It's track season...finally!

I love watching the twins run! Official practices started yesterday with the team but both girls have been traning all year. Jenn has healed from her December surgery. She never stopped working out but now she can actually run again. Jenn won't be ready for indoor track meets but Leah will participate. Both girls will hopefully be back competing together in late March. 

They love to run together and I love watching them. They're pretty good too!

Here are a few pictures from a meet last year. 

Where in the World?

When I was teaching I used to host a little time every morning called Where in the World is Mr. Biasi? My classroom full of kids loved to follow him across the globe.  We also had a large map and put pins in every new location he visited. Frequently he even brought little trinkets for my class to show them the cool places he traveled too. It was a wonderful way to teach the kids map skills and they also got to see a glimpse of what the mysterious Mr. Biasi was doing. I wish I had a picture of that. It was such a simple time and such a great thing to do every day. You just have to take my word for it. It was adorable.

Poor Bob has been traveling this whole month of February. His travels are not ending anytime soon either. Today he's in a little town outside of Normandy France. This afternoon he travels to a factory on the border between Finland and Russia. On this trip he has also been to Zurich and Portugal. He will come home Friday evening, rest for two days then he's off again on Monday to return to Zürich and then Barcelona. It sounds very glamorous but I'm sure he would tell you it's not. The nice thing is that he does rack up the frequent flyer miles. When we went to Alaska in August we flew there completely using his free miles. It doesn't take him long to rack up miles again. When we go to Arizona in March we will fly again using his miles. When you see an airplane up in the sky this winter and spring, it's probably Bob!

One box of cheap red velvet...

It's amazing what one box of red velvet cake mix from Aldi turned into. I bought this mini bundt pan last fall. It was perfect for mini valentine cakes.

The mix made 12 cupcakes and 6 generous bundt cakes. 

I used a cream cheese icing as a topping. I had those little cupcake picks leftover from last year. 

So cute!

Happy Valentine's Day

This Valentine's Day I tried to be very festive. On Pinterest I searched  for heart shaped food. I came up with lots of great ideas. I was determined to make a few things that the kids would enjoy. Of the three things I made, only one worked out really well.

My first attempt at making heart-shaped food is below. The first picture is a step-by-step direction of what I was trying to make. And the second picture is how my version actually turned out.

My attempt does not look very appetizing.

I also tried to make this heart shaped bacon. It doesn't look like much of a heart. At least it tasted good. We had heart-shaped bacon BLTs. 

My final attempt at Valentine's Day food was heart-shaped cinnamon rolls. These are the easiest of my three items and they turned out the best. It was so simple. I just bought a can of cinnamon rolls. I cut each roll in half. I unrolled each roll and rerolled to make two small rolls. I attached the bottoms to a point and I ended up with the cutest little hearts. My hands were full of cinnamon by the end but it was worth it. They tasted great and looked good too!

On St. Patrick's Day I will just color everything green.

Reading and a funny story

I was wondering something the other day while I was shopping with Maria in Scottsdale. We ran across a deeply discounted clearance table while at Barnes and Noble. Everything on the table was $2!!!!! What a bargain! I had to limit my purchases because I couldn't fit much into my suitcase. 

So here is what I was wondering...Writing a book is an arduous task. Many authors devote years to one book. How would they feel knowing their hard work has been reduced to a value of just $2?  It's kind of sad. The Counting to Christmas book was adorable and the Hersey Syrup cookbook had great photos but I didn't have a need for either of those. Of course many of the books on the $2 table were just rediculous. If you zoom in you can see the Kardashian sisters actually wrote a novel. I'm sure there was a ghost writer involved in this project. I read a little of it and it wasn't even worth $2!

Luckily I found an excellent book on that table. It was a mystery about a very sinister minister who steals money (and many of the wives) from his congregation. Eventually he is killed which leads to many plot twists. I was enthralled and read the entire book on my plane ride home to Indy. When I finished the book we were almost ready to land in Indianapolis. The man next to me commented that I was a very quick reader. I told him the book was so good I couldn't stop. He noted that he was familiar with the author.  I then offered to give him the book. He was happy to take it and promised he would give it to someone else when he was finished. He too was reading a book and I asked him what he was reading. He told me he was reading a book about searching for your soul. He explained that he is a minister and he's going to make a sermon series out of his book.  Now if you haven't caught on yet, remember the book I had just given this man was about a sinister Minister. I had just given a book to a minister about a minister! What are the odds of that happening?

 

😢

Since my last post was about how much I love my polish pottery, you can imagine how sad this makes me.

I did this myself. So sad. In happier times it was a coffee mug. It wasn't my favorite but I'm still mad at myself. It happened on Saturday while Bob and I were cleaning the stove. I went to grab a quick sip and the cup slid right out of my soap covered hand. Coffee flew everywhere so then I had to clean walls, floor, cabinets AND the stove. 

If you ever need tips on how to clean a Wolf oven or stovetop just ask us. Bob and I have lots of great tips.