No energy!

When I run on the treadmill, I walk for 5-10 minutes. I'll walk for as long as it takes to feel energetic, warm and loosened up before I start running. I hate stopping 5 minutes into a run to stretch out my calf muscles again.

Today I walked for 45 minutes and still did not feel up to it. I even tried eating one of those energy gummy Shot Blox things that Joe uses when he runs. I ate half of it and it made my stomach hurt and THEN I was really dizzy and I had Scrubs-style visions of falling off the treadmill and concussing myself and trying to explain to Bart how to dial 911 while he gobbled up the rest of the energy gummies and bounced off the walls. It was not fun, even in my head. Finally I gave up and just got off the treadmill. I could not get up the energy to run. I was wasted.

Several hours later, after eating dinner and having a rest, I did finally get the 25 minute run in. Sheesh! It took the entire day. So that was annoying. On the brighter side, I walked so much getting warmed up and cooled off that I worked out for 2 entire hours. That has to do a body some good, right?

I think I need to eat the right things on the days that I run so I feel energized and ready to work out. Sadly, I still need to eat carefully so that I'm not putting on weight as I'm working out, which as we all know, is what made me quit running last year. Ideas? Suggestions?

Summer recipe roundup

In time for the holiday weekend, here are some of my favorite summer recipes

Red, White & Blueberry Muffins

Sweet Potato Fries

Papa's Garden Salad

Panna Cotta

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

Paul Bunyan Burgers

Hot dogs are for ball games. So for our extra-special BBQ, we made Paul Bunyan Burgers, baked potatoes and roasted corn on the cob.

1 1/2 pound ground beef
4 strips bacon
handful of mushrooms, chopped
1/2 onion, diced
2 tbsp Worcestershire
1 tsp garlic salt
1 tsp pepper
4 slices of your favorite cheese

Mix the ground beef, Worcestershire , salt and pepper together, set aside. Chop the bacon and fry it until crispy, remove from pan. Add mushroom and onion to drippings and fry. Drain grease and add bacon to veggies.

Divide the beef mixture into 8 pieces, form each into a thin patty. On 4 of the patties, put a spoonful of the bacon mixture and a slice of cheese. Top with another patty. Seal edges. Grill to desired doneness.

Summer Lime Pie

As much as I know this will torture Amy, and as much as I want to stuff a piece in an envelope and mail it to her... I'm sorry Amy!!! This was just a pretty, blog-worthy pie.

1 1/2 cups crushed pretzels
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup butter, melted
4 oz. cream cheese, softened **
1 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk
2 eggs
dash salt
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup lime juice
zest of 1 lime
green food coloring

Preheat oven to 350. Mix crushed pretzels, sugar and butter. (Crush your pretzels fine if you want a graham-cracker like crust or leave bigger chunks if you want - I always leave the pieces a bit bigger). Press into bottom of 9 inch pie plate. Bake for 7-8 minutes or until crust is set. Let cool before filling.

Add cream cheese, condensed milk, eggs, salt, vanilla, zest and lime juice into mixing bowl. Mix until combined, then beat at medium speed for 2 minutes. Add green or yellow food coloring if you want the pie to look "limey-er". Pour into prepared crust.

Bake at 350 for 15 minutes or until center of pie is set and doesn't jiggle. Let cool and then chill in refrigerator.

For perfect whipped cream (recipe from Amy Noorda), start beating the whipping cream until it's to the point where you would add the sugar. Stop the mixer. Dissolve half a packet of unflavored gelatin in lukewarm water, stirring to make sure there are no clumps. Start mixer, add gelatin and sugar and beat the rest of the way. Pipe your whipped cream onto the pie, the designs will stay crisp and fresh as the gelatin sets!

Garnish pie with thin slices of lime. Serve cold.

**The cream cheese and vanilla tame the tartness of the lime a bit. If you like your lime pie nice and sour, just eliminate these two ingredients. If you want, add some sour cream instead of the cream cheese. I haven't tried it. It just seems like it would be a good idea.


