Foto Friday

I forgot yesterday to post my lunch that I brought to Scout camp. Of course I took a picture of it, because I was just so proud of how adult it is.

See, I have my sandwich of an Uncrustables, I brought health into it with the applesauce and Craisins, and then I finished up with the treats of the Cereal Squares (with my current mouth condition, the way I eat these is I put them in my mouth, leave until its slighty soggy, and then chew a little and swallow. Like a child) and then have a delish Twinkie to finish. I felt good about myself, and it totally filled me up there. Plus, all the kids envied my food, since it was all food that they like too!

Scout Camp

Today, I got the opportunity to go to Scout Camp. Also known as Webelos Woods, but I only heard a couple of people call it that, so I can't verify the authenticity. It's held up Springville Canyon, in Jeremiah Johnson ranch. Since I've only been a leader for a few months, this was my first time ever going to a boy scouts camp. I don't know that I'd even call it camp, since to me, camping is when you have to at least spend the night. But thankfully, we don't have to do any overnighters with our boys. I'm grateful for that.
The camp started this afternoon, at 2 or so (and finished at 8), and had several stations the boys rotated through. There was archery, shooting BB guns, trekking with a handcart, canoeing, all sorts of fun stuff. To be honest, I wish I had signed up for this stuff too, I wanted to shoot and hunt and all that stuff. Maybe next year... Our boys mostly behaved. We had one that would jump into every river...lake...pond...body of water that he could, so by the end of the day, he was filthy. This same boy, when another scout leader dropped a bead, picked it up and ATE IT. That's right, he just randomly picked a bead off of the campground and swallowed it. What the heck? Luckily, those were pretty much the only trying times we had.
With all the fires happening around us right now, there were I think 2 that were right over the mountain of where we were all day. It rained ash on us all day long. It was all over the place, our hair, our clothes, everything. It just smelled of fire all day long. And when I got home, and sneezed, black ash came a-flying out of my nose. (You're welcome for that bit of too much information I gave you, and I apologize for it.) But soap and water has cleaned me up, and now, I'm just exhausted. Being outside all day in the sun, chasing after kids, and trying to make sure no one kills each other gets pretty tiring. Needless to say, even though its only nine, I'm ready to go to bed. The bright side of all this is, we don't have to go back for a whole year. :)

Miscellaneous Monday

Alas, this is a sad day. Remember the bird that I blogged about on Friday that I added the top hat to? Well, today as Chelle and I were walking past his office, I look over, and lo and behold, he had already taken it down. What the heck, man? How does he not have a better sense of humor about this? If I had a stuffed pheasant on my desk (shoot me should that day ever happened) and someone started adding little hats to it, I would die with laughter. I wish he would leave them on there for longer, so that more people could enjoy them. I’ll just look at my pics of them every once in a while, and giggle to myself.

Last night, I was sitting on the couch, reading, and I felt a little movement on my arm. I figured it was my hair, so I shook my head a little, moving things around. After a second, I felt it again, and I thought, jeez hair, you’re so dumb, so I moved again. After some more movement, I finally look at my arm, and there’s a FREAKING EARWIG on it. Now, I don’t know where this came from. I don’t know how long it had been there. But, in a very un-Vieve-like movement, I calmly put my book down, grabbed a tissue, took it off, smushed it, threw it in the garbage, and resumed reading. No screaming, no crying, just a quick killing. I felt pretty mature after that.

Tonight, Husband and I went hiking, a thing we've been meaning to do ever since the weather turned warm. I don't ever want to go on a weekend, things are already busy enough, plus its so hot during the day. Going at night seemed better, much much cooler. We hiked Stewart Falls, and I wore a pair of hiking sandals (Tevas) that I thought I had worn hiking before. Turns out, my memory was playing tricks on me, this was actually my first hike with them. My pinkie toes were hurting by the time we were making our way back down the mountain, and now that I'm home, and I've taken off my shoes, I see now, I have giant blisters on both of my toes. It's so weird to have these - I've never had blisters on my pinkie toes. Here's a pic of one of the blisters:

Don't judge me for my toes, I have monstery feet. Anyway, I'm looking forward to my run tomorrow morning...not... I'm not sure how well it'll go down, but I'll try. And as always, I've learned what shoes to not wear hiking. Happy feet, everyone!

