Maddie's Thought of the Day

As I was helping Mad get ready for bed today, I told her she better go sit on the potty before we brushed her teeth. She looked at me matter of factly and said, "Mommy, I went potty yesterday before bed, I am good."

Yeah, thanks for trying, but go anyway.

I'm Gonna Try

I just saw the trailer for the new movie I Don't Know How She Does It starring SJP based on a book by Allison Pearson. Trailer for the Movie, although I liked the one I saw on TV better.

The short synopsis is that it's about Kate Reddy a manager of a hedge fund with two small children and how she juggles life. I really hope it's a worthwhile flick to see. I can completely relate to working full time, but at the same time spending as much time as you can with your kids, having a relationship with your husband, trying to keep your house in some semblance of order, and fitting in a few moments for yourself to exercise or read or do a hobby or just decompress. It is a juggle and there are times when I just want to crawl back under the covers and hide. I don't, of course, and try everyday to be the best mom, wife, engineer, etc that I can.

There was a quote at the end of the trailer that made me think...Kate is talking to her husband Richard (presumably after a difficult time in their marriage) and she says, "Me without that job isn't me, but also me without you and Ben and Emily is nothing." I like what I do (if I didn't like getting to work at 3:45 am some days, I would have found a new job by now) and it's definitely a huge part of who I am. But, at the end of the day (and many times in the beginning too), there is no place I would rather be then at home with Kevin and the kiddos. I think being away from Kevin and the kids all day makes me really appreciate the time we do have together. There is certainly a balance that has to be worked on to have the career and the family too. So far, I think we are doing a pretty good job at it.

The song that they played at the end of the trailer - Sabrina Starke - A Woman's Gonna Try is awesome. I love Sabrina Starke's voice. The song is upbeat and has a wonderful message. I think it's a great sentiment for kids, family, life, and even work. When ever there is love involved, I'll try and do whatever it takes.  I may make mistakes, but I'm still gonna try.

Since the movie doesn't come out until September, I am thinking about picking up the book to read. Let's face it, it's not like I would actually go to the theater. The last movie I saw in a theater was The Departed and that was released in 2006. Plus books are usually better than the movie anyway. The reviews for the book are good, although there were a lot of complaints about the ending...that it was wrapped up too nicely. Isn't that what we want though? After a tough day or week of craziness, it would be nice for things to wrap up nicely with a happy ending. True, it doesn't always happen like that in real life, but books and movies are a way to escape real life, so I'll take it.

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!

We are ice cream fanatics and snobs. There is always at least 2 quarts of ice cream in our house. We eat it at least 4 nights a week (another reason we both run so much). If it's box store bought, it's Breyers. If it's not Breyers, it's Vale Wood. If it's cake, it's Dairy Queen (got a peanut butter cup one for my birthday that was awesome!). 

For Father's Day this year, I thought it would be neat to make our own ice cream. I did great a really nice ice cream maker, but the whole making ice cream part isn't really an activity for the whole family. It's not like we are cranking a wooden crank with the ice and rock salt freezing the ice cream. It's an electric mixer that does all the work for you. It's fairly noisy too. But, it does a good job, so I really can't complain. It's pretty much become a toy for me to play with (like I needed another).

I have made quite a few batches now and am finding that there is a certain learning curve. It took me 3 batches to perfect my vanilla recipe. This was a key one to get right since it's by far Kevin's most favorite flavor. I guess I should add that ALL the ice cream flavors we eat start with a vanilla base. Neither of us is a chocolate fan. I believe there is one exception to this rule. I started with a recipe I found online (All Recipes - my favorite website for finding recipes) and tweak my technique and the recipe based on reviews and our personal preference. Now Kevin says it's his prefered vanilla (used to be Breyers Natural Vanilla). 

Making gelato was a new experience.  The first time I had inferior equipment which resulted in making green tea flavored scrambled eggs. Needless to say, that got thrown out! The second attempt was considerably better and resulted in a nice creamy Green Tea Gelato. It was good, but not my favorite. I think a Chai Tea Latte flavor may be really tasty.

Over the weekend, we went up to the cabin. On the property around the cabin are tons of wild blackberry bushes. We picked about 3 cups to bring home. I was thinking of making just a blackberry ice cream, but instead decided to make a blackberry cheesecake ice cream. The cheesecake ice cream was easy...I just took my vanilla base recipe and added in a box of instant cheesecake pudding. That made for a really thick and creamy custard like base all without having to worry about tempering eggs! Then I made a syrupy sauce with the blackberries. I swirled the sauce, graham cracker crust pieces, and the cheesecake ice cream together. I need to work on my swirling technique, but it was still delicious!

Making our own ice cream has been fun to do, even if it's not the family fun time I thought it would be. It's been interesting to experiment with different flavors and techniques. We'll see what fun (or interesting) flavors we come up with next! Family and friends may even be subjected to my ice cream around holidays.

On a side note, it's been a long time coming, but our next experiment in home creations will be beer! We just need to get our butts in gear to figure out what kind to make and get the ingredients for it. Stay tuned!

Oh how I long to be a locavore

A year ago, I had the grand scheme that for 30 days we would be locavores. Essentially, we would eat food and drinks that were produced within a 100 mile radius of where we live. That turned out to be much harder than we thought. 

I can say that we do have an amazing dairy farmer that we get home delivered products from. Vale Wood Farms is just up the road in Loretto, PA and has an abundant offering of dairy products. In addition to milk, we absolutely love their cottage cheese and sour cream. Their sour cream is thick, creamy, and so delicious. It's gotten to the point where we are sour cream snobs. For dairy products, it really doesn't get any better.  

