Baby Colts on Rollerskates

When Avery gets an idea in her head, it’s hard to sway her. If we have a good time doing something the first time, then we have to keep doing that thing until it’s no longer fun. Last fall, the PTA began their schedule of Family Fun Nights. The first was a carnival at the school. It was fun, a bit crowded, but fun. Then came movie night. They were showing Ratatouille, one of our favorites. Concession was good, also fun. Then came rollerskating night. We were also game. Mind you, Mark and I haven’t been on roller skates in over 10 years. I don’t know about him, but the last time I laced up any skates was back in my single days. And the girls hadn’t tried it ever. But it was scheduled on a Monday night and seemed like a good FHE activity, so we gave it a shot. It was at a roller rink I used to go to when I was a kid. A bit dated (fluorescent pattern on the carpet and carpeted walls) and a little dark and cavernous, but filled with other friendly Randolph kids and parents, it was actually pretty enjoyable. The girls however could not skate. Not for lack of trying, they really just couldn’t do it. I think it really disappointed both of them, especially when they saw their friends whizzing by, and especially when the High School Musical anthem came on and they were still practicing on the carpet. They fell about a million times, and when they weren’t falling they were either clinging to the wall or Mark and my hands for dear life. Sadly, they are all legs and arms, and little coordination. As Mark put it, it was like watching a baby giraffe or horse being born and trying to take it’s first awkward steps. They just couldn’t get their feet and legs under them and it was agonizing to watch. And yet, despite all of that, they wanted more.

Avery got a free pass to the roller rink for Spring Break. We figured if we just didn’t bring it up again, she’d forget about it. She didn’t. And she knows how to work the parent guilt, because somehow we found ourselves at the Riverside Roller Rink this past Saturday for “Open Skate”. All signs were pointing to disaster, but we trudged on anyhow. After we passed the cloud of cigarette smoke to enter the joint, we saw that it was packed, and unfortunately not with the welcoming friends and parents of Randolph elementary. There were lots of loud, obnoxious teenagers who had been dropped off by parents for the afternoon. There were lots of icky single adults who were trying to accompany those parentless teenagers…eww! And we just didn’t get a good vibe from the get-go. After waiting in an endless line, we got our stinky and slightly moist skates. While we wrestled the girls into their skates, Maryn notices some of her friends from school. They see her too, and come over. One of them says, “I didn’t invite you to my birthday, why are YOU here?!?”, to which, Mark and I both sit in stunned silence, mouths agape with horror. Maryn pretty much takes it in stride and says, “I know, I’m here with my family.” The “birthday girl” then says, “well, I guess it’s okay if you stay.” So basically, that kind of added to the pall we were already feeling. Maryn, skates off on the carpet, immediately tripping and falling over herself surrounded by these other girls who HAD been invited, who are already giggling and having a great time at their party. I don’t know what switch is flicked as a parent when somebody treats your child like that, but basically that switch was FLARING for me. I skated by the “party”, but didn’t say anything. I knew many of the parents and didn’t want it to be awkward. I asked my friend Jane if her daughter had been invited, and she said yes. She said it was mostly just girls from the other first grade class who had been invited, and that it was a small party. She could tell I was bugged, and reassured me that it wasn’t a snub and kept encouraging her own daughter to go and skate with Maryn. Although a sweet gesture, it didn’t do a whole lot for Maryn. By this time she was sitting on the bench and already wanted to go home. In the meantime, Avery has fallen about a million times, and is nearing her breaking point. After falling backwards, and hitting her head pretty hard on the hard wood, she burst into tears, and was pretty much done after that. By the time we took their skates off, they had both melted into puddles of tears and drama. Not to mention the grumpy parents Mark and I had become from just wasting $30 bucks on such a monumental disaster. So that’s what we did this weekend. Instead of being grumpy from cleaning my house and shopping for groceries, I got grumpy from roller skating. Can I not win on Saturdays?!?

On the agenda for 4/19/08: Stake Women’s Conference all day and a Birthday GNO for me at Olive Garden in the evening. I guess I already answered my question…it’s about time! I am bound and determined to have an awesome weekend!!

He’s Cooking Our Garbage

I was reminded of that line from Uncle Buck last night as I served up our dinner. If you’ve been following my “Menu For The Week” on the sidebar, last night I tried a new recipe called “Parmesan Crusted Chicken in Cream Sauce with Brown Rice and Asparagus”. My friend Stacie asked me to share how it went, so here goes...

The brown rice and asparagus I got down-pat, no problems there. But the chicken part, not so much. It’s not that I can’t sauté a decent chicken breast on it’s own. I do just fine with the spices, and the moisture, and don’t usually end up with a dry old piece of cardboard. But you can now add something to the list of things that I’m NOT good at…frying. I’ve tried probably a million recipes that involve dredging the meat in either butter or egg or something else wet, and then dredging it again in a crumb-y mixture of either breadcrumbs, or cracker crumbs and parmesan, etc. You get the point.