Foto Friday

About 2 months ago, I blogged about a guy in our building that has a stuffed pheasant in his office. Back then, I always wanted to add a hat to him, so finally one day, I found a cowboy hat at Hobby Lobby, and put it on there the next day. It was hysterical, I laughed every time I saw it, until he took it off a couple of days later. (This recap was for those who maybe don’t read this often.) After the cowboy incident, I saw a tiny top hat at Hobby Lobby, and knew that would be next. So I bought it, but I hadn’t put it on yet, I wanted to space it out. So I waited. And waited.

Finally, today, Chelle and I were walking downstairs, when we noticed their office was empty, and the light was off, so we knew they were gone for the day. I ran back and grabbed the hat, and into the office I went. Chelle stood guard, of course, and I ran in the office, put the hat on, and snapped the pic. And now, we’ve been laughing since. It’s just so hysterical, the top hat on the bird, I can’t stop laughing at it. I hope you enjoy as much as I do.

Stories of Running

Earlier this week, I blogged about running in the Summerfest 5k, and the results were pretty good in my favor. They finally posted the standings on the website, and indeed, I did place third in my age group, yay! Yesterday, I had yet another dentist appointment. Turns out, the experimental procedure that I had done on my tooth failed completely. So we had to hurry up and pull the tooth. So I had that done yesterday, during the afternoon. Afterwards, I went home to rest up, and Husband went to the Orem Safety Building and picked up my medal! Here it is, in all its glory:

And then, of course, last night, I went to the RSL game, after my tooth pulling, and after taking a Loratab, I felt AMAZING. Sadly, we lost, but alas, can’t win them all.

Today is the summer party for my work. It kicks off with a fun run (I like that phrase, even though everyone else says it’s an oxymoron.) which I usually do pretty well on. Usually, I’m pretty quick, and I’m the first female to cross the finish line. Sadly, this year, that wasn’t the case for me. I was the first in my age group (by seconds, only!) and was about the 3rd female to finish – a couple of teenage girls beat me out. I’m ok with that, though, because they’re younger and in better shape, they should be faster than me. But I’m psyched I got at least 1st in my age, and I’m looking forward to my prize money. I wish I got a medal for it too, but cash is a dang good prize!

Best Chocolate Cookies Ever

I wish these had a better name, I really do. Unfortunately, the name of these delicious cookies is plain old ‘4 Ingredient Chocolate Cookies’. How boring. I found this recipe, as I do with all my recipes of late, on Pinterest. I’ve been wanting to make them for weeks, but not having any teeth to chew things really cut down on my baking. But – and this is exciting for all of us - I am really close to being back to full strength. I can eat some things now. Not anything super chewy or hard, but I’m doing good with sandwiches, breads, oatmeals, I ate some chips…the possibilities are endless, and they’re getting better every day, and it’s about bloody time, as I had this stupid procedure done a month ago now. Anyway, to celebrate being able to eat (mostly) I made these cookies last night, and holy cow are they the most delicious and super easy to make.


Ingredients:
1 pkg chocolate cake mix
1 8-oz frozen Cool Whip, thawed
1 egg
½-3/4 cup powdered sugar (I won’t lie, I didn’t even measure the powdered sugar, I just dumped some in a bowl)
Directions:
Mix the first three ingredients together until very well incorporated. The dough will be stiff.

Drop by teaspoon into the powdered sugar, rolling to coat the ball completely. Place the ball on a baking pan that has been lined with parchment paper. Press down the ball with the bottom of a cup that has been dipped in the powdered sugar. Bake for 12-15 minutes, until the cookie has cracked open and appears just slightly wet within the cracks. Cool completely, store in covered container. Makes about 3 dozen cookies.

Ok, that’s the recipe as it came from Pinterest; here are a few observations of mine. These things were really hard to roll into a ball. At first, I just scooped the dough straight into the sugar, so it was like, a glob of sugar and dough, but it looked awful. So I decided to roll them up in my hands before, and that created a holy mess of craziness that left most of the dough in my hands. I did what I could, but I only made about 22 cookies, so nowhere near what the recipe said. It still worked out, though, and I ended up with delicious cookies, so I think I still win.

