Meet Ruby

Some of you have already met Ruby (my bike), but for the rest of you here is a pic of my favorite new girl! Ruby and I have become "BBF's" (ha ha) and I have really enjoyed spending time with her. Oh, and all my friends that ride too! I just wish that the weather would cooperate a little more, so I don't have to mope around the house when I can't get out for a ride. Today I took Ruby from my house up to the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon, then along Wasatch, (where I got schooled by an old man rider), then down 126th to 27th w. then down 98th so. home. It felt sooo good. I think I have found that thing I am passionate about. Biking doesn't seem to bother my legs the way running does, although I'm going to have to give into the fact that I need to do a little cross training. So to all of you out there who are considering a bike, I highly recommend it. Until next time, don't forget to "Ride like a girl!" And to those of you who have one, Lets go! By the way, it has come to my attention that I have lots of anonymous readers, feel free to say "hi" in my comments...;)

Soo yummy!

For Mother's Day I requested a wheat grinder. So I am the proud new owner of a Nutrimill grinder, that can pretty much grind anything you can think of. Its way cool, if you don't have one, I highly suggest getting one. There is a woman in my neighborhood (Tami Girsberger, some of my readers will know her) who was first of all, instrumental in me getting a wheat grinder, and she has also written a cookbook, "The Essential Food Storage Cookbook". It's not your mothers food storage cookbook, I recommend it. One of my favorite recipes is Yogurt Pancakes. Up until the wheat grinder I have just used white flour in this recipe (which is delicious), but just recently tried it with my freshly ground wheat flour. It's to die for... So everyone give it a try, then let me know what you think. (I suggest doubling the batch, then freezing the left overs for a quick microwavable breakfast later on.)

Orange Yogurt Pancakes

2 eggs

1/4 c. sugar

1 c. white flour

1c. whole wheat flour(I opted for 2c. wheat, no white)

1 1/2 t. baking soda

1 t. salt

1/3 c. oil

1t. vanilla

1 c. orange juice

1c. vanilla yogurt

Mix wet, and dry ingredients separately, then combine until well blended. Cook on preheated griddle at 350. These pancakes will be very moist, and will be a little difficult to flip, but enjoy. Definately on my list of favs!

Wanted: more sun, less rain

O.K., so our "bucket list" for the three weeks off track hasn't been going according to plan. The weather is NOT cooperating, and we are soo far behind schedule on our picnics I just don't know that we will be able to catch up! We have been spending time indoors, the kids have been working on art projects, and perfecting the art of beating on each other out of boredom. For Christmas, Santa brought each of them art kits that we decided to break out. They looked so great, a huge recipe book of ideas, and paints, glue, glitter, dyes, measuring cups, paintbrushes... So we go through the book to find a project, and the dumb book has tons of great ideas with ingredients that they don't include in the kit (what the?) So after a couple of failed attempts at their ingredients I made a good old fashioned batch of salt dough clay, added a little food coloring, and it kept them entertained for the rest of the afternoon. The lesson you ask? Keep it simple, stupid. The salt dough works everytime, and you don't have to buy the crappy kit. Just 1c. flour, 1/2c. salt, 1/2 c. water, and 1T. oil. Add a little food coloring, and your set for the afternoon. We did catch one nice day on Saturday, so we went to Gardener Village to find some new bar stools. Can I first say that my bar stools are only a couple of years old, and they are beat to crap! I'm pretty sure the kids use them for WWF matches when I'm in the shower or something, not to mention for some unknown reason I had a weak moment and bought bar stools that had fabric seats, which of course look disgusting because the kids use them as napkins. Soo, the stool hunt was sucessful, as you can see I chose some fairly plain, easy to care for new ones, and I got a pretty good Memorial Day sale too! (That made Greg happy.) We wandered around Gardener Village for a while, they had a folk band playing, and great sidewalk sales at every house. The kids were drawn to the water, and the ducks, and Gage found a little garden snake that he a Trace both posed with for the camera. There was also a bullfrog that was huge, and too fast to catch a photo of. Who needs the zoo when you can just go to Gardener Village? And of course, whats a trip to Gardener Village without a candy stop at Sweet Afton's! (Who doesn't love their fudge?!) Today we broke the law (what can I say, we're desperate people with all the rain) and took our kids to see Indianna Jones. (My kids look 13 don't they?) Either it wasn't all that bad, or we are totally desensitized to what we consider entertainment. It wasn't my favorite Indy movie, but pretty good, especially for a rainy day.