I add the prescribed amount of oil to the pan at the prescribed heat, and then add the dredged meat, and wait the prescribed amount of cooking time and then BAM (thanks Emeril), when I turn it, I lose the breading. It usually sticks to the pan, or sometimes just turns to mush and melts off of the piece of meat, so then I end up with either a pan full of mush or a pan that is covered in stuck, burning breading and under-cooked chicken or meat. AAGH! What am I doing wrong?!?

Anyway, that’s what happened last night. The parmesan crust that I so carefully applied to the chicken breasts got stuck to the pan and when I turned them, it was all over. By the time the breasts were done, the breading was turning a brownish-orange and was completely stuck to the pan. For the cream sauce, the recipe said to add chicken broth and deglaze the pan, and then add the cream cheese and stir to a nice, thick consistency. Except when I deglazed the pan, all that stuck-on breading came up in big, brownish-orange chunks and I knew it wasn’t going to be pretty. Instead of turning into a smooth and creamy, Alfredo-type sauce, it turned into a chunky, brownish-orange mess. I figured I wouldn’t use it anyway, but then Avery gets a look at it and says, “ewwww, it’s looks like pu-uuuke”. Which really drove the knife in my heart ½ an inch deeper (gotta love my 5-year old's honesty), except I knew it was true.

I didn’t make them eat the sauce, nor did I want to for that matter. Quite frankly, it did look like puke. Oh well. We ate the chicken (sans breading and cream sauce) anyway, and at least the asparagus was crisp and the brown rice was good with some butter and salt and pepper. Not a complete loss. But if you have any advice about my ineptitude in the frying department, I’m all ears.

Who Doesn't Love Jane Austen?

Take the Quiz here!

I found this quiz on a friend's blog. Jane Austen has always been a huge favorite of mine since I was a teen. I love her style of writing and her complex, and impossibly romantic characters and plot lines. I love the drama and the tension, and the passion of it all! Not to mention the bonnets, and cute empire waist dresses, and those adorable accents. I sometimes wonder if I should have been born in that time period in England somewhere. I wasn't expecting to be most like Emma, I was thinking more along the lines of Elizabeth Bennett. My favorites are Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. And I've actually read both of those. These days, I don't have a lot of extra time for that pleasure, and so I've been watching the movie adaptations. Mark and I recently watched Persuasion with Amanda Root, and it was a snooze fest. Which disappointed me because I'm really on a kick lately. The next movie in my Netflix queue is Mansfield Park. I hope it's a keeper. What about you? What's your favorite Jane Austen work and who are you most like?

The Results

(Women's 30-39 Division)

Number: 98

Name: Suzanne Brown

Age: 33

City: Livonia

Place: 57

Group Overall: 378

Finishing Time: 1:00:33

Pace: 9:45

So all in all, the race went well and I’m glad I did it. I’m mostly happy with my finishing time but I think it could have been a wee bit better. It was my own slightly uneducated fault though, so I have nobody to blame but myself. As some of you know, I ran with a friend from my Ward, Angela. I'm glad we ran together, because we kept each other on pace and got to chat which made the time go by pretty quickly. We also bumped into a co-worker from CPWR, who started the race with us too, but said it was okay if we went ahead without her. The exhilaration of the event kind of sweeps you off your feet a little at the starting line and you have to actually temper yourself a little so that you can find your pace, regulate your breathing, and get warmed up properly. The weather was awesome. It was already like 40 or so when we started. I had bundled up…black pants, white t-shirt, black fleece jacket, hat, and gloves. I had also stuffed my cell phone into one pocket and my shuffle into the other. These items were my biggest mistakes. I didn’t need any of them. Now I know. I quickly shed the hat, then the gloves, then the iPod. After another mile or so, the jacket too. Problem with the jacket was my shuffle was kind of tangled in the zipper, so I had to untangle it, and it kind of slipped out of my hand. I had to stop running so I could stuff it into my jacket pocket, zip it up so it wouldn’t fall out, and then unzip the jacket, and find the arms to tie around my waist…you see where this is going, right? All that nonsense seemed like it took an eternity. And all the while people are zooming past me, and I’m saying sorry over and over to Angela who is now walking with me. I finally arranged my crap, and we started back up. I started stressing out a little at this point about how much time we’d lost and got a little distracted. But then we found a groove again, and after about the 4 mile mark (and water), we stepped up our pace. We stopped chatting at that point and started passing people up again. After the bridge, we were really doing well. I think our best mile was the last. And especially the last .2 miles. We sprinted because we could see the finish line and our families! It was so much fun!!

