I cannot, for the life of me at the moment, figure out how to load pictures on this here blog o'mine from certain spots on my computer. I think it has to do with the fact that I'm playing hop scotch with where the pictures are located in which programs and how I've uploaded or downloaded them to begin with. It's a hot mess over here. It also has to do with the fact that several years ago I requested a Mac instead of upgrading my PC and I've never quite figured out the fastest way to go about the whole photo thing. To top it all off and from what I can gather, Blogger and Apple aren't simpatico and most bloggers switch to WordPress, which isn't free. Since I'm making zero pennies from this endeavor, Bill is less than eager to shell out more of his hard earned money. That is, unless we here, this gathered, albeit small, community raise our collective voice-
"Do you hear the people sing? Singing a song of angry men. It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again!"
I believe in the power of a good broadway song.
This song or musical has nothing to do with my photo uploading skills but somehow I can embed a YouTube video. I present to you Do You Hear the People Sing? from Les Miserables
Let us hear your voice. What say you about, well, anything really? What musicals or songs pop into your head at random? I can't even begin to name all that come to mine.
This may be the weirdest post to come back to blogging with. I'm not sorry for that. I've also read that the first X number of words is what captures most peoples attention to propel them to read the rest of your post. I don't care. It might turn out that I'm not actually coming back to blogging but rather had a temporary burst of blogging energy. Fine.
This is my little place in cyber-history and I think I'll do with it as I please. I like writing on here. I like sharing about my life. But I want you to know my life is not all roses and sunshine or unicorns and rainbows or whatever happy pictures come to your mind. And I want you to know I don't share everything. (Well, sometimes I share about pre-race nerves and what that does to me and it might be TMI for you but it's real and let's be honest, everyone does.) Please don't get into your noggin' that our life is perfect. It's not. I share the happier things because 1) they are easier to write about and the harder things are harder to write about and 2) the hard things are usually struggles that need time to work out before words can be applied to them (or at least for me anyway). Finally, who takes a picture of themselves having a meltdown? No one that I know of. The closest I get to that is a selfie of me taking a nap. (Let's discuss naps later.) So anyway, I know you're curious about my running and did I ever get back on the motorcycle and what has happened to the children. I'll probably share about more food that you want to know because it makes me happy even though the only two things people ever ask me about is my monster cookies and scones.
I'll admit, this feels pretty ambitious of me. I'm quick to realize school has been in session only four days and my think time (sans kids) has grown significantly and so my brain is in happy overload. (It's an introvert thing.) But I have had a few key conversations with people to help me put some pieces in the right order about blogging and life and so on. I am super grateful for them because they are answers to prayers. Golly, it sounds like an acknowledgment page of a book. With a lot of expectations. Nope. What I really should say is "I overthink a lot of things but I have patient, gracious friends who help me sort my life out." The end.
Looking back through my summer photos, I know I've not yet shared some of my most favorite memories yet. I've alluded to one and said nothing about the other.
If I can, I will squeeze highlights from those into the next couple of days.
I drew for the Ball Jar Print this morning and Angie is the winner!! Thank you all for sharing with me some of your favorite summer memories. I felt as though I got a little intimate glimpse into your life and could see why they are special. I'm so glad they are your memories!
This print sits framed on a rusty yellow cart on my back deck. A mason jar jammed full of the flowers only summer brings. It brings a smile to my face.
Even though summer is taking it's last stand with heat and humidity, fall is warming up with changing and falling leaves. It can't help it. Over the next couple of days, I'm going to share my favorites of this past summer with you. It's now or never. Today is my 500th blog post! Thanks for continuing to read my ramblings. Let's celebrate with a giveaway. If you'd be so kind to leave a comment and share with me a favorite memory of this summer, you'll be entered to win this print from me. It's an 8x10 print from The Wheatfield. I will draw for a winner next week.
Friends and readers, I'm pretty excited to share with you that today I am the featured runner on Another Mother Runner!!! You'll have to head on over to read it all. I think there are some things you still don't know about me and my running. I'm really humbled to be asked to be a featured mother runner. It was a secret "Oh, I wish I could be awesome like those mothers and someday be chosen." And while I don't think I'm awesome like those women, here I am. (Ok, ok. I'm clap my hands real fast, slightly skipping excited.)
It was, probably of no surprise to you, hard for me to answer those questions in one hundred words or less. I felt like some answers were more vague than I wanted them to be. I guess that's why it's really just a feature of a runner, not a full blown biography. And that's why you're here, too. So hello! Thanks for visiting and reading my blog. I'm really glad you did. For my new mother runner friends, I'd love it if you said hello and told me about yourself. Also, of all my other social media accounts, my Twitter account is where I do most of my run chatting. It's along the lines of "how many layers does 25 degrees, feels like 2 degrees call for?" or other run stuff but occasionally there will be something about parenting or other life thing. On here it's more of a this is my life in which I happen to run. What else do you want to know? If you look over at the labels cloud on the right of my page, you'll see the label "run". You can discover that me crying during a race or run is NBD or why I have an affinity for pumpkin pie but only in other towns. Earlier this week I posted on Facebook/Twitter that I was going to go for my longest run ever- 13 miles. I got lots of virtual cheering, which really did help me. I also got some questions to why 13 miles. My races this fall are mostly 10 mile races. The 25k I hoped to do filled up faster than I anticipated and the registration is closed. I decided to use the Train Like A Mother Half-Marathon Own It training plan. It definitely gets me over the 10 mile mark many times and will hone my speed. It also creeps up to 15 miles for the longest run which happens to be a 25k so it will break that mental barrier for the future. Even now, with that 15 miler still weeks away, I'm thinking "That's just 2 more miles. No big deal." (Except for the hydration/nutrition thing- that's a big deal.) I did a little extra at the end of my 13 and made it 13.1 so now I have run a half marathon distance. Nope I don't have a t-shirt or medal or any finish line photos. Ok by me. I think one has to make their own goals. Mine are just on the wonky side- 15k's, 10 miles, 25k's, maybe someday a 50k- but they're mine. (I'm akin to the K's.) Oh, also I switched my long run to Tuesday because I'm running the 10k Huxley's PrairieFest race this Saturday and I wanted to get both in.
