been plaguing me since then. I’m a bit gimpy still. Continue reading “Done with 13.1”

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369 Days of Ben

You might’ve noticed that while we were out of town, my little man had a birthday! Yes, it’s true … Baby Ben turned 1 the same day mama and dada did their first 13.1 mile run! He had an excellent morning hanging out with his grandparents, big sister and aunt and uncle. That evening we had dinner out (meat loaf and mashed potatoes for him) and afterward, his Nashville family made darn certain he celebrated in style with cupcakes, balloons, candles and the whole shebang (mommy’s lack luster, overwhelmed plan involved a piece of pie at the restaurant). He was serenaded, fed green-frosted cupcakes and got to open two huge presents (with help from sissy) and capped it all off with a shower in the sink. It was a decided success. Continue reading “369 Days of Ben”