We certainly took for granted the abundance of farmer's markets in and around the Butler/Saxonburg area. For where Kevin and I grew up, you could easily get to multiple markets with numerous offerings of fresh picked vegetables and some fruits that is just delicious. Maybe that set our taste bud standards high, but it doesn't come so easily in Cambria County. In early summer we are lucky enough to get delicious sweet corn from a farm near Indiana, PA. Later in the season, they usualy don't venture out this way and our only daily choice is a farm from northern Cambria county that is sub-par at best. The weekly farmer's market in "downtown" Ebensburg only starts at the end of July and frankly, is a little sad. 

So, for when my parents came out for my birthday last week, what did I ask for but some good Western PA produce. I got zukes, cukes, beans, tomatoes, and corn (Mom also made a yummy peach cobbler). the produce hasn't disappointed us either! I guess we will just do what we can and enjoy the local home-grown produce when we can find it. Just remember how lucky you are Western PA residents!

The Number Fifteen

Fifteen. It's the number after fourteen and before sixteen. In English, it's the smallest natural number with seven letters in it's spelled name (thank you wikipedia). In Irish, fifteen is a cúig déag. Fifteen is a triangular number, a hexagonal number, and a pentatope number. There was apparently a TV show called Fifteen. It's a song by Taylor Swift. Fifteen is the atomic number of phosphorus. There are fifteen total individuals in the mollusk species (bet you didn't know that). It's the age of quinceañera, a important birthday for latin american girls. People get fifteen minutes of fame. Fifteen may be all those things, but to me it's so much more.

You see, many years ago on April 19th at the age of 15 I started to date this boy named Kevin. Little did I know the adventure that would start that day. Fast forward a few (ok, more than a few) years and I married that boy. If you take all the digits from the short date of our anniversary and add them up, what do you get? 1+1+2+6+0+5 = 15. So yeah, I make that one work, but give me some credit for actually realizing that in the greater scheme of things. Move ahead another two years and even though she was due on 12/22, our darling daughter was born on 12/15. Another few years later, our sweet boy decided he didn't want to arrive on his Dad's birthday, but wait another 8 days to be born on 3/15. So three of the most important people in my life are all tied to the number fifteen. In fourteen days (should have posted this yesterday, but the dear husband had to do work), it will be fifteen years since that fateful day in April. So in addition to celebrating my father in law and niece's birthdays, we are hoping for some sort of celebration. Hopefully we can come up with something worthy of the number fifteen!

Round and round she goes...

Last week I completed my first track workout for this training session. It had been a while since I had been on the track. There's this crazy thing we have in Pennsylvania between the months of November and April, maybe May, called winter. So with the early darkness and accumulation of snow, getting to the track was not going to happen. Last week was one where we got that sweet glimpse of spring. So the fam decided to take advantage of the beautiful evening and all go over to the track. I could get in a workout and the kids could get some much needed time outdoors. 

The workout I had on tap was 8 by 400 at 5k pace. So that is 8 laps around the track jogging a 200 in between running each 400 around 1:45. It was easy to tell that I hadn't done a track workout in a while. My first 400 was completed in 1:33...WAY too fast. So I dialed it back and completed all the rest in 1:42 to 1:44. The entire time I had a great cheering section that encouraged me on. It gives such a boost of energy for the last 100 of the 400 to hear the kiddos (well, Maddie) yelling out "Run fast Mommy!"

I love track workouts. Sure one of the main purpose is to work your fast twitch muscles, but there are other benefits too. Going to the track really helps give a change of pace to your everyday runs. Yeah, it is just going around in circles, but if you are lucky enough to have a group of people to run with or a running club, it's a social outing too. If you do most of your runs alone (like me), then it's really nice to have people to meet up with. It's also a way to help you break through those mental barriers. When you don't think you can push yourself harder or do another lap, you do it anyway. There is definitely a great feeling of accomplishment at the end. Maddie knows that Mom and Dad go out running on a daily basis. She usually just sees us leaving or getting back. It's nice for her to see Mom and Dad actually running. One of her favorite things to do is to velcro her running shoes and do laps around our breakfast bar/island and tell us that she is running on the track.

Happy Birthday KRD!

Last year for Kev's birthday, we basically sat around twiddling our thumbs waiting for Miles to decide to make his grand entrance. Well, that didn't actually happen until 8 days later. Amidst it all, we didn't really celebrate Kevin's 30th birthday as we should have. That's a major milestone and it deserved more attention than it got. So I decided that we needed to do it right this year.

What is an appropriate birthday present for 31? Something Kevin has been talking about lately was starting to drink scotch. With the help of our friend Mike, we got him to try scotch to see if he liked it. He did, so I bought him a bottle of Macallan 12 year and a book by Michael Jackson (not the one you are thinking of) all about single malt scotch. The perfect gift from his son, a book about running. From Miles he got the book "The Perfect Mile." It is about the race to run the mile in less than 4 minutes. A gift from the 3 year old...a Nerf gun that shoots suction cup darts...what was I thinking on that one?? He loved all the gifts.

We also decided to completely indulge at our meals for the day! We started off the day with good gourmet coffee and cinnamon rolls. While enjoying that, the breakfast casserole I made cooked in the oven. I tried a new recipe that had potatoes, ham, sour cream, and cheese. It was ooey and gooey and paired well with the citrus fruit salad. A few hours later, I started to prep for dinner. For cocktail hour, we started the evening with hors d'oeuvres of a port wine cheese ball and crackers and sausage stuffed mushrooms. We enjoyed Prime Rib, perfect fingerling potatoes, warm goat cheese salad, and yorkshire pudding. Dessert was Birthday Cake Ice Cream from Vale Wood Farms.

The weekend was nice and relaxing. Unfortunately for the birthday boy he came down with the flu and eventually strep throat on his birthday. So the actual day wasn't as happy,  but I think we did a good  job over the weekend celebrating Kevin's 31st Birthday.