Stuck on time

So I'm still on the time thing. Today I went to the cemetary to visit/clean up my dad's grave. My cute little Gram beat me to the cleaning, and edging, so I just stood there and had a good cry, and remimisced to myself for a bit. In September it will be two years ago that my dad passed away, and in that time, I have spent a lot of time thinking about all the things I didn't say or do and aching for a little more time. The Today Show's Anne Curry just lost her dad in April after a short battle with cancer. She did a piece today about her dad and some of her favorite memories of him. She talked about how much she misses him, his corny jokes, the way he was always laughing and smiling. Anne also talked about documenting, with photos or video, and writing down things that loved ones tell you. Of course you reflect on your own life when something hits close to home. I miss a lot of the same things about my dad. He was always walking around singing some song under his breath, always a smile on his face, and I will never forget that deep quiet laugh he had. I also treasure the advice he gave me along the way, I still sorely miss being able to call him for his advice on this or that. My dad wasn't judgemental or proud. He was who he was, and I loved that about him. He had more friends than most people even meet in a lifetime. Life is short, sometimes way too short. I know I needed a lot more of my dad's time than I got. Just make sure you take time to spend time. Then write it down, and take lots of photos. I wish I had done more documenting and picture taking. By the way, the Beetles songs are for you dad, I sure miss you... love, Sunni

Is it time?

Is it time for a new post? I guess by the infrequent posts you all can guess how consistantly I write in my journal too. Well, I think that our April showers are falling in May, which means my May flowers should be lovely by June? And since we're running a month behind schedule I expect a nice long fall too! So, the kids are off track and we have a list as long as my arm that they want to do before they go back to school in 2 1/2 weeks. As I read through it after its completion I realized its all about time. They want to do things like picnic (everywhere, at our park, at the park by dad's office, in the yard...) -you can never go wrong with a picnic. They also wanted to just play some family baseball, and go on a bike ride together. We have already been on one picnic this week, which consisted of a fabulous lunch from McDonald's, and a slightly soggy shady spot under a tree next to the playground equipment. After we ate I watched them play for a while, then I joined in the fun -which only lasted another 20 minutes before someone had to go potty, and with no unlocked potties in sight we had to call it a day. As we packed up and headed to the car all 3 of them were raving about how much fun we had, that this day topped their list of best days ever, and all I did was play "monster of the playground" for 20 minutes. So, yes it is time. Its all about time, how we use it, what is really worth our time, and who we choose to spend our time with. So, what time is it for you?

This family Tri's hard!!!

We had such a great time in St. George last week. Although it rained cats and dogs, buckets, down poured on us all the way down on Wednesday night. But, the weather was perfect for swimming and playing on Thursday and Friday. However, Saturday morning the wind storms came just in time for the triathlon. They were soo bad that after the olympic heat started in the water, and they had to pull a whole group out of the lake due to the severity of the current, they cancelled the swim portion of the race for the sprinters. (phew! I was soo nervous to watch those guys try to swim against the waves.) So, Greg only had to bike and run this year. I say only, it was still a killer trying to bike and run with extreme wind conditions (you can see by my fabulous hair!) Thank goodness everyone we went with went home in one piece, there were lots of crashes and accidents this year! Yikes! I had some extreme fun of my own while we were there. I took my bike, and met up with some friends for an especially early morning 30 mile ride. Lets just call it the death march. We started at 5 a.m. because one girl had to be back home by 6:30. It was completely dark, which wasn't too bad until the leader of the pack (no names to protect the guilty) led us on a wild ride down dark side streets, only two from our group had lights, and I wasn't one of them. Needless to say, dark unfamiliar streets, on a road bike left me praying for the light of day. I love the light. I have never been soo glad to see a sunrise in my life. After the sun came up the rest of the ride was awesome. Can I just say that I love my bike! (only in well lit places though!)

Where are you Summer?

Where are you summer?

How can I find you ?

Why won't you come our way?

Where is the sunshine

you used to bring me?

Why can't I see flowers bloom?

My world is greying

I've need of rearranging

That means changing of seasons too - oo

Where are you summer?

I am still waiting

My skin is cold and

very pale and I need

sun to see me through...

Ok, I give up on the trying to rewrite the lyrics to "Where are you Christmas". Because instead of writting this blog, I'd rather be outside digging in my garden, planting the vegtables I bought at Glover Nursery the other day that are hiding from the frost in my garage. Now, if this was the begining of April I would be a little more ok with the fact that everything is dead from last nights frost, but being that it is May 1st I am soo not ok that there is snow on the ground! (By the way Happy Birthday Dad, I hope you wanted snow for your birthday. Although I know you'd rather be fishing on the 'berry so I doubt you ordered snow.) Too bad I'm not more like Polly Anna and then I could find the good in this and go out on the lawn and make one last snow angel for the year. I never did like that Polly Anna!