Birthday Fun

Today is my pop’s birthday. He is 60 years old, can you believe it? We decorated his office last night before we went to work – we being Chelle and myself. I chose a Star Wars theme this year, for a couple of reasons. One was, pops is a Star Wars fan, so of course it was a good idea, and the second was because there wasn’t enough superhero stuff to fill an office. I really wanted an Avengers theme, but alas, I couldn’t. Here’s what the office looked like when we finished:

 He has 3 desks in his office, and of course, we had to decorate all 3.

 Chelle made this pudding tower while I streamered the desk.

 I wish you could see the litte Darth thing in the middle better. It was Lego Star Wars, so freaking adorable.

This is the door. Originally, this was a tablecloth that I ripped in half, and taped to the door.

Pretty cool, eh? And yes, the decorations are juvenile, but that's the purpose of it, it's just so much fun. So, Happy Birthday, Pops! Eat some cake, eh?

Foto Friday

It’s been a long time since I’ve been to the library. Specifically the one in Orem – I don’t think I’ve gone there since the fam moved to Spanish Fork like…8 or so years ago. (I can’t even remember, how awesome) I just never borrow books anymore, if I want to read something, I either buy it, or if a friend has it, I just get it from one of them. Yesterday, I had such an inkling to watch the movie Watcher in the Woods. Have you guys seen it? It is really scary to me. I saw it for the first time in 4th grade, at a friends house, in her unfinished basement, at a sleepover. I think I’ve seen it once since then, about 10 years ago, and it still scared me. I thought of the movie and decided that I should watch it.

The problem is, there are hardly any places to go to rent movies anymore. Sure, there’s RedBox, but they only have new releases, and Netflix, which I don’t subscribe too, I just don’t use it enough (thank you, DVR) and so I had to do something that I haven’t done in forever – use the library. I went online and made sure that they had to movie, and then Husband and I skipped on over there. Not literally, we’re not weirdos. But when I got there, it took a while to find the movie, The way they have their DVD’s set up – they’re not stored alphabetically, they’re stored in their decimal system of things, so you have to go to the computer, find the number, and then go from there. Finally, I located it, and went upstairs to sign up for a new card and rent my movie.
Signing up for the card was easy, but holy cow, they have a crazy newfangled system where you check everything out for yourself now! So, because I was signing up for my card at the same time, the librarian was helping me, but I felt so dumb, like I couldn’t figure it out for myself! Finally, I got it all checked out, paid my dollar, and went on my way.
Here's my card:

I went home and watched it. It wasn’t as scary as I remember, but it still made me jump, there are some super creepy things that still happen in that movie. Now I’m just trying to make sure I get the movie back before the due date – I don’t want to make my new card have a fine on it already.

Miscellaneous Monday

This past Saturday was Summerfest. I go every year, but I never really do anything there. I don’t ride the rides, I don’t buy any of the goods, I mostly go to eat a funnel cake and walk around. This year, I participated a little more, and ran in the Summerfest Firefighter’s 5k that morning. I ran this one by myself – PJ, whom I usually run with, was out of town, and Husband was sick, so I just went alone. Never again will I do this – going to a race completely alone was not fun at all. So I waited around for the start to happen, and then, took off like a shot. It was a pretty easy course, no hills or anything. I finished in 24:51, which was pretty good, I thought. The computers weren’t working there after the race, so they couldn’t tell us who finished where or anything, they said they’d post it online later, and give away the finisher medals at a later time, they would notify the winners. So I was checking today, and lo and behold, they posted the times/rankings. I was #20 to cross the finish line, not too shabby, I thought. And, if they have their age groupings the way most races do, I finished third in my age group. Not too bad at all! I hope that’s how it worked out, but I don’t know how they’re going to work it all out, so maybe I didn’t place, but maybe I did. All I care about is that I ran better, and did pretty well. If I get a medal, awesome, I’ll post it on here for everyone to see. But if not, I know I did a great job anyway.

We went to Husband’s family’s house yesterday for dinner and to play some games. We ended up only playing one – Electronic Catchphrase. I love this game. I’m pretty good at it too. Of course, I’m the most competitive, so I get really wrapped up into it, yelling and trying to make points, etc. I know I’m like this, and I’ve accepted it. I get that I get way too into board games, and fights will usually ensue. Of course, this happened yesterday, and someone at the party said something that I hate – “It’s only a game.” I hate this phrase. Yes, I used a strong word there, hate. But you know, it’s the worst. Here’s what I hate about it: yes, I know it’s a game. I know that it’s just for fun. But still, I like games. I like to win. I will get a little wrapped up in the game, and I will totally fight someone to get a point. I know it’s worthless. I know that it doesn’t make sense. But it’s what I do. So be warned, friends. I will come to every game night that you throw. But I will try my hardest to win, even if we’re only playing Sorry.

