Farmers Market & 36th Street Bistro

I love, love, love the Boise Saturday Farmer's Market.  Today was my first trip down of the year.  I invited my mom, dad, and Beki to come... Beki is leaving on Thursday for a summer job so I wanted to spend a little more time with her.  We walked up and down the booths, sampling yummy food, and buying our favorites.

After the market, we tried out a new restaurant my co-worker had recommended to me - 36th Street Bistro.  It was so much fun to walk through the Garden Center shop while we waited for our table.  If I had extra money, I would have bought half the store!  My lunch of shrimp gumbo and salad with citrus vinaigrette hit the spot :-)  Thanks Sharon for the suggestion!

Daily Bread

You'll never guess what my most recent purchase is... a one year supply of food :-)  We are taught that we should have a food storage in case of emergency.  Many people stock up over the years, purchasing wheat and beans and oats and rice in bulk.  Well, I got my one year food supply in one fell swoop from Daily Bread!  There are a lot of things I found appealing about the Daily Bread food storage.  First, it's it's super light weight and hardly takes up any room.  My whole year of food fits in 3 boxes.  Second, it has a 25 year shelf life.  Third, I think the food tastes pretty good (at least the sample I tried did).  So if there's no emergency in the next 20 or so years, I think I'll just start eating my food storage :-)  And the best part is that there is no preparation like there would be with a "regular" food storage.  It's all freeze dried so you just have to add water.  Sweet!

Thanks Mandy for the Flowers

They brightened my day!

The Enforcers

This week is the first ever "Staff Week" at Boise State.  There's been a volleyball tournament, bowling tournament, food drive, and it is capped off tomorrow with an ice cream social and music.  Kris, Mandy, Steve, and I participated in the bowling competition.  Our team name was "The Enforcers" because our office is in charge of enforcing a lot of policies set by different entities across campus.  I pretty much sucked, but our team did okay with a score of 470... which put us in 6th place.  I think the fact that we had cool team t-shirts should have bumped us up a couple in the rankings :-)

I Caught the Bug...

... the Family History bug!  I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was starting to get in to family history.  Well, it got even more exciting when I started finding people!  I started out by searching ancestry.com for my great-great-great-great-great-great grandpa on my mom's side to see if I could find out more about his family.  One of the search results was in a book called "The Scotch-Irish McElroys in America".  My great-great-great-great grandma's sister married a McElroy, so my grandfather was mentioned in the book for being at the wedding.  I found out a ton of information about the McElroys, and was able to use that information as clues to more information (i.e. census records, death records, etc).  The best part is that the family I was researching actually lived in Boise!  I questioned one of the death dates, and was able to locate the headstone in a local cemetery :-)  Then I spent some time in the library pulling up obituaries, and learned even more about this family.  It was so much fun to add this family to Family Search!

Anyway, now I'm back working on more direct family lines.  Brooke pointed me to a website where I could order personal histories from pioneers who came across the states and through Utah.  Lucky for me, I've got a ton of ancestors in their database.  I submitted my first 9 names (you can only submit 9 in a 30-day period) to get copies of all the information they have on them.  Can't wait to see what I get back!

It's Getting Easier

I did 300 push-ups at bootcamp tonight.  Yes, 300.  All on my toes.  That was in addition to chest flys, rows, tricep pull downs, shoulder presses, preacher bicep curls, incline sit-ups, lateral shoulder raises, tricep dips, and hundreds.  Needless to say, my arms and shoulders are exhausted.  I don't know that push-ups will ever be easy for me, but I am happy to say that I can tell they ARE getting easier.  When I started bootcamp 8 months ago, I think I could maybe do 25 push-ups before I had to drop to my knees.  And that's if I was lucky.  Now I can pop out 25 like they're no big deal.  I still hate them, don't get me wrong, but it is fun to see the progress I've made.  I love feeling stronger!

Speaking of push-ups, NOT doing them is my new fitness incentive :-)  I needed a little push to lose these last 10 pounds, so Brandee had the idea that for every 5 calories I go over (per day), I need to do one push-up... and for every "bad" food I eat, that's 50 additional push-ups.   I know that I will cheat with eating dessert in a couple weeks when we go to Mystique (I can't pay that much for dinner and not eat my dessert!), but my goal is those will be my only push-ups this next month until my birthday!

Allergy Season

I'm sneezing, my eyes are burning, my throat is itching... Bummer.  Here's to the start of allergy season for me.

Commencement... Times Two!

I am so proud of my brother BJ.  He has been working toward several welding certificates for the last two years.  He started off his college experience at Boise State (where he will get his Technical Certificate and Advanced Technical Certificate this fall), but along the way he picked up his Post-Secondary Technical Certificate in welding from the College of Western Idaho.  CWI's commencement ceremony was Friday evening... the very first commencement since its inception!  I was lucky enough to know the person organizing CWI's commencement ceremony, so my family got tickets to sit in the dignitary seating.  It was so much fun to watch the ceremony from the second row!  I loved this picture that I snapped of BJ as he headed back to his seat after walking across the stage.

After the ceremony, we went out to celebrate at Texas Roadhouse.  It was good to hang out with my family and celebrate BJ's accomplishment.

Fast forward to Saturday morning... Boise State's commencement!  Since I work in the Registrar's Office and my co-worker Mandy puts on commencement, I always help out during commencement (it's pretty much expected!)  It is a lot of fun, though, to see all the excited graduates and proud families, and the ceremony is always beautiful.  Here I am with Kris... ready to start the day!  We both were wearing new dresses :-)

Here are a few more of my co-workers, working commencement and enjoying the beautiful day!

One Month. No Sugar. No Problem.

Well, I made it through a whole month without eating sugar, and it was a lot easier than I thought!  Remember, that doesn't really mean no sugar at all, it just means no added sugar or sugary treats.  I could still eat breads and fruit.  And I'm sure that the sweet pork on my Costa salad has some sugar :-)  But I didn't eat any candy, cookies, brownies, etc.  We did find a couple flavors of tasty no sugar added ice cream when we really wanted something sweet, but only ate that a couple times.  It made me feel good to have the will power to pass up all the yummy looking treats that came my way.

Productive

I love when I have productive days.  I don't seem to have too many days where I feel productive from start to finish... probably because at the end of a long day at work and the gym, I usually feel the need to relax a little and recharge for the next day.  And that's understandable I suppose.  But Friday was one of those exceptionally busy and productive days and I felt so good about all I got done.  I had originally taken the day off work a couple months ago in anticipation that I would be volunteering at the Idaho Green Expo, but my volunteer shift ended up being scheduled from 2-7 Saturday so I found myself with an extra day to accomