Mandy and Jace

Last weekend we were invited to go to South Padre Island to a motorcycle rally with my family and some of the other riders we know. We drove the truck with a trailer attached so that if anyone broke down we could just load them up and trailer them home instead of wasting time fixing the bike. I don’t think we realized just how far it was to Padre, though.

By the time we all got there we were exhausted, and I can’t even begin to imagine how all of the bikers felt. But, after a good nights sleep almost everyone was good to go the next morning. Notice I said almost.

I don’t know why, but I always get sick either on the weekend or on vacation. I can’t get sick on a weekday when I can get out of work. Nope! So of course, Saturday morning I woke up with some sort of demon bug that caused me to feel like crap, no I’m not pregnant. I managed to pull myself out of bed around lunch time because I was determined to not let all of that driving go to waste. Once we got on South Padre we met all of the bikers at a seafood restaurant where I fulfilled another one of my goals. I tried MahiMahi and liked it (at least going down, bleh)! Sorry, I didn’t take any photos of me with the fish. Didn’t think about it at the time.

Then we went to the beach. I LOVE the beach so I pushed aside my sickness and had fun. This particular beach was strange though. There were people driving on it. So we had to dodge cars and…

motorcycles with interesting characters on them. Someone please call What Not To Wear, this lady needs help immediately.

Sunday we woke up bright and early and headed home. We made the 12 hour drive back with 6 motorcycles, a truck with a trailer, and a very sick passenger. Can we say torture??? We actually had a blast and would do it again, but if we did we would either fly or take a couple more days for travel.

After waiting weeks and weeks I finally put up my fall decorations. I bought them last month and was itching to put them out but it was still 100 degrees and just didn’t feel right.

I also made my first batch of pumpkin bread and it was so good! I love anything with pumpkin. Bread, waffles, cheesecake, soup, it is all wonderful to me. This recipe for pumpkin bread is leaning more toward the healthy side. I plan on trying the non-healthy version very soon!

Almost healthy pumpkin bread
adapted from Bread and Honey
makes one regular loaf or two mini loaves.

2 cups sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup applesauce
3 eggs (I used egg beaters and it worked just as well with fewer calories)
1 15oz can unsweetened pumpkin puree
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon nutmeg (freshly grated if possible)
1 teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Combine the sugar, oil, applesauce, eggs and pumpkin in a bowl and set aside. In a larger bowl combine the flour, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Don’t over-mix or it will come out tough.

Bake for 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool and enjoy!

Where: Calvary Assembly of God parking lot

When: Friday September 17, 2010

Time: 6:00 pm

Bring your trucks, grills and food if you have them and come cook out. If you don’t have any of these things, come anyway, I’m sure we’ll have more than enough food. We’ll have food, games and music! If you have any questions you can leave a comment here and I’ll get back to you.

Hope to see everyone there!

I love…

• Quiet car trips where we don’t have to say anything because we are thinking the same thing
• Loud car trips where we talk about anything and everything
• Cooking dinner together
• Lazy evenings on the couch
• How you still want to hold my hand
• How you have to walk on the outside of the sidewalk so you get hit first if someone tries to run over us
• How you still open the door for me
• Weekends where we do nothing
• That you are ok with me having a “phone pen”
• That you will eat mac and cheese just because I love it
• That we can argue and make up all in the same sentence
• Seeing you when you come home from work
• That no one knows who the bands are that we listen to
• That we feel at home in Dallas even if we just land there for a couple of minutes
• YOU!

Happy 3rd anniversary, love.

Update from Jace:
There are a lot of things that I like about you, too, The Girl:

• I love that you so willingly put up with all my nerdery. Except you reap benefits like having a reliable wifi connection and instant access to a pretty great music and video library that can be streamed to the TV, so maybe that’s why you put up with it.
• I love that you let me listen to bands that no one knows about yet, and get mad with me when people “discover” our really cool bands and ruin them
• I love that you take such great care of me
• I love the way you fit so perfectly in my arms.

You mean the world to me, kiddo. Happy anniversary!

Back in May I set some goals for myself that I wanted to accomplish by the end of the year. If you like me have a bad memory here they are.

Read more books
Learn to drive a standard transmission
Bake more breads
Learn to shoot
Learn photoshop
Climb the alpine tower at Lone Tree
Eat more candlelit dinners
Find a piece of seafood that I can stand to eat

While we were on vacation I achieved one of my goals to learn to shoot. While I wasn’t very good I am proud to say I did it. I was a little nervous at first but as I got a little more comfortable the nervous went away and I actually had fun. We will definitely be taking some Saturdays so I can get better and better and maybe hit the target a couple of times.