Brazilian Limeade

2 Limes
1/2 cup water
2-4 tb Sweetened Condensed Milk
1/2 cup Sugar
4 cups ice

Blend whole washed limes & water for a few seconds until limes are chopped up pretty small (don't blend too long or the drink will be too bitter)

Drain in very thin weave strainer, reserving juice and discarding pulp. Rinse blender pitcher.

Blend lime juice, sweetened condensed milk, sugar and ice until it's the right consistency (thick with no chunks) and add more water or sugar to taste.

Jurgens family pictures

I love this family (they are our neighbors and friends) and I had so much fun doing their pictures. We went to this fantastic abandoned house and it was a Location Extravaganza. Brick walls, old sheds and even a few friendly horses. The weather gave us a lucky break and we had a blast.

Look at those eyes! I could just squeeze him... but he wouldn't hold still long enough.

The baby boy is a precious red-headed doll.

The picture on the left is one of my all-time favorites, it just captures their personality so well. Thanks you guys!

Watermelon to go

This great idea came from my brother-in-law, of all places.

The dilema: 80% of a watermelon on the counter that's going to get yucky. If I put it in the fridge it will leak juice all over and I will be mad. If I put it in a bowl it will get mushy, no one will want to eat from a bowl of watermelon-muck and it will go bad. If I leave it on the counter, Bart will keep poking at it and I will put him in time-out until he's 12.

The solution: Cut into lots of bite-size cubes and store them in individual baggies. Put baggies in the fridge. Take out baggies when you want a quick snack. Send one to work with husband each day. Genius! Takes up less space, cuts down on waste, provides a healthy snack and almost eliminates sticky-juice-kid-face (Bart could get sticky-kid-face eating dry bread crust, so I say almost.) Thanks for the idea Braden!

Your mom has a blog

Actually, MY mom has a blog. Awesome, right? My dad got a big touring motorcycle last year (this is MidLife Crisis #4, after the horses, pilot's license and BMW). Now he and my mom spend every sunny weekend cruising the scenic byways of the western U.S. My sisters and I finally convinced them to keep a travel journal on a blog so we could see what they were up to. Mom promised to post on her blog if I designed them a special look. And here it is.

It took her a few hours to learn the ins and outs of blogging but she's already getting posts going and pictures uploaded. My dad is a computer genius and I'm pretty sure he'll have it all figured out by lunchtime. My parents are rad.

Running goals

It's strange how your goals can change over a year. Last fall I stopped running. My feet hurt, my knees hurt and it didn't matter how much I worked at it, I still felt exhausted and out of breath each time I ran. I hated it.

This spring I re-evaluated my quitter attitude. It had done me no good. In fact, I was 10 pounds heavier and annoyed with myself. When Joe started training for the Wasatch Back I decided to give the whole program another try.

This year I've started off much slower. I've stuck with the Couch to 5K program very strictly. I've done weeks over if I don't feel ready to move on. I've been running on our treadmill because it's easy to find time while the kids nap and I don't have to push them and their giant stroller around. I've cut down my speed so that I don't feel out-of-breath each time I run. And I can tell you - it really works! (Real runners are out there saying 'duh!')

I'm so glad I went to the Wasatch Back with Joe because it really made me see how fun running can be. I really want to do that race with him next year but I'm going to give it a couple months of training and see how I feel. So my official short-term goal is to do a run-through-the-lavender 5K at Young Living Farms in a few weeks.

Jue family pictures

I loved this family, they were lots of fun. The kids had already had a really long day but they were so patient and just did whatever I asked them to. In the midst of all the rain, rain and more rain, we miraculously got a few clear hours and were able to get some great pictures.

Wasatch Back by numbers

188 - total miles run
12 - team members that relay the legs of the race
2 - vans, each with a non-runner driver (I was one of these)
4 - hours of sleep I got the night before we left
11 - minutes we had between when we arrived in Logan and when our first runner had to start running (stupid road construction)
5 - other rad people that shared a huge Suburban with us

3 - legs of the relay that Joe ran
13 - miles he ran total
24 - seconds I had Joe's iPod Shuffle in my hand before I totally lost it and he had to carry my larger Nano the entire weekend
211 - pictures I took during the race
3, 792 - teams that think fecal matter is a necessary ingredient for a great team name
117 - times I wondered what the heck our team name meant (Straight $hooters) and why we wore rainbow tie-dyed shirts to go along with it
1 - gigantic hill that Joe ran up
292 - feet of elevation gain of aforementioned big hill
1 - even bigger hill that Diana ran on her last leg (661 feet of elevation gain)
1 - even longer and BIGGER hill that Brian ran at 2:00 in the morning (884 brutal feet of elevation gain)
118 - times I was grateful for those rainbow tie-dyed shirts because we were easy to spot in a crowd of ten-thousand
11,001 - times we leap-frogged over our team members, started and stopped the van and rolled down windows to shout unintelligible things to cheer them on
12 - times we cheered and shouted at the wrong runner because they run in normal clothes, not those tie-dyed shirts
1 - mile of Diana's second leg that I ran along with her
5 - gallons of water that poured in the Suburban and onto Brian's lap when I parked too close to a sprinkler shower-head
2.5 - hours of sleep that we got on the lawn outside an elementary school, under a blanket that barely covered both of us
278 - times I wished I had the amazing running ability of Christina, Diana and Katherine
2 - regular meals we ate over the course of 28 hours (unless you count half a bagel and a breath mint, then we ate three meals)
94 - times I heard Brian say "I'm so embarrassed"
1 - cup of hot chocolate that saved my shivering life at the top of East Canyon Reservoir
83 - times I was glad I packed a Handy Little Bag of Everything (hair ties, nail file, Advil, eye-drops, sunblock stick...)
2 - hours spent showering, watching TV and taking naps at Christina's aunt's house before the end of the race
8,001 - times I thought Joe was a Total Racing Stud


4 - doses of Ammodium AD that Brian can (yet probably shouldn't) take in 2 hours
294 - minutes we spent trash-talking some team called Spit Happens (they started it)
1 - hapless male that unfortunately had Joe spit in his face as he tried to pass alongside (it was an accident!)
37 - times we hoped that guy actually was from Spit Happens
1 - Parking Lot Nazi that denied us entry into the lot adjacent to the finish line
0 - times we heeded his Threats and parked there anyway (under the guise of 'turning around')
412 - times the Parking Lot Nazis threatened to tow all the vans away for not having their Van2 decals in place
10 - minutes we had to stand in pouring rain waiting for our last team member to finish the course
1 - extra Wasatch Back Medal that was given to ME in addition to the rest of the team (apparently volunteers can't count and get rained on at the same time)


31 - place that our team took in the Coed Open division
299 - teams that came in after us (including Spit Happens who were 19 minutes behind)!

5 billion - gallons of water dumped on us in a crazy storm in Provo Canyon while driving home
0 - times the kids actually missed us because they had Ultimately Fun, Dinosaur Museum Visiting, Pudding Eating party with Grandpa
1 - iPod Shuffle miraculously discovered in the back of the Suburban when we got home from the race
3 - times I had to wake Joe up to try and get him actually in bed so he could sleep after we got home
infinite - times I will hope that we get to do this again next year... except I'm making a tentative promise to myself to be an actual runner instead of driver

Cheer for our team!

Today we're leaving for the Wasatch Back, a 170-mile Ragnar Relay race that goes from Logan to Park City Utah. The team is the Straight $hooters and they're team number 479.

Don't think that I'm running in this race. Maybe someday. Actually I'm just driving one of the support vehicles. But Joe is running and that makes him studly and awesome. If you happen to be in Park City, cheer for the Straight $hooters!

Rob & Andrea

This shoot was so much fun! We tried out this awesome abandoned house location that I discovered a few months ago. It looks scary on the outside but it makes a great background. I am really happy with it.

And lets not forget Rob and Andrea. These are their engagement pictures and they are a really fun couple. They were totally willing to try any crazy ideas. The only hard part was that Rob is probably more than a foot taller than Andrea... always a challenge.


Beautiful, beautiful girl. Don't you love the random gust of wind? I wonder how I can work this out every time I do pictures...

Cute cute girl

This is my niece... sort of. Her mom is Joe's cousin so however we are related - I call her my niece to simplify. Anyway, I did her family's pictures a few weeks ago and this is one picture that I loved so much, I had to post it.