Livin' the Dream in Lima

As you're reading this, I should be on a plane to Vegas to join my sweet Business Man there. I may or may not be just a bit nervous about the whole flying on a plane, laying over, flying on another plane, and then catching a shuttle bus to the hotel thing. I'm sure I will survive. I'll pop in with at least a picture to celebrate my arrival. ;-) --- Well, it is  Thursday, which means it's time for another pumpkin recipe. You sick of these yet? I hope not... because it's still a good long while 'til Thanksgiving. (Not that I'm counting or anything. Thanksgiving is just our next big 'break' at school. Only 39 school days away! Haha.) Sundays are "fun breakfast" day in our house. Basically, the only day of the week I actually make something for breakfast. (Other than pouring a bowl of cereal or some good ole' maple & brown sugar instant oats.) It usually goes down like this: I go for a run, rush through the end of my run in ...

So... teaching at a high school can get pretty interesting. I will admit, there is never a dull moment. But sometimes even the teachers up the ante to make it even more fun. Case in point : The Purple Competition .  Another teacher & I absolutely love the color purple for clothes-wearing. Well, and accessories. (Noting in my head... purple purse, purple shoes, purple necklaces, even a purple blackberry. A phone's an accessory, right?) So, we decided to do a competition, a Purple-Off. To see who could wear the most purple outfits in a row without repeating a shirt or bottom. The only rule - no purchasing new purple clothes.  What was at stake? A $20 gift card to the winner's favorite clothing store. And it must be used to buy another purple piece of clothing.  It took a few days for the kids to catch on, but they got really into it once they did. "How many more purple shirts do you have??" " You can borrow one of my purple shirts!" (Thanks, but...

Or cheers to the freak of a person who thought the best way to kick off her weekend was to run her 14-mile long run after school. On the treadmill.  I actually quite enjoyed it. Haven't run on the treadmill and watched TV for a long time. Also I had a few secrets up my sleeve for a great run. SUGAR! In the form of cupcakes and jelly beans. I made cupcakes for one of my geometry classes because they earned a certain class average on their first unit test last week, and I definitely indulged with them this afternoon.  There is a chunk of cookie dough in the middle. I also had some sport beans on the run because I really need to practice taking in fuel. I pretty much  never  eat/drink anything on runs 2 hours or less. Which is not good. Because I feel should probably have something during this half-marathon since I'm gunning for a PR and all.  So I tried out the sport beans today. They were fine. I forgot my water bottle so I had to choke them dow...

It's that day again... Thursday! Which means it is time for another pumpkin recipe. Which  makes my heart happy. The past two weeks , I've been all about the sweet side of pumpkin. But today... I bring you over to the savory side with  Pumpkin Lasagna ! This recipe is one of my absolute favorites to make in the fall. There's quite a backstory to how this recipe came to be. In the fall semester of my senior year of college , about 2 years ago, the student life program held a campus-wide Iron Chef competition. Can you say right up my alley? I had to enter. The contest was structured so that we were competing in teams of four - and four of us cross country girls quickly joined together to form a team. And by 'form a team', I mean we all wrote our names down on the paper and I took charge. Pretty typical. Anyways... the contest was a bit different that the Iron Chef TV show. We were given two  secret ingredients, and 24 hours to come up with our dish....

Oh yeah, mile repeats on the schedule for today. I didn't have any pics of me running today so here's an old picture of me stretching with a kiddie running group we led in college. I'll have to blog about that sometime.  I've done this workout a couple times already this training cycle, but only done 3x1-mile. Today I cranked it up to 4! I brought my running clothes with me and hit the track after school this afternoon. Coincidentally right when the marching band was practicing. At least I had accountability with my students watching? The plan was to do 4-5x1-mile with 1/2 mile jogs. I am still adjusting to the whole jog recovery thing - in college, we always had standing recovery. Jog recovery makes you tired!  Today was a little rough, very humid and BUGGY! I didn't have my camera, but my chest was plastered with bugs. Along with a bug in my eye and a bug stuck in my teeth, which was oh-so-kindly pointed out by one of my students/cross country runners. ...

...when you're bored on a Monday night and one of your BFF's calls you up asking if you want to go to Pete's ice cream. Um... do I ever not want to go to Pete's ice cream? Oh, how I will miss seeing this glowing sign during the winter months. And so sad, they are closing in 11 days "for the season." And then the Dairy King and Dairy Queen's will soon follow. And we will go through the deep dark months of November, December, January, and February with no ice cream. Well, besides ice cream from the freezer case. That would be an Oreo-Cookie Dough avalanche with chocolate ice cream. So. Good. Since it was a bit rainy we got our ice cream to go and ate at our place. So great to catch up after a busy last couple weeks. And now it's time for a Weekly Rundown ! YAY running! Last week was a 'cut-back' week in training, since I'd had three 50+ mile weeks in a row. Plus I wanted to be rested for the 10km race on Saturday! I...