Do you want to see more of that gorgeousness that is the Superior Hiking Trail? Me, too! Tomorrow I'll write more about my most favorite recent run. But for now, here's another peek.
Who feels like running? I feel like I should clarify that neither me nor my family follow the Paleo diet. I've alluded to it a couple of times now and linked to a few Paleo recipes we've had (shh, don't tell the kids), but we aren't. We are very much for lots of whole foods. Less processed is the direction I'm headed but if you wave a bag of BBQ chips in my face, it's kryptonite to me. I make a mean scone and my sugar/snickerdoodle cookies have been featured at more than one gathering. Also, I like meat. Oh wait, that is Paleo!! I'm also behind on race recaps and I will try to jam those in here sometime soon before the fall races start up.
This recipe is taken straight from Iowa Girl Eats. I'm posting it here because 1) my father-in-law asked for the recipe and 2) because I know he won't click over to her scrumptious site to get the recipe. Which is ok. 3) Because he always wants less food stuff on my blog so this is my way of making him eat his words. heehee!
As far as the recipe goes, it's pretty awesome. I love green onions but added them minimally as the rest of the fam doesn't. The second time I made it, I added a bit more milk to the eggs. The eggs set the whole casserole up well but I felt there wasn't much wiggle room for cooking it longer so adding more milk gave me a bit more time. Since every slow cooker cooks differently, keep an eye on it towards the end; the cheese can get a bit too done. (But with the addition of more milk or water, that seemed to help.) Yum! You will like this. (I could totally see this recipe being vegged up: peppers, onions, mushrooms and more.)
I should include a little a funny little story about Iowa Girl Eats just to prove how off my rocker I can be. Actually, it's about her husband, Ben. I was in Whole Foods shopping one evening and spied him in the produce department. As I was busy examining elephant kale (lacinato, to be exact), I was also debating if I should say hi to him. We then moved on: ketchup for me, fresh meat counter for him. I had decided I should probably just let the fellow do his shopping in peace but a teensy part of me said "No, get your picture taken with him. Then you'll have matching pictures and that will be dorky and awesome all at once." Well, the fact that I almost knocked over a corner stack of wine made me re-group. I went on to look at fair trade chocolate and he must have zipped out quick. My chance was over. I tweeted Kristen and gave her the update. Turns out, I wasn't the only one as she RT'd another Whole Foods shopper spying Ben that night. Oh dear. He is such a good sport, he tweeted us back. (I ended up getting the kale, the ketchup and wine but it wasn't the wine I almost knocked over.)
And with that, here's the recipe from Iowa Girl Eats. Thanks for sharing it with us, Kristen (and Ben).
Crock Pot Breakfast Casserole is an incredibly easy and crowd pleasing breakfast!
Ingredients (serves 12)
30oz bag frozen hash browns
1lb sausage, browned & drained
8oz shredded cheddar cheese
8oz shredded mozzarella cheese
6 green onions, sliced and divided in half
12 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
Instructions
Spray a large crock pot with non-stick spray then place half the hash browns into the bottom. Layer in half the cooked sausage, half the cheeses, and half the green onions, then repeat hash brown, sausage, and cheese layers.
In a large bowl, whisk together eggs, milk, salt, and pepper, then drizzle over top. Cook on high for 4 hours, or low for 8 hours, or until eggs are set. Serve with remaining green onions, salsa, or guacamole.
They are based on the number of views, which more than likely, was found by searching on Google. Since they have some good key words in the title, they pop up, except for the Turn Around and Refresh post. I'm not sure how that one ranks so high. It also explains how most of them have very few comments. These places give me the most referral traffic
I need to send some big thank you's to those ladies for listing me on their blogs. If you have time, head over to their blogs, read a little and send them a happy message.
Pageviews by Countries
Entry
Pageviews
United States
46346
Denmark
1716
Russia
1156
Germany
564
United Kingdom
266
Canada
239
Ukraine
217
Sweden
106
France
89
Japan
88
Interesting, huh? I don't know who in Alaska is reading, but I'd love if you'd drop me a line to say hello. These statistics were taken from Blogger at 6:30 a.m. this morning. What's new for 2013 on here? I have a blog re-design coming that I won a while ago. That girl is busy (which is awesome), however, we are in the middle of design discussion so it will be coming sooner than later now. Yippee! I'll still have cute kids, dirt bikes, recipes, and more bits and pieces of my life that I'll share with you. Thank you for reading and for all your encouraging words to me!!
I write about my family of five and our life. It's a glimpse of insights into my soul, including a flair for the dramatic, fumes of motorcycle exhaust, and hugs and kisses from cousins. This is my story, my desire to know and enjoy God and all that He's given me.