Good news, everyone, I am getting so close to being able to eat. I ate some oatmeal on the right side of my mouth earlier, and then for lunch, I ate a little pasta over there as well. Of course, right now it’s hurting me a little, but at least it’s getting possible! I am just so excited, I feel like with these new developments, I’ll be able to eat in less than a week. I’m crossing my fingers, and I think you should all as well, I need all the luck I can get.

Foto Friday

I was looking through my recent photos, trying to find one for Foto Friday. I haven’t done one in a while, it seems, so I was like, I have to get back into the habit of doing it. I couldn’t really see anything that I wanted to have on here, until I finally saw this, from a few weeks ago:

This isn’t my tattoo, this is my sisters. Rory now lives in Cali with her husband, he’s in the army, and they’ve been stationed in Monterrey. So when they moved out there, they got tattoos, and she got one of the state of Utah, with the heart on it in the general direction of where we all live. Then a couple of months later, she added the Vieve to it, since, well, I suppose I’m her favorite sister that she’s left behind here. When she sent me the pic with the new addition to the tattoo, I wrote her back to tell her that now that she’s permanently put my name on her body, we’ll end up having a fight soon in which we hate each other. It’s just how things work. Funnily enough, she wrote me back saying the same thing! So I have this backup plan, in case we do have a fight, and I’ll send it to her:

I just thought that was hysterical. But in any case, even though I don’t think I’ll ever tattoo people’s names onto my body (sorry friends) it’s nice to know that somewhere, my name is on someone else, for the world to see how awesome I am.

Crafty BEE

I wrote back in April about my Easter blocks that our Craft Club made. It was our April craft, and we were going to do another in May. Sadly, conflicting schedules and total crazy busyness prevented us from meeting up in May to do our next one, so my Easter stayed up all through May…and was staying up there for June, it seemed. Finally, I thought, ok I have to take these down, so I made a trip to Crafty Wood Blocks (in Orem, in case anyone cared) and tried to find something that could take the place of that, until our club got together for our next craft. It took me a bit, but I chose something that I thought was cute, and looked easy enough to do on my own.

I finally unwrapped it out of the package on Wednesday, and then tonight, I finally started working on it. I cut out my paper for my letters, painted, modge-podged it on, and tied on my ribbons, and here’s my end result:

I gotta admit, it’s not as good as the one in the store, and I don’t know if I like it as much. I wanted to, and I worked really hard on it, but it’s still not the same. I put it up on my ledge-thing, and here’s what that looks like:

I should have found something longer to take up more space, but oh well, this is what I have, and it’ll do nicely until the next time we get together, and I get more direction the whole time, so that it’ll end up being better. There are supposed to be some wooden bees that are supposed to be hooked onto the letters, but there wasn’t wire included in the package, so I didn’t do anything with them. Maybe someday I’ll add them on, but for right now, this is good enough.

Miscellaneous Monday

Yesterday, I made Cake-Batter Pancakes. I got the recipe from somewhere, and wanted to make them forever, and I finally got around to it. So it calls for 2/3 cup of yellow cake mix, so I just opened a box of mix and used it, but then I had the rest of the box to deal with. I know everyone knows about using a box of cake mix + 1 can of diet (or regular) soda to make a cake/cupcakes. So since I had a little over half a box of mix, I went with a smaller amount of soda. Luckily, I have tiny cans of soda that I drink. I think they’re adorable, and the perfect amount of soda to drink. So I combined the leftover mix with the small can and voila! It was the perfect amount of both! I made yellow cake + 7Up cupcakes with regular old chocolate frosting. Behold!

I really liked them. I think they went pretty good, and with the smaller batch, it only made 12 cupcakes, which is the perfect amount to share and still have a few left for me to eat!

I played Grand Theft Auto (a lot) before, and I blogged about it about a million years ago. I haven’t played it in a really long time, but when I play it, usually, I get super into it, and play it a lot. So on Saturday, for some reason, I got the urge to play it. I don’t know why, or where it came from, but all of a sudden there it was. My parents have a PS2 that I was confident was still in working condition, but of course I had no idea. So I head on over there to find it, and, yay! They had the PS2. I was looking for the game, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. I found all the other games, but not the GTA that I was looking for. So I decided to see if the PS2 was still in working condition, so I plugged it in, and opened the CD drive to put in a disc, to check it out. When it popped open, lo and behold, there was the GTA disc! I couldn’t have been more excited. So somewhere, someone has the case for the game, but not the actual game, haha! So I turn it on, plug it in, and while I couldn’t see the game (I couldn’t figure out how the change the input on my parent’s TV!) I could hear it, so I knew it was ok! I hurried home with the game (yup, a super nerd) and plugged everything in, turned it on, and *angel chorus* it worked! So, instead of having a life on Saturday night like regular people, Husband and I stayed in, and I played some GTA for a couple of hours (he played his game too, so its not like he was bored) but I just couldn’t believe it. All of a sudden it was late, and I hadn’t even realized how long I’d been playing. I do enjoy the game, and now I can’t help but think how much fun it would be to just go home after work and play a little. Oh man, I’ve totally slipped over to the dark side! Heaven help me with this game so that I don’t play it all the time.

Yesterday, I was working on crafts (read: I was cutting out a new scrapbook piece of paper for my iPhone cover) and as I was trying to clean up, and cut off some scrap papers before I put the rest of the stuff away, I accidentally misjudged how close my finger was to the paper, and I cut the ever-loving heck out of my finger. Of course, it bled, and I bandaged it up, and after an hour or so, it stopped bleeding, and life kept going. Today it’s not too bad, it just stings a little, so I consider this a victory and I’ll be more careful next time.

4th Place is Just About as Sweet as First

Well, its summer, which means, among many other things, its now race season. Starting in March, I usually race once a month until November, then take off December, January and February, because no one likes to freeze while they run. But sadly, this year, I accidentally skipped April (I usually do the SLC ½ marathon then, but PJ was out of town, and she’s the one I do it with, so I missed it) and then May happened, and I skipped the Provo City 5k (I just don’t like that one as much) so I now have to make up those 2 races elsewhere, and do 2 races a month. I feel confident that I can do it. Anyway, this yesterday was the Springville Art City Days 5k. I love this race. It’s a relatively easy course (Except for that dang giant hill in it!) and afterwards, the post-race treats are awesome. There’s the usual fare of bananas and apples, water, etc, but they also add in fruit popsicles and ice cream bars. I had one of both of those. Then there’s always the prize giveaway, which so far I’ve not won, but I have to sometime, right?
I got to the race about 20 minutes before it started, and I was looking around for PJ, we usually meet up there beforehand. Husband had to use the restroom, so he got in line for the port-a-potty and I kept looking. Sadly I didn’t find anyone, and Husband stayed in that line forever, so eventually, I just lined up for the race by myself. The gun went off, and off I went. I felt pretty good about my pace, and even tackling the hill wasn’t awful. I slowed WAY down running up it, but at least picked things back up afterwards. As I was running, I was thinking, boy it would be great if I could finish in the top 3 of my age group. That never happens at big races, I’m just not fast enough. So the whole time I was running, I was noticing how many people were ahead of me. A lot. A whole whole lot, so I wasn’t concerned with finishing in the top of anything. So I finally get to the end, and my finishing time is 25:23. Not too shabby, I thought, especially with lately, I’ve felt like I’ve been slowing down, so that was nice. My time was 3 seconds slower than last year, practically turtle-finish! I waited for everyone else to finish, and we all grabbed our treats and settled in for the prize drawings.
There were so many cool things given this year that I would have loved, but sadly, my number wasn’t called! I was sad, but I’m pretty used to it by now. They split up the prize giveaway by giving away the medals/plaques for the top 5 fastest runners in every age group, so when they started that, I wasn’t really paying a whole of attention. They got to my age group and I was sort of listening, and then they said the 4th place person…and it was me! WHAT?! I screamed and jumped up, hardly believing it. I got my plaque, which I like. I wish it had my name, maybe I’ll go add it later myself. Haha I doubt it. But here it is:

(Oh shoot, now everyone knows my age range) Nice, eh? This is the first plaque I’ve ever gotten for running. I’ve gotten a couple of hang-on-your-neck medals, but this is my first plaque, and I’ll hang it up on the wall next to my race bibs and other medals. I am just excited that I’m not as slow as I think I am!