Baking galore

The month of October is upon us and Tony and I decided that we were going to keep all of our four feet in the state of Iowa for the entire month. We have decided that traveling should not be the rule for us anymore, but rather the exception. In fact, our wonderful car has officially over 100,000 miles, which was bound to happen eventually, but we have only had it for a year and we bought it with 65,000 miles on it.

Anyway, this plan was bound to fail and within the first week Tony was invited to Milwaukee to see our friend speak at the large group meeting for Intervarsity (the campus ministry we were a part of at MSOE). This meeting was on Thursday so I didn't get to go, but Tony had an amazing time catching up with friends and seeing so many people. 

While he was gone, I had the chance to finally put together some care packages for some people that I've been meaning to get out for the last two months. I ended up baking two pans of brownies, making a full box of puppy chow, a large batch of monster cookies and two batches of chocolate chip cookies. Thankfully, one of my friends came over on Friday to help me with this. In the end, my kitchen table was covered in cookies and the counter was covered in dishes. All in all, I think I'm a pretty neat baker so clean up wasn't too bad. I hope everyone enjoys their (hopefully) tasty treats!

Bagged up and ready to be packaged

Color all around

I'm not much of a long distance runner. Never have been. In fact I still don't really run long distance, even though it is growing on me. (I find its a lot easier to tolerate when listening to a podcast rather than music.) For this reason I never really run street races or have really had the ambition to run a half marathon; however, about two months ago my friend asked me if I would run in a color run with her in Cedar Rapids the last weekend of September. It was only a 5k and you get covered in lots of color. Why not do it?

September 28th came upon us and I woke up early to make it up there by 7:30am excited to soon be covered in color. There were four of us total, me, Abby, Kimberly and Kimberly's dad. The (very informal) race went off at about 8:30 and Kimberly and I made very good time since we ran the whole way. There was no official timing mechanism, but based off the camera (Tony was our official photographer) time, it took us about 26 to 27 minutes. Either way, it was for sure sub 9 minute mile pace. Unfortunately, the color was only colored corn starch so it was permanent. Regardless, it was a fun time with some great friends!

All ready to begin!

Finished and covered in color

Rounding the final corner with Abby

All four of us at the end of the race

Home Sweet Home

The third weekend in September was the wedding shower for Naomi, this meant traveling to the good old land of Wisconsin for some quality time with the family.

We left Friday afternoon to take Tony to my brother's house in Chicagoland. Every year the guys in my family get together for a man's weekend and this year they planned it for the weekend of the shower (since all the women would be gone) and it was in Chicagoland. Normally, this should not be a problem, but we own one car and needed to be in two different places at the same time. Tony arrived in Chicagoland around 7:45 so I stuck around to hang out with the guys for a while. I must say. I truly enjoy some quality time with those guys. This little detour meant I arrived in good old Saukville around 11 pm. Just in time to wake up Naomi, Laura and Mom to have a nice late night chat.

Saturday morning was spent preparing for the shower. We managed to shove almost 30 ladies in the basement of Mom and Dad's house. That took some skill. It managed to go great. The remainder of the day was spending some quality time with Payton and the wonderful women in my family. Of course this required a fire in the backyard to facilitate lots of talking.

Payton!

Some quality chatting around the campfire

Apple pie!!

From the weekend of apple picking, we had soooo many apples!! Well not really, but it was more than I really wanted to eat in a reasonable amount of time. So what better to do than make apple pie!!! I have never made apple pie so I started with the basics, use a store bought crust and mix the middle. It turned out delicious! Maybe next time I'll make the crust too (when I have more time).