Jelly Bean 10k

I ran my Jelly Bean 10k at the gym, on the treadmill, Wednesday.
One of the Y gals took my picture at the beginning of my run

I tried to take one at the 5k mark.  I wanted to show my race bib and not my armpit.  This was more difficult to do than I thought it would be.  Maybe this was because I was running at the same time.

My goals for this run were to get under 60 minutes, no matter what.  Even better would be 58 minutes.  I am happy to say, I PR'd at 57:17!

While I did walk a 1/2 mile to cool down, this is me picking up the boys from Child Watch 8 minutes after finishing my run.  Lex did not care how sweaty or smelly I was; he just wanted to be loved by his mama.

I thought it would be fun to take our picture with the Y's Easter bunny, Daisy.  Cavell made bunny ears and an Easter "basket" with eggs (all paper cutouts).  He very happily hop-hop-hopped over to Daisy's cage.

Move Along

Lex is now hypermobile. The walker has been taken out of storage and he took to it like a natural.

After only one day of use, he has mastered the walker including changing directions and making turns.

He has a little competition for resources.  Cavell has decided that it is fun to use the walker to play postman.  He walks around delivering mail from the walker and making his little brother upset.

Tale as Old as Time

Belle and the Beast came to Alayna's school to sing one of their duets and invite the children to ask their parents to take them to see the show.  She had been asking me about going since then.  Friday afternoon I finally made the decision that I would take Alayna to see the 7 o'clock performance of Beauty and the Beast.

It was a production by the New Braunfels Christian Academy drama department.  The teacher said that over 15% of the student body was involved in this production!  The gal that played Belle was fantastic.  For a high school senior, she was amazing.  We could also tell that "Gaston" had a lot of good experience behind him.  After the Beast sang his song (If I Can't Love Her) and I was applauding, I also explained to Alayna that what he had just sung was very difficult and he had done a fabulous job.  Only after the play did we discover this was the boy's first experience in acting, and he hadn't even known he could sing before getting the part!?!

When asked what her favourite part of the night was, Alayna replies that it was after the show when she got to meet Belle.  I wish I had kept a program so that I could give this young lady proper credit with her name.  Belle was very kind to talk with Alayna and have her picture taken.  Alayna hopes that we will have this picture printed and framed for her room.  The Beast (now Prince) was also nice and spoke with Alayna but we didn't manage to get a picture with him.

Lex is 1

Jelly Bean

I have signed on to run the Jelly Bean virtual race!  I will be running the 10k option.  I need to decide if I will do it Wednesday the 20th on the treadmill or Saturday the 23rd outside.  Anyone else doing this?

Another Pamela's Review

I found one of the missing packs of organic cookie samples.  Paul is now only accused of eating two of them by himself.  It was the Dark Chocolate-Chocolate Chunk option.

I liked these.  They were very chocolate-y.  Dark chocolate.  The chunks didn't have the same deep, rich, dark chocolate flavour, but they were a good match to the cookie.  I loved that the chunks were just soft enough to melt in my mouth without being all melted on the cookie.  The cookie itself was a good balance between crunchy and chewy.  It wasn't soft and floppy when I held it, but it was easy to bite and dissolved while I chewed while still having texture. I would describe the texture a little bit like chewing sugar crystals, except they were chocolate.  I liked these cookies.

We tried the corn bread mix this week.  We weren't planning to use it, but Paul was making a brisket and we needed something to eat with it.  What about corn bread?  Okay.  We started to read the directions and found an additional recipe for Cranberry Orange Corn Muffins.  We made those.

These corn muffins were good and will be made again.  We loved the cranberry orange combo.  Question is, will we purchase this mix or make our own?  It was difficult to separate the super yummy flavour from what, specifically, the mix gave to the muffin.  This was made more difficult by the fact that we baked these on the bottom rack (brisket was still in the oven) so they stuck to our liners and the "crusts" were a little thicker.

You can see the stuck bits in Alayna's picture.  Yes, she really likes brisket.

These corn muffins were good and will be made again.  We loved the cranberry orange combo.  Question is, will we purchase this mix or make our own?  It was difficult to separate the super yummy flavour from what, specifically, the mix gave to the muffin.  This was made more difficult by the fact that we baked these on the bottom rack (brisket was still in the oven) so they stuck to our liners and the "crusts" were a little thicker.

The texture on these were spot on for the way we like corn bread.  While they were light muffins they had that cornmeal feel in the mouth.  We like that.  Our last homemade cornbread had too much, because we used some rather coarse cornmeal.

Who's the Fool

Alayna had been making a big deal about April Fool's day recently, so we decided it would be fun to plan April Fool's Jokes for the tykes.  Most involved their food and food colouring.

The morning started off with a colorful breakfast.  The Kix cereal had a surprise of yellow food coloring hidden at the bottom of the bowl.  As the kids added milk to their bowl, the milk turned a strange yellow color! This little trick went over pretty well with the kids, but things went downhill from there.

For lunch, Alayna had pink milk. Stacy put a couple drops of red food coloring in her milk to turn it pink. When Alayna came home, she proclaimed loudly that she, "doesn't like pink milk and it tasted funny." She took a sip and that was that. But the mind-taste connection would be illustrated even more later.

For dinner, Stacy worked hard the night before and April Fool's day to keep the kids from knowing what was in store, and actually prepare the tricks. Dinner was served in pajamas and the kids were told they needed to finish their cupcakes before they could have their dinner. Dinner was meatloaf "cupcakes" with blue mashed potato "icing" on top.

Stacy even tried initials in ketchup on top of the "icing".

Cavell took a nibble of the mashed potatoes before concentrating on the ketchup and ignoring the rest.  Alayna ate most of her "cupcake" and then proclaimed that there was too much "icing" and it was too sweet so she was done with dinner. Lex ate like a champ and finished off a whole meatball and potato cupcake on his own.

We had to call the kids back to the table so they could eat a dinner of "Chicken Pot Pie." That took a lot of convincing and a little threatening. From the pictures, you can see just how much they enjoyed their meal.

Chicken Pot pie was a vanilla pudding with Mike & Ike candies cut to the size of diced vegetables and topped with a pastry crust.  The kids immediately turned up their noses at the thought of chicken pot pie, but they at least had the decency to crack the crust and taste that.

They ate the crust. Alayna was the first to discover that the sauce had a sweet taste and was willing to give the innards a try.  Cavell took one bite and decided that this was just too much trouble and left the table again.  Alayna started to get into the meal and then complained that the candies were too hard to chew and there were not enough of them. She ate half of her pie and left the table as well.

Lex, Mom, and Dad cleaned up the leftovers without a single complaint.  Well, Lex complained when the leftovers were gone and he couldn't eat any more pudding.

So I guess Alayna got us after all.  We did all the work for the prank and we still ended up getting punked.