One night Manfriend and I went out to a bay South of where I live. I had been there once before, but it was completely dark when I was there, so this time we planned to be there for sunset. It's a small bay surrounded by some volcanoes. There weren't many people around, which was great because nobody tried to fight us for the one broken-down bench that was there.
We went to a really nice dinner that night at a restaurant I had never been to before. We were both actually really impressed with the food and I can't believe neither one of us took pictures.
I was at the Nike outlet store this past weekend, and they were having a 40% off clearance sale, and I picked up a couple great things, including a t-shirt to run in. All of the graphic tees were heavy, but there was one shirt that was silky smooth, and for 5 dollars, I took it. I also bought a red, lightweight track jacket that was normally $50, but I got for $13. Not bad at all.
While Manfriend was here we made an apple pie. I made the same apple pie that I made for Thanksgiving. The only thing was that this time I had to make my own pie crust. Cutting cold butter into flour is no laughing matter, for which I was happy that Manfriend was there to help. He's a good manfriend like that.
It was delicious.
***You can find the apple pie recipe here. The only thing that should be changed is that it was on the watery side, so add more flour.
***The pie crust is found here. It was incredibly light and flaky. We used salted butter instead of shortening, and it was great. We doubled the recipe, thinking that it was only enough for one crust, but we were wrong - we had a ton left over.
And you know what my family does with leftover pie dough? We make peanut butter and jelly pie. It's what it sounds like. And it's even better than you're thinking. And it is wonderful.
It's been a while, yet again. My manfriend came to visit, and when he visits I don't write much. I don't take many pictures because he takes so many pictures, and for some reason there seems less to write about. When I get pictures from the last week back from him, I'll be sure to post them - we did some fun things while he was here.
I decided to do a "best of" post today, a simple post about some things I found fun, interesting, or even silly over the past week and a half, and that I just want to share.
First of all, the Boston Marathon was on Monday, and although the elite Kara Goucher didn't win, she did set a personal record for herself which is amazing in itself because she had a baby last fall. Wow!
Two bloggers that I follow also ran Boston. Small Town Runner ran even after an injury, so she did an amazing job, although I know it wasn't the performance she wanted. You can read about her race experience here and here.
Skinny Runner did two marathons last week - the exclusive Gansett marathon and then Boston two days later. She's crazy. You can read about her Gansett experience here and Boston here.
My running? Not so elite or exclusive. Well, it's exclusive because I run by myself with Lucy. She's the exclusive member of my exclusive running club. We only met twice last week for really short runs, but we keep it like that to keep it exclusive. That's just how it is.
But really, I'm hoping to be building up again. I've been lazy, and I know it's mostly all in my brain. I know I can run much farther and many more miles, I just have to convince myself of that while I'm running. It needs to happen because Manfriend loves foods and desserts even more than I do, and if he's eating chocolate cake....
Said manfriend left yesterday on a plane back to go home, but before he did that we headed to the Scripps Aquarium in La Jolla.
While it was nice, and there were a lot of fish to see, I think we both agreed that it was not as good as the Newport Aquarium on the Oregon Coast (which at one point owned Keiko, the whale from the Free Willly movies, and you know that was a big deal to me as a kid).
After the Aquarium we went to a great little restaurant called Prep Kitchen and enjoyed a lunch on their patio. We tried to find a park to hang out at it, but apparently everyone else in San Diego thought it'd be fun to go to the park in La Jolla yesterday as well, so we had to drive down to Pacific Beach to even find a parking spot next to a park. But we did. Then I put that man on a plane.
Any and all exciting adventures that were had last week will have to wait to be told, but I will tell you right now that we did play Connect Four, and although I think the score was 9-1 (him), I did win thumb wrestling later on. In case you need a reminder about how cool Connect Four is:
And on a completely unrelated side note that must be written because I am from Portland, I give to you the website Dads: The Original Hipsters (a little bit of questionable content included).
Have a great Easter.
"How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who bring good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of salvation, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion 'Your God reigns'". Isaiah 52:7.
This last weekend our staff and both boards (Mexican and American) met at Las Gaviotas for a relaxing retreat. We had devotions, shared communion, and the boards had meetings, but mostly it was a time to relax and spend time together. We've stayed at this place before, and although we had a few complications, everything ended up working out just fine. They are rental houses, so we rent three of them and do all of our meetings and meals in one house. These houses are huge, some with 6 bedrooms, so they are perfect for us, considering there were about 30 people attending.
Maribel, our daycare's housekeeper, rode with us to the retreat, and her 3 month old, Ismael, got to go along! I spent a few minutes in the Costco parking lot, amusing him.
This is the view from my parents' balcony, looking out onto the rest of the development, and the Pacific Ocean.
We all went out to dinner on Saturday night, and these pictures are from our table inside the restaurant, and out on the back deck.
Run: 2.4mi/23:30
At least I'm getting up and doing it, right? I liked that in my 23 minutes of running this morning I saw and said good morning to three people that I actually knew. Not other joggers/walkers, but three people that I know personally. Small town.
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Last night my sister in law posted a link on her facebook to this blog article on raising grateful kids. It's an important lessons, and not just for parents, but for all of us, to stop and think and remember all the things we have to be grateful for. It seems that when we have more, we thank less. All I really want is to live a life of gratitude because the gifts I have been given are so wonderful.
Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.
It's no secret that I love John Steinbeck. He's my man. I picked up my copy of East of Eden while I was home over Christmas in the hopes of reading something familiar (and I've read To Kill a Mockingbird more times than I can count). I've always loved long, sweeping, epic family stories. I can trace this back to when I thought the Sweet Valley High genealogical super book was fascinating.
I believe there are a few different ways that a book can be good. You can enjoy the style of writing (Dickens), the subject matter (McDougall), or the characters (Lee). One way I tend to judge my books is how captivated I am. In all truth, I tend to look forward to the feeling of accomplishment of finishing a book. Unfortunately, that means that sometimes I'm more in a hurry to finish, than to enjoy the book. But, you know it's an excellent book when you look up and realize that you've reached the 300th page without noticing all those pages fly by.
The spiritual implications in Steinbeck's piece are huge, which can't be surprising with the name of the book. It's been a while since I read the book, and over time I tend to forget details of books I've read. I think on my last reading I was most enchanted with the way Steinbeck writes a story, the colossal story in its entirety, the characters. This time, the Biblical connections were of more interest.
The last word in the book is timshel, and the entire book revolves around this idea. Three of the characters have this conversation at a pivotal point in the book - that the word timshel, in Hebrew, means "thou mayest", not "thou shalt" or "do thou" as so many Bible translations have led us to believe. Timshel gives us permission, instead of telling us what we will do, or commanding us to do something. This word appears in the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis chapter 4, after God finds Cain, discovers what he has done to Abel, and God tells Cain that although sin is "crouching at the door", timshel rule over sin. Not that he has to, not that he absolutely will, but that he has the ability to do so. One word can change so many things.
I could go on and on with this book review, but I'll stop before I tell everything. I know, I know, I'll read somethin besides Steinbeck soon.
