Fourth Of July Fun

Yes, I know July 4th was nearly a week ago.  As you may have noticed by my lack of blogging, I am a little behind lately.  Besides, my neighbors are still shooting off fireworks.  So if they insist on doing that, I insist on sharing our 4th of July a few days late.

The past several years, the more ambitious members of my family have started a tradition of running a 10K called the Butte to Butte on the morning of July 4th (the less ambitious members of the family, aka my siblings, have always managed to find a reason to stay in bed).  First it was me and my parents, then Nathan joined in.  This year Nathan had to sit out due to all the broken toes, but my Uncle Rob joined the festivities.

For all you non-runners, a 10K is slightly over 6 miles.  The first mile of this race is all uphill, the second mile is downhill, and the last four are flat.

I love doing this run, but I am setting a disturbing pattern of being in worse and worse shape every year when it rolls around.  I don’t think I had run any farther than 4 miles since LAST July 4th!  This year, I ran the 10K in a little less than an hour, and only ten seconds slower than last year.  Not bad, except that I felt about ten times worse this year.  I felt great through four miles, but miles five and six kicked my butt.  As evidenced by this super flattering photo of my finish.

If it looks like I am running about two miles an hour at this point?  That’s because I probably am.  Nothing like pain to motivate me to actually attempt to be in shape next year.

Luckily for mom and dad, they photograph just as great as me.

The upside of this run is that it is a TON of fun, you totally get your money’s worth out of your entry fee (this year they even had barbecued hot dogs at the finish line!), and you get such a good workout that you feel no guilt whatsoever when you stuff your face later on in the day.  The downside is that you have to get up at the crack of dawn, and it hurts to move for several days after.  But that is a small price to pay for enjoying this later in the afternoon:

Ingredients: 3

Minutes to Prepare: 5

A Beautiful, Delicious Dessert: Priceless!

I would give you my secret recipe, but then I’d have to kill you.

The other great thing about July 4th was that summer finally arrived!  We had one glorious day of comfortable weather, and we enjoyed a fun, relaxing barbecue that afternoon with some great people.

Since then, the temperature has skyrocketed and I am contemplating a move to Alaska.  I am also contemplating using Nathan’s crutches to knock some sense into my apparently unemployed neighbors if they don’t stop setting off fireworks on a nightly basis.  Wish me luck!

Countdown to the BSBPE! Part 3

When Tom Brady scored a TD with 11 and a half minutes to go in the Pats-Ravens playoff game, I started planning the crowning glory of my BSBPE!: Patriots team/player customized cookies!

First, I found these awesome cookie cutters on Amazon.  I decided to stick with the football & flag shapes only for this party, because I thought they would be the easiest to cut out and the least likely to break.  I was right – only one football bit the dust!

Turns out the sugar cookie cutouts were the easy part.  Not so easy?  Attempting to get navy blue colored frosting.  We used an entire tube of blue gel coloring and still didn’t manage to get there.  We did however, make some pretty awesome cookies.

Our two magic weapons:

The frosting in the bags was Nathan’s idea.  We were trying to write players names & numbers onto the cookies, and we had bought canned frosting in order to attempt that.  However, our cans were rather temperamental and didn’t allow us to write small enough, so Nathan came up with the idea of using Ziploc bags with a tiny hole cut in the corner.  Similar to a frosting bag, except this way we could get the tip to be teeny tiny in a way that my cake frosting tips don’t.  The big bowl of blue frosting (leftover from frosting the cookies) became our “Correction Frosting”.  Correction Frosting comes in very handy – for instance, when your husband invents a player named “Brach”.

I have to say I am VERY proud of our finished product.  We are currently trying to figure out how to get them submitted to the NE Patriots Facebook fan page.  Navy blue or not, I’d say they turned out great. 

Super Bowl Party Prep!

Outside of work, sleep, and saying prayers for Gronk’s ankle, I have spent nearly every spare moment of the last week planning the Super Bowl party of the century!  Why, you may ask?  Two words, one handsome face:

Tom Brady!

Tom Brady is the driving force behind my love for the New England Patriots, the NFL, and my ESPN radio addiction.  I saw him on TV in a football game in high school about ten years ago, and it was love at first sight.  Nathan & I have a Super Bowl party every year, but this is the most important one we have thrown so far, and may possibly be the most important ever.  We had a big party planned in The Year That Almost Was, But Was Instead Ruined By A Big Goober Named Eli (aka the 2008 Super Bowl), but Mother Nature is apparently a Jets fan and had other ideas – freezing and breaking our pipes, thereby cancelling the party.  So this is the very first year that we are throwing a party for a Super Bowl in which my beloved team & quarterback are actually playing, which requires the Best. Party. Ever!!!!!

Let me share with you the finer aspects of planning the BSBPE! (Best Super Bowl Party Ever! – Duh). 

Step 1: Develop a Pinterest board devoted specifically to Super Bowl foods.  Spend hours when you are supposed to be sleeping devoted to pinning links to said board.

Step 2: Plan a freaking fantabulous menu! We are having a taco bar, trying out the crockpot chicken pictured below.  Sister is making the devilled eggs (how awesome are those?), and we are having bean dip, fruit salad, and veggies as apps.

chicken via mychocolatetherapy, eggs via myrecipes.com

And for dessert – nothing beats a Super Bowl Sundae:

I have another (Patriot-themed) dessert planned, but it is a surprise – I will have to post the pictures later this weekend!

Step 3: Develop a bunch of awesome games, then buy some crazy prizes at the Dollar Store! 

For our games, Nathan has a sheet of questions put together for people to answer before the game (winner, MVP, halftime & final score, longest field goal, first player to score, etc.) and whoever has the most right at the end of the game wins.  This year we also decided to play some Bingo! We found an awesome website (Print-Bingo) that lets you create custom Bingo Cards (for FREE, I might add) – you create the format, pick all the bingo square words, and it will generate random cards for you!  It was so awesome.  We made a game bingo specifically tailored to NE & NYG with game related things like pass interference, NE rushing TD, NYG passing TD, etc.  Then we made bingo cards for commercials with things like talking baby, Pepsi commercial, Budweiser, etc.

I am so ready for this BSBPE!  I wish I could stay home from work on Thursday and start getting ready that day!  As it stands, I will have to wait until Friday.  I will leave you with this football related joke that I heard on TV last night (although for the life of me, I can’t remember what show.  Which means it must have been the Disney Channel):

How did the football player break his finger in the telephone booth?

He was trying to get his quarter back.

:-)