So overall I feel good. I’m glad I didn’t chicken out and I can add it to my list of running accomplishments. In the grand scheme of things, I’m definitely giving myself a little pat on the back. Afterwards the girls were very enthusiastic and now want to start running their own races. I guess that’s another perk from doing all of this…inspiring my kids to learn to love it too.

Thanks for all your kind words of encouragement. After you tell a bunch of people what you’re planning on doing, it makes it pretty tough to back out. I’m glad you helped me not to.

Go To Your Special Place

One of my co-workers has a great big bowl of candy that she passes out to people on Friday afternoons. She is allergic to chocolate, that's how she can safely store this bowl of candy at her desk. She knows my favorite is Dove Dark chocolate. So if I'm not here when she passes by, she leaves one on my keyboard. It's one of those weekly rituals that I particularly enjoy. The fun thing about Dove chocolates is that the wrapper always has a special little message typed on the inside. I used to save my wrappers because they made me smile. Then I realized how many I had and I remembered seeing those homes of hoarders on Oprah and I got a little paranoid and threw them away. ANYWAY, I still love my special messages, but now I discipline myself to enjoy it for awhile and then throw it away already! Geesh! So today, this is what my Dove chocolate wrapper told me to do.

“Go To Your Special Place”

When I read it, I kind of giggled as I imagined myself rocking back and forth in fetal position with my thumb in my mouth finding my “happy place”. My special PLACE? Do I have a special place? Where do I go when I am seeking refuge or respite from the cold, cruel, angry world? Is it all in my head, a memory of someplace from my youth? Is it at the mall with my credit card in hand? Or is it daydreaming about an exotic (probably never going to happen) vacation? Or could it simply be 14295 Bassett Street? Basically it could be or mean anything. Sky’s the limit. As a matter of fact, my special place could be the sky itself. So I’m on a tangent to find out what I want my special place to be. (And since I’m making the rules, I’m not going to have just one…)

My Special Places:

18646 Golfview: I’m sorry, I’m super sentimental, but I grew up in this house and every memory I have as a child is tied to it. Whether good or bad, it all happened here. I can remember so many little details about this place. The funky wallpaper patterns in the “big bathroom”, the oozy mortar pattern on the brick fireplace, the patched up hole in the hallway where Jeff put his fist through the wall. It all comes back with such clarity, doesn’t it? That is a special place for me. I remember my red and blue room, and having a Strawberry Shortcake comforter and sheet set. I remember when I moved into my re-decorated for my 15th birthday light blue and dusty rose “country” room. But I mostly remember just snuggling up on the blue and tan plaid couches in the family room, watching TV, Dad reading the paper on the loveseat, while Mom cooked dinner in the kitchen (I can still hear the hissing of the pressure cooker) and various siblings were either propped on the coveted spot on the carpet in front of the TV or doing homework assignments at the kitchen table. That will always be a very special place in my heart and mind.

A daydream of a (probably never going to happen) exotic vacation: I finally checked off Disneyworld this past year so now I’m onto daydreaming about other distant lands. I think I’ve mentioned about a million times that I want to go back to the Czech Republic and so I’m not going to classify that as a “probably never going to happen” because hopefully it will happen someday. Instead, I’m going to write about another place that really probably won’t ever happen but is fun to think about. For me, right now I have this dream of flying into either Dublin or Edinburgh, Scotland and either riding buses or trains south into the deep Scottish countryside. We would stop and stay at bed and breakfasts or small, quaint Inn’s and dine on authentic Scottish cuisine (haggis anyone?) and hike around and discover things all day long. I would want to make my way through the country to the Island of Ronansay… (It’s this fictitious place that was made up in this show on PBS that I love called “2,000 Acres of Sky”, produced by the BBC). In the show they call this place the Island of Ronansay, but in real life it’s Port Logan, and is a small village in the parish of Kirkmaiden in the Rhins of Galloway in Wigtownshire. (Doesn’t that SOUND amazing?)

Trefoil Ranch: I will always remember the summers I worked at Trefoil Ranch in Provo Canyon. It really was a beautiful place and I was constantly surrounded by gorgeous mountains, wildflowers for miles, and blue sky dotted with white, cottony clouds. I remember taking early-morning runs along the canyon road and hiking along dirt trails up and down the mountainside. I remember climbing a mountain for the first time in my life and sleeping under the stars with giggly little girl scouts and other counselors, who became my close friends. I remember learning to love nature and myself in a new way and feeling very connected to God’s creations. It was a special place and time in my life.

The Temple: I know this may sound a bit like a stock Sunday school answer, but for me the Temple is a real touch-stone and constant in my life. Ever since I left home at 18, I have moved around a lot. I haven’t really lived in any one place longer than 3 years. Because of that, I’ve discovered I really don’t consider any place “home” right now. Even now that I’m back in Michigan, I still don’t feel “home”. Mostly because we are just renting our house right now and may not stay after Mark finishes school. But I have found this feeling of being “at home” in the Temple. It reminds me where I came from, and where I’m going, and helps me to feel peace and serenity all at the same time.

