Railroad Yummies

I found this picture of a Carcassone cake on cakewrecks.com. This game is a lot of fun and found this cake rendition a good one. It has inspired me! If I ever do beat Erik at Railroad Tycoon - I might just make a Railroad Tycoon cake! Although the board is much bigger and hugely more complicated and I'm NOT drawing little hexagonal lines on the cake. So maybe I won't do this...

Next week starts a new semester and I'm nervous. I'm teaching math which I haven't taught since 2004. I love math but it is easy to get rusty when you don't "complete the square" every day. So I hope the class goes well. I'll be spending all weekend preparing. Except for the time on Saturday when we go pick up the camper! It is 80°F out today and beautiful! So it should be a perfect day for me to risk my life cleaning the top of the camper.

Missy, my "sister", bought the girls singing and dancing toys for Easter. These toys are played constantly. I do have a video but it doesn't quite show Sarah doing the chicken dance. She really tries to do the chicken dance. Jenna is having a ball dancing and Sarah is trying. Check it out.

Only 78 on Quiddler today!

Exercising Dreams

As we played squash the other day, I was thinking of my favorite exercises. So of course, I decided to compile a top ten list of my favorite exercises.

1. Squash - so much awesomeness!
2. Hiking - outdoors + walking = fun
3. Walking - anywhere, anytime!
4. Swimming - I love swimming!! It would be higher if I didn't have to shave my legs :)
5. Aerobics - I've done aerobics since I was 13 and have always loved it!
6. Tennis - racquets + outside = fun
7. Elliptical trainer - workout + listening to books on my mp3 player :)
8. Racquetball - a fun racquet sport - not as much fun as squash or tennis though
9. Sit ups - I'm a glutton for punishment. I love situps for some reason?
10. Stretching/Pilates - I've done pilates at Wright state and loved it. Stretching always makes me feel good afterwards

Golf - as you notice is not on here even though it involves outside and walking. It's not on here because golf is not fun. Bicycling is also not on here as it always hurts my bottom. I loved it as a kid but I don't have a tough bottom anymore.

Also, I was thinking of some dreams I have for myself, family, community and world and thought I would share these as well. Maybe these dreams will never happen, but if I know my dreams, maybe I can work towards them and come one step closer.

A dream for myself - to earn my PhD

A dream for my family - to all become followers of Jesus Christ

A dream for my community - no one would go hungry

A dream for the world - the end of abortion

So now that I know my dreams. I can work to accomplish them. When I asked Erik what his dream for himself was, he said he wanted to live in a castle. Well....we'll see about that one. His dreams for community and world were that our world would be a safe place.

73 on Quiddler today.

Breathing Chocolate

Le Whif has developed a chocolate inhaler. It's a new way of eating chocolate by breathing it. I'm not so sure about this. Would it really replace the yumminess of chocolate? Although if it curbed my sweet tooth it might be worth it.

I don't just have a sweet tooth. I have 32 sweet tooths (or teeth... sweet teeth just didn't sound right). I wonder if this product would satisfy my sweet tooth. In my 20s I weighed about 10-12 lbs less than I do now. On my frame (I'm not short!) that makes a big difference. I no longer have the excuse that I can't give blood because I don't weigh enough. However I have been okay with the additional weight because I don't want to give up sweets :). Who's going to go buy this breathable chocolate?

My psycho crazy baby

Easter was glorious! We all packed up and drove to Cleveland to cram into Missy's condo. It was an amazing time of bonding as sisters and as sisters in Christ. Praise God my two sisters are Christ followers! We had a blast. And hopefully Erik wasn't overwhelmed with estrogen.

We attended Missy's church called Church on the Rise. It was definitely a great service for Easter!

Then we left the girls with my parents for two days. And Erik took a 2 hour nap. I made homemade pasta with my pasta maker and put fresh rosemary in it. Then I stuffed the pasta with fresh mozzarella cheese, ricotta cheese, parmesan cheese, and italian seasoning. Fantastic! We had that paired with pinot noir for lunch. Since I was teaching Monday night I had pb&j for dinner but at least we had a great lunch!

Sarah has become psycho crazy baby. I say this with the utmost affection. Here are my reasons for why my daughter is psycho crazy baby:

• She RUNS! She is 15 months - how can she run already?
• She runs away from me, particularly in public places, and very fast. I'm 33 - I should be able to keep up with a 15 month old.
• She climbs on the table and eats directly out of the salt shaker
• She grabs goldfish out of the box under the secretary and just snacks whenever she feels like it.
• She walks up to anyone, ANYONE, and puts her arms up so they will pick her up (grandparents, aunts, friends, waitresses at Der Dutchmann, random strangers...)
• She mooches food off of anyone who looks at her
• She climbs the backs of chairs
• Her "hugs" for Scruffles look like some form of torture
• She eats crayons, dirt, soap, soap bubbles, pens, and anything else that looks tasty

Even so, I still think she is absolutely adorable and I love her more every day. I haven't queried Erik or Jenna to see if they feel the same.

I just finished "Your Best Life Now" by Joel Osteen. Very motivational book - I hope I can live out the principles he talked about in the book to live my best life :).

54 on Quiddler today!

Iron Chef Erik Green Olives

Thank you to everyone who voted for Iron Chef Erik's secret ingredient. The winner was green olives!!
Erik made 4 dishes:

• Chicken salad with Italian Olive Dressing. Erik cooked chicken in olive oil and put it on a bed of lettuce with chopped tomatoes on top. He made an Italian dressing with chopped green olives. This dish had a very strong olive flavor.
• Fried BLT wtih Olive mayo. Erik received a lot of originality points for this one. He put bacon, olives, lettuce, and tomato in a burrito shell and then fried them in olive oil. Then he made mayonnaise with green and black olives. YUM!
• Creamy olive rice. This dish was composed of rice, bleu cheese, cream cheese, green olives, and chopped peppers. The green olive flavor came out well in this dish and he paired it well with the cheeses.
• Olive spread with crackers. Erik used one of the olive containers to put the olive spread. This was a cream cheese spread with chopped olives, sour cream, juice from the green olives, and chopped orange peppers. We spread this on crackers. Yum!

I gave Erik 15.125 and he rated himself a 15. This was a really fun Iron chef. We will take a break for a few weeks, but I'm saving that poll for his next Iron Chef!

I've had an incredible week. Here's what happened:

1. Wednesday - I beat Erik at Squash!!! We've been playing for a few months and I've never won. But I beat him 9-7 (you have to win by 2). I jumped so high!!

2. Wednesday - I finally reached level 80 with my Paladin. I started the night at 83%. I've never been the highest level in the game before the next release comes out. Yea!

3. Sunday (today) - I received notice that my paper was accepted to BIOCOMP 09. I'm going to Vegas baby! The conference is July 13-16. Yea! And I read on the site that they only accepted 27% of papers.

You'd think that I was on a roll and would get an awesome score in Quiddler - no, just 80 although the minimum score was 75 so that wasn't too bad :).