We have had two fun weekend’s back to back. First, this blog updates you on our fun picnic last weekend (Nov 4) that we had at Samford. The first part of the week leading up to that weekend saw a few trees start to change their colors.
By the end of the week, the colors were fantastic. So part of the motivation for the picnic was to get out and see the beautiful fall colors.

Unfortunately, the day was brightly overcast making for terribly washed out pictures. So for all the pictures you see here, in your head imagine that it was actually twice as beautiful in person! This picture above shows the east end of the Samford campus from a vantage point near the top of Shades Mountain.

Analise enjoyed playing with the leaves quite a bit. Here in this three picture sequence, you can see Analise doing the “Leaf Dance”.

We took many more pictures, which I’ve included in a separate photo album. Just click on the picture below.

Beautiful Alabama Fall Weekend #1

No, not cockroaches. Some stomach bug found Brian and I last night, and it’s been miserable around here. Thank goodness for my in-laws, who rescued Analise from the sick house, and I hear she had a good day. It was the first time she’s been away for the whole day, but man did I need it! I think we’re both on the upswing tonight, thankfully, though I’m not sure poor Analise will survive with just applesauce and saltines for dinner. I’ll check back when we’re feeling better. Hope everyone’s well!

This morning, registration opened for the 2006 Ford Ironman Triathlon in Panama City, Florida. Two guys from church had talked about doing it, and Brian had decided he wanted to tackle the Ironman distance race as well. The registration opened at 9am, and they knew it would sell out fast, so you had to register online. Brian went biking with a friend this morning, and he came home a bit late, just 40 min before church, jumped in the shower, and yelled to me that he had to register before church. I was GRUMBLY because I did NOT want to be late. It only took a couple minutes to register and we were at church just as the music was starting. The guys from church hadn’t registered yet, and they were racing to do it after the service ended. We’re still waiting to see if they managed to get their registration in on time… The race includes a 2.4 mile swim in the ocean, a 112-mile bike, and a 26.2 mile marathon. Brian’s done a half-ironman distance triathlon out in Californa, known as the “World’s Toughest Half-Ironman”. I’m sure you’ll hear much more about the Ironman training and adventure to come!

Snuggly Saturday Morning
Alright, I’m snuggled on the couch while Analise is watching Dora the Explorer. We’ve rediscovered Saturday morning cartoons lately, and our favorites (in order) are The Backyardigans and Go, Diego, Go! Dora isn’t quite as much fun as Diego… better adventures and more Spanish with Diego. Analise is so funny – the Backyardigan animals dance a lot, and she loves to dance when she sees them get started.

Brian and Analise went out for their own morning adventure and walked to McDonalds to find our breakfast of Egg McMuffins and Sausage McGriddles. The weekend’s starting out well!

Dinner and Dogs
Dinner last night – Chicken Capri from the recipe on yesterday’s blog – was excellent. I served it with pasta, which probably isn’t in the South Beach Diet list of side dishes but it worked well. I used 6 chicken breasts, an entire container of ricotta (1 3/4 c), and a can of stewed italian tomatoes that I cut up. It was cheesy and tomato-ey, and the chicken was very tasty from the sautee’ing. I give it 2 thumbs up!
We have a lot of dogs in our neighborhood. I remember the first night we moved into this house, hearing a lot of barking during the night, and thinking that this was something you could never know about a house/neighborhood until you actually spent a night there. Last night, though, the neighbor’s dog barked incessantly starting at about 5am. Ag. It was so annoying. Bark, bark, bark, bark, bark…silence (and you’re thinking it might be over)…. Bark, bark, bark. Ag.

Boo!
I forgot to blog this past week about our neighborhood tradition called Boo’ing. Our next-door-neighbor had told us in early October that there was a tradition that someone would drop a basket of treats off on your door (they “boo’ed” you), and then you had 24 hours to do it to someone else. So on Saturday before we left for Clemson we got boo’ed with a GREAT package. It was a huge plastic bowl filled with candy corn, a ceramic pumpkin bowl of chocolate halloween candy, a pumpkin potholder, a hand towel, some Ghost Peeps (which, by the way, should not be called “Peeps” but “Boos”, shouldn’t they???), and a little toy for Analise. It was quite a treat! So I sent Brian out get some treats to boo one of our neighbors. It wasn’t quite as good a selection as Brian wasn’t sure what to get, and we ended up spending about $12 ($5 more than I thought we’d spend). So we boo’d our neighbors on our way out of town the next day. I’m sure they knew it was us, because they were all in their dining room eating when Brian dropped it off on their porch. We were supposed to put a sign up on our door saying that we’d been boo’ed already, but we sort of didn’t get around to it. All week long, we kept saying that we needed to print off the sign and post it. Then on Sunday evening, the night before Halloween, we got boo’ed again! Whoops! We decided we’d “re-boo” the basket to our neighbor across the street:) All in all, it was kind of fun. But then I just found out that our sweet neighbor who told me all about this, who’d had her basket ready since September, never got boo’ed at all! I felt so bad. I might have to drop off a treat on her doorstep sometime soon, though.

Halloween
Brian posted the pics, but I had a few things I wanted to recount. The first that he forgot to mention was that Analise won us a cake during the cakewalk at the festival we went to! Sweet! We didn’t buy any candy for trick-or-treaters since I had a huge bag leftover from vacation bible school this summer. I left a large bowl on the front porch, thinking kids would take SOME (you know, a reasonable 3-5 pieces each) while we were gone. When we got home from the festival, the huge bowl was nearly empty, and it was only 7pm and still lots of kids out! I managed to find another bag of chocolate in the cupboard, and sorted through Analise’s stash for the stuff we didn’t want:) We just had enough! I can’t believe they took all our candy while we were gone! Brian wasn’t surprised, though.

Have a good weekend!

Yes, I am here. Brian’s been the blog hero lately, and he’s working on another with fall photos of the beautiful changing trees. But I’m just trying to stay on top of our house, which seems to get unclean as fast as I get it clean. That’s actually 99% due to Analise. She’s just today learned to reach a new level of shelves. This means that there’s a whole new world of “toys” that she can play with. Picture frames are strewn all over, my Willow Tree nativity set animals are lying around, and her “good books” (only to be looked at with supervision) have been found. She’s heard “NO” a few too many times today, and I’m sure she thinks I’m just the grumpiest mama (in fact, I’ve said it 3 times since i started this post 2 minutes ago!). I think she’s a bit grumpy, too, maybe due to teeth. We’re about to head to the bedroom for a nap, but I’ve got a cake in the oven that needs to come out – Darn Good Choclate Cake from The Cake Mix Doctor Cookbook. We’re having company for dinner, and I’m going to try a new recipe from The South Beach Diet Cookbook, on recommendation from my sister, called Chicken Capri. Here you go – we’ll let you know how it is after tonight!

Chicken Capri

• 1 c reduced fat ricotta
• 1/2 tsp dried oregano
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp ground black pepper
• 4 boneless chicken breasts
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 cup crushed tomatoes
• 4 slices reduced fat mozzerella cheese

In a blender or food processor, combine the ricotta with the oregano, salt and pepper. Process to blend. Rub the chicken with the garlic powder. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the chicken and cook for 12 mins per side. Place the chicken breasts, side by side, in a large baking dish and allow to cool.
Preheat the oven to 350F. Spoon 1/4 cup of the cheese mixture and 1/4 cup tomatoes onto each chicken breast. Top each chicken breast with 1 slice mozz. Bake for 20 mins, or until thermometer reads 170 and juices run clear.

It all started Friday night when friends from Clearwater invited us over for a pumpkin carving dress-up Halloween party. I went as Dr. Spandex (wearing my bicycle shorts combined with the nice shirt and shoes I normally teach in).

Analise went as a TV-remote-control-bearing lion. Kristine went along with Analise as the TV-remote-control-bearing lion tamer. Other funny guy costumes included a Hooter’s waitress (Kurt), a sumo wrestler (Byrant), superman (Stephen), a redneck hillbilly tooth fairy (Michael), Cereal Killer (Blake), Cow (Ben). Girl costumes included Kris-Kross (Stephanie and Claire), Marilyn Monroe (Lauren). Here’s a picture of all the girls (after Analise had already changed into her pajamas).

Unfortunately, we couldn’t stay for the actual carving, so we had to carve our own pumpkin on Sunday night. That was a lot of fun, and we came up with our own design. Here a few pictures…

Earlier in the day Saturday morning, Samford was having homecoming festivities associated with our homecoming football game. We went to watch the parade. Analise dressed up as a pumpkin.

Finally, last night for Halloween we went trick-or-treating in our neighborhood as part of our walk through the dark scary woods to Lakeside to enjoy the harvest festival with Grandma Toone. Analise had a blast. Her favorite thing to do was to go tearing through the gym carefully avoiding being run over by the big kids and the grownups. For the lucky ones who made it all the way to here. I’ve uploaded two short video clips of her at the gym:

	Click on the picture to download an mpg movie or you may also stream the video using real player.
	Click on the picture to download an mpg movie or you may also stream the video using real player.

We just got home from our trip to Clemson. It’s COLD here – in the 50’s! The house was cold, and I’m hovering under a blanket waiting for it to get really warm, but I think we’ve turned the corner from a/c to heat season, and I’d better start dressing appropriately. We went up into the mountains of northern South Carolina, just over the border into North Carolina to see some beautiful views and catch a glimpse of Whitewater Falls, the highest waterfall east of the Rockies. Very pretty! After our picnic lunch, we stopped in Atlanta at Ikea, the mega-Swedish furniture store. It’s a great store… We found a new floor lamp for $32 to start the living room redecorating we’re hoping to do over the next year:) I’ll post a picture tomorrow. It’s great to be home, but unfortunately, we found water under the bathroom sink, so hopefully we can figure out what’s up with that. There’s no major leak to be seen, so hopefully it’ll be easy (and cheap!) to fix. We just finished watching Charlie Brown’s Great Pumpkin special, and I’ll probably call it a night very soon. Busy day tomorrow with a couple appointments and our weekly home church here at our house that I’m not at all prepared for. We’ll catch up more later!

Hello from Beautiful Clemson, South Carolina!

We have had an awesome spir of the moment trip up here to my college Alma Mater Clemson, SC. The drive up was nice. The weather was beautiful and we had a tremendous tailwind most of the way. Shortly before driving through Atlanta, we stopped for a DQ break. Here’s my beautiful wife and daughter enjoying a Georgia Mud Fudge Blizzard in Georgia! Shortly after we made it through Atlanta on our way up I-85N, we stopped for a gas and happened upon a Citgo station turned into a cool little Fall Pumpkin Festival.

After a leisurely morning and a trip to the Express Lube for our 6,000 mile oil change (yes, I realize it’s supposed to happen more often than that), I headed out on nothing short of a biking adventure. Absolutely beautiful fall weather, a little on the breezy and chilly side, but awesome nonetheless. I’ve got a bazillion pictures and video to share, but I’ll limit myself tonight to just these three pictures. Check back sometime in the next couple days to hear more about this awesome adventure.

Beautiful South Carolina and North Carolina mountains. I drove Kristine and Analise here in the morning to the Oconee County Airport just outside of Clemson to show them this beautiful view of the mountains I would be riding in later in the day.

Much of my ride today was through roads lined with trees. This picture is from near the top of Sassafras Mountain.

I took this one just after I started my descent back down Sassafras. The road was so steep here that it took me close to 100 feet to stop. It was so steep that I had to weave back and forth across the road to cut off some of the steepness while simultateously squeezing the brakes as hard as I could.

Yes, you read the subject right. Last night as Kristine and I sat down to eat dinner, we thought we heard rain. Then we realized that it was actually Analise dropping a number of her peas one right after the other off the side of her high chair and onto our hardwood floor. It sounded just like rain. It was hilarious, and try as we might, we couldn’t keep from laughing. I hope she doesn’t start doing that now whenever we give her peas! I’ll tell you about the raining trees soon (with pictures, too!)…

Ok, now for the trees… It hasn’t rained (water rain) for probably close to a month now here — which is very unusual for this time of year. So I got out our sprinkler and set it up in our backyard to water, when I noticed that there was a new tree in our backyard! I’m not talking about a 12-inch tree, but a 3-4 foot tree has planted itself right next to our house. We can’t imagine where the seed came from to plant this tree because it doesn’t match any of the other trees that we can find anywhere near it. It may have been brought in by a bird or squirrel! In any case, it’s in a good location, and I’ve got a few pictures of it to share. If anyone can identify what type of tree it is, please let us know! I’ve also included pictures of our other trees in the yard, but the first two are of the newly planted tree…

 

And now, here are a couple good ones looking towards the front of our house from the street. In the top picture, you can see four of the five really large trees (70-75′) in our backyward. In the bottom picture, you see our beautiful river birch that has already lost a lot of its leaves without them changing color 🙁

Finally, from left to right … a picture looking at our banana tree that was damaged from Hurricane Katrina (see the dead yellow leaf hanging off the side). In the middle, you can see the largest tree we have in our backyard. Notice all the large splits in the tree towards the bottom. This tree is at the lowest point of our yard, yet it rises a few feet above the tall one located at the top of our yard. So it’s by far the biggest and tallest tree we have. Lastly, here’s the large tree next to our driveway and basketball goal.

I started coming down with a cold last night feeling miserable. I must have a touch of the flu, too, as my stomach has been in bad shape. Ag. It’s hard to be the mommy when you’re sick. I even tried to call my mother-in-law to see if she watned some Analise time, but she’s not feeling well either. Bummer. Analise has managed pretty well with graham crackers and Baby Einstien and sporadic intervals. We’re both looking forward to afternoon naptime here in the next hour.

On a different note, here’s a great site to practice carving your pumpkin for Halloween. Happy Halloween from Theo Worlds We’ve got a pumpkin carving party next weekend, so I’d better start designing:) After our nap, maybe…