So here’s another one of those posts that is supposed to get you thinking…what is your “special place” and why?

Run, Forrest, Run!

Oh soul, you worry too much.

You have seen your own strength.

You have seen your own beauty.

You have seen your golden wings.

Of anything less, why do you worry?

You are in truth the soul,
of the soul, of the soul.

-- Jalaluddin Rumi

I found this poem on a Marathon Mommy’s blog and it made me kind of tear up a little bit. The beauty of it is it can apply to almost any situation, but in this case she was bloggin’ about her marathon training. I’m no Marathom Mommy (not even close, thank you very much), but I do understand what she’s talking about when she talks about how running has changed her life and how she sees, and thinks, and goes after things differently…how it affects everything, how she deals with things, and how she sees herself. I guess I’ve noticed the gradual change in myself due to running too. It definitely didn’t happen overnight, or even after a year of doing it consistently. It’s still hard to do, sometimes it still hurts, and I wonder why I push myself. Now the discomfort and self-doubt fades away quicker and the “runner’s high” kicks in sooner and I actually feel better, more at peace after doing it. I’ve proved that I’m stronger than I think I am, and that I’m more capable than I give myself credit for. I guess I’ve found my “golden wings” as the poem says. I’ve learned a lot and am grateful that it’s kind of allowed me a re-birth in my life at this stage of the game. I feel better than I did 5 years ago and I’m not getting any younger, if you know what I mean.

So a little news for all (?) my readers is that I’m gearing up for my first 10K on Saturday morning (Martian Marathon/Half/10K in Dearborn), and I kind of started to panic a bit as I set out on a 5-miler the other day. After the first 10 or 15 minutes my breathing started racing and I was getting a little spastic (losing my stride), and practically fell off the treadmill. I started thinking, “I can’t do this…I’m too tired…I haven’t trained enough…My head hurts…Who am I kidding?” And then I (metaphorically) slapped myself across the face and kicked up my speed to prove that yes, I can do this. I can absolutely do this. So I finished a little over 5 miles in a little under 50 minutes. It must be the NEW shoes that my friendly, Running Fit employee (John Bagley) hooked me up with a few weeks ago (with his friendly employee discount). It’s pretty sweet having hook-ups like that. I must say I felt pretty exhilarated after finishing my run, and realized that maybe this isn’t such a long-shot after all. This is something that I’ve been kind of shying away from for awhile and am ready to conquer it already…get it over with. I guess the thing I’ll be scared of after that is the eventual half-marathon I’ll hem and haw about until I just slap myself across the face again and do it. Maybe October? Maybe the Flagstar in downtown Detroit that I thought maybe, one day I could possibly do 2 years ago when I ran my first 5K? Maybe. We’ll see. Wish me luck on Saturday. EEEK!

Some Pictures, Finally!

Sorry it has taken me so long to get our Easter pics uploaded. We had a great one this year. We enjoyed a nice visit with Mark's parents. They drove cross-country from Idaho, and had a pretty easy trip until they hit a random Spring snow storm in Indiana and had to slow way down. I'm just glad they made it in one piece. The girls woke up to not only Easter baskets and eggs on Saturday morning, but Grandma and Grandpa all the way from Rigby!

Easter baskets



Reunited with Grandma Brown



We took them downtown on Saturday. Mark drove them around the "sights" of Detroit (I think I heard Dennis lock the doors at some point), we had lunch in Mexican Village, and then went to the DIA (Detroit Institute of Arts). Avery volunteered to be our (bossy) tour guide and showed them all of her favorite paintings and places. We all took some good, long naps when we got home that afternoon.



Avery and Grandpa had some important discussions during their visit. Maybe they're talking about the different types of Impressionism depicted at the DIA. What do you think? Too cute!



We finally had a family picture taken by Laurie before Church on Sunday. It's been awhile. The girls didn't end up with the poofy, frilly, pastel dresses I imagined. Instead, they picked out what they wanted and I think they both suit their personalities really well. They both felt pretty cute getting all gussied up. Mark even consented to wearing the pink tie we bought him for Easter a few years back. Me? Mine's not new, although I did buy something. I just need to wait till it gets warmer to wear it. IF that ever happens.



The next picture is actually from this past Friday. Upon hearing news that we had Dentist appts. (just cleanings) on Saturday morning, there was more tooth drama. Maryn has another tooth that is hanging onto gum only at this point that she will NOT give up. Many of you probably question whether Maryn has this side to her personality as she is so mellow and friendly so much of the time. But here it is, in all it's raw, terrified, and stubborn glory...poor girl!