TFDs

I had my first TFD of the season last night with our Community Group from church.  It was especially delicious, since it has been months since my last one- 9 months to be exact.  A TFD is what we at Spruce Lake Wilderness Camp call a hamburger cooked over the fire in tinfoil.  It is our Tuesday night dinner during a week of camp.  

Tin

Foil

Dinner

What I love about TFDs is that you can make them so unique.  Really, you could do almost anything with them. 

You start with a bed of cabbage (to protect the meal) on a large piece of heavy duty tin foil and then place a hamburger on the cabbage.  But you could use chicken, fish, more veggies or anything really!  You can then put in any kind of flavoring that you desire.  I love salt and pepper, but you could use dressings, other spices, etc.  Cover all of that with sliced potatoes (to protect the meal again) and seal up your tin foil. 

Make sure that you have a fire with lots of hot coals, and place the meal in the fire.  Time will vary with the intensity of the coals, but generally the meal should cook in about 16 minutes - 8 minutes on a side.  Open it up, check to make sure your meat and veggies are done, and enjoy!   

Some people on staff get really tired of having this meal every week, but I'm going on 10 summers and it is still one of my favorites :)

Road Trippin' to Cedar Point

Olivia and I are leaving today for her second trip across PA in her 4 short months of life.  Although, this trip will seem to go by in a blink of an eye compared to the last one.  We are going, along with my sister and cousin, to the ROLLER COASTER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD!!!!

I was at Cedar Point for an evening about 2 years ago and I called my cousin and said, we need to come here sometime together (we both love roller coasters).  Now she is graduating from Nursing School and to celebrate we are headed on another great adventure.  My sister is coming along to hang out with us and snuggle with Olivia while we are in lines to go on rides.  Olivia is too short to go on the coasters and my sister doesn't love them, although I am hoping that she will go on one or two with us.

Did I mention that it is going to be a chilly 43 degrees when we are in the part tomorrow morning?  With a high of 54 around 5 pm.  It's going to be a cold day for roller coasters, but totally worth it.

They have a new record breaking coaster that just opened up yesterday, check it out below. 

We.are.so.excited!

 

#shereadstruth

I found the #shereadstruth community a few months ago.  You know how you see things that you think you might be interested in, but you know you don't have time to look into at the moment, and they go to the back of your mind somewhere and then suddenly reappear later?  That's what happened with this.  I had heard about it, but never really looked into it.  It was in my "to read" bookmark folder.  Two days ago I finally got around to looking into it and can I say that I am really excited?

Thursday they just finished up with the current reading plan that they were on (the book of Hosea) and on Monday they are going to start on the book of Nehemiah.  I stumbled upon them again at the perfect transition time.  I am going to join them on their study of the book of Nehemiah.  In fact I have already started.  One person had posted that Mars Hill church had done a great series on Nehemiah, so yesterday I listened to the first one. 

I have been doing a pretty good job with actually sitting down and doing my devotions this past year, probably the best I ever have, but recently I have been feeling like I haven't been getting much out of it.  I kind of think it is the devotional book that I have been using.  It's alright, but I'm looking for something a little bit deeper and the idea of having a community of people to share it with...  I am excited to say the least.   

At the washline

I love when it is warm enough and dry enough to hang the wash outside.  It is only when I get to do this simple act that I actually get joy out of the laundry.  I mean, I don't hate keeping our clothes clean by any means, it is just that when I get to hang it outside, I actually love it. 

:: I love being able to have an excuse to go outside.

:: I especially love being outside when it is early yet in the day - say pre 8:00am.

:: I love talking to Little O about what she is seeing around her. 

:: I love that it is only natural energy/heat that is drying our clothes.

:: Hanging out cloth diapers is especially satisfying.

:: I love putting on the clothes (even days later) & being able to smell the freshness of the outside air.

Ice cream whenever I want

You know those Yonana machines?

Did you know you can do the same thing in the food processor?

You probably knew that already, but I just found out this weekend.  When I was home this past weekend my mom made me, what she calls, a "banana whip."  It's so simple.  I've already made them twice this week.  Just put about one frozen banana per person in the food processor, process and add some kind of liquid.  I added coconut water the first time and milk the second time.  I didn't really taste a difference in either of the liquids, maybe you could just add plain water too?  You can't get much more of a healthier dessert than that.
I actually really like ice cream, so I had a hard time believing that I would like this imitation ice cream, but it's really good.  Of course I still top it with things like M&Ms or Chocolate Chips.

The downside to these Yonana whips is that you have to make the exact amount that you want to eat, because you can't refreeze it.  Refrozen it just turns into one solid banana chunk.  But the upside to it is that if feels like you can eat ice cream whenever you want.

I am going to try to make it this summer for some of the lactose intolerant campers when we have ice cream for dessert.  I'm excited to see what kids say.

I have a feeling this will be Olivia's first experience with a frozen dessert, when the time comes.  And it's coming oh so quickly.  

Morning Pages

WARNING: I have no one thing on my mind at the moment, but here is 5 minutes of writing none the less. 

It's a flow of ideas.  Julia Cameron talks about stream of consciousness writing she calls "Morning Pages."  She requires doing it long hand.  I wonder if mentally, the act of picking up a pencil and a piece of paper is any different than typing? Do the ideas come out the same way?  Does information stick better in your mind one way or another?   

So, Olivia is 4 months old now.  It's official.  She is also sleeping through the night.  It's wonderful. 


I am trying to clean out our chest freezer.  I would like to be able to see the bottom of it and defrost it, the ice chunks are starting to build up.

I have thought about this idea of Morning Pages probably weekly since I was told about them about 2 years ago.  It is something that I would love to do, but honestly, writing 3 pages takes a long time.  I have a hard enough time sitting down and doing my devotions each morning, would I actually be able to add in the time to write 3 pages?  It's too much for me to try right now, since I am also committed to writing on here for 5 minutes each day.  I don't want to start too many things at one time or chances are I will become overwhelmed and give up on all of them.

I signed up for the Runner's World half marathon that is happening in October.  I am glad that I did my best at the Broad Street Run, because now I want to take my time from that and build a training plan for this half marathon actually based off of numbers and not just what I feel like I might be able to do.  Maybe that is the trick to finding a plan that I will actually follow through with.  The reason I usually bail is because I don't find a good time to run.  Especially now with Olivia.  I think I need to find a time to run and stick with it.

Well, if I start with running in the morning, doing my devotions and writing Morning Pages at some point, maybe I should just wake up at 4am.   Let's see, if I like 8 hours of sleep, that means bedtime will be at  8pm.  Okay, not as unbelievable as I thought it might be, but certainly not going to happen during the summer- it's not even dark out then :) 

Broad Street 2013

What an awesome feeling, being a veteran at a Broad Street Run.  The days before were not spent wondering if I would be able to figure out where to go and how to meet people.  The night before was not spent wondering if I was going to oversleep the 5am wake up.  The minutes before were not spent wondering if I could conquer 10 miles.  Ahhh.  Instead I felt a strange sense of peace, even though I knew I hadn't trained as much as I wanted to.  I had done this once, I could do it again, no matter what.

It was a beautiful day to spend running down Broad Street in Philadelphia.  The first 5 miles are so fun, full of anticipation with eyes locked on City Hall - the half way point.  I had an A goal of running 9 minute miles and a B goal of 10 minute miles.  Every time I passed a clock I added 10 minutes to it for my goal for what I wanted to see at the next mile marker.  That kept me quite entertained.  Not to mention the thousands of people lining the street cheering.  I think my favorite poster that I saw said "Keep running random stranger," pretty sure I laughed out loud.

Miles 1-6 were a breeze and then came miles 7-9.  They were not awful, but I had to start concentrating on running, breathing and putting one foot in front of the other at a consistent pace.  Once I made it to mile 9 I started scanning the crowd for my cheering squad.  I knew they were going to try to get as close to the finish line as they could, but who knew, they could be anywhere now.  When I saw the navy yard sign I was able to kick it into high gear for the last quarter mile.  Although it wasn't easy, it was quite the bottle neck.  I passed my dad about 20 feet from the end and slammed into the back of someone trying to get my chip to cross the finish line.  The rest of my family was about 20 feet passed the finish line.  I had done it.  It felt so good.

I didn't know then, but as it turned out I landed just about smack dab in the middle of my A and B goals.  A 9:38 pace.  2 years ago I ran about the exact same pace.  In fact I only added about 57 seconds to my time, but this time around I was 4 months post partum.  I am pretty pleased with myself.  Now that it is nice out, Olivia is getting a bit older and I am back in pretty good shape, I would like to train hard and complete a training cycle.  For one reason or another I usually get distracted.  I'm going to go come up with a plan...

Oh, and we took Olivia to her first Phillies game.

The day could not have gotten much better.