Renaissance Faire

This morning I visited my parents. The were working around the house and in their lovely garden.

Mom and dad, in their domain

Coffee and knitting

Eggplants from the garden - yum!

In the afternoon, my sisters, my bff and I attended the Renaissance Faire. Here are some shots and videos from that little field trip.

Spomi and the snake

M'ladies

Ha ha

Queen Victoria's Secret

Pony

King and the Queen

Uh-oh... watch out, S!

Jousting

Pretty lake

My sisters, fencing. Very reminiscent of the movie "The Parent Trap".

My sisters dancing.

These two are gifted.

Late summer walks; Bella & Paisley visit

Wallace and I have been walking on the long, winding bike trail near our house every day now. Saturday was especially nice.

What's behind that corner?

Yes - that's my big shape

Blue skies, green trees, light breeze - I love this season!

And then there were these bright flowers...

...many of them, cheering us on

In the afternoon, I had company. My friend Ariel (who is expecting her third daughter Milla any day now), brought over Bella and Paisley to play.

Pretty visitors

Bella - the first-born, putting stickers all over her shirt

She is a huge Sponge Bob fan

Hungry baby Paisley

Such a happy babe

Friday walk

Nothing like a lunch hour walk with my dear mom and my two lovely sisters.

Labor day weekend

My long weekend consisted of miles and miles of walking, shamelessly long naps, and a few house chores now and then.

Walking lunch hour with mom & sisters on Friday

Wally cooling his paws

Wallace and I walked 3 miles on Saturday. The day was beyond beautiful and the trail was surrounded by trees and prairie grass. On Sunday, my sister joined us for a walk, but we got caught in a hard rain and had to be picked up by my hubby and driven home.

Rain, rain go away

On Monday, Wally and I walked 5 whole miles. We went furthest we've ever been, and even saw some oxes resting in the tree shade on a field by the trail. Then we returned home and took naps.

Gadget girl

You may already know that I am a gadget geek. On top of that, I am also anally goal-oriented. Hence the endless to-do lists and progress charts on everything I do. But when it comes to cardio exercise, it wasn't just enough to check it off my to-do list.

I needed to know my heart rate, pace, distance, speed, cadence... (yes, because I am such an athlete ::eye roll::).  Treadmills are great for keeping track, but excruciatingly boring. I love to run/walk(/crawl) outside, so I needed something to play with while serving myself as dinner to all the mosquitos in the 25-mile radius.

So yesterday I bought this magical toy. A Garmin Forerunner 305 - a portable GPS with tons of cool features.

I want to go out and run all day, just so I can go home, download my step-by-step peformance and analyze the results. Heck, I can even download my route onto Google Maps and see exactly how many miles it is from point A to point B. My hope is that this will kick my training into gear, because it's only a few weeks until the 5k race I so ambitiously signed up for.

Mother's gifts

Mother's love grows by giving.  ~Charles Lamb

My mother crocheted this beautiful soft scarf for me. I have to say it matches my eyes. Thank you, mama! 

 I also received a wonderful gift from my mother-in-law in celebration of my graduation. 

Mothers are wonderful.

Randoms

1) I am knitting a rainbow shrug to wear over my multi-colored tank tops. The back is almost done (as seen below).

2) This is my husband. He is a stud. Handsome, intelligent, and overall awesome. And that's our "puppy" behind him. Another really cool alpha-male.

3) And here is a project we've been working on lately: removing the jungle around our house. It's a lot of work and delayed by a nest of vicious bees who stung hubby, me, and even our puppy. We are waiting for the weather to cool to finish cutting these overgrown bushes and planting less invasive plants.

In progress: that entire side of the house was hidden by bushes (like the front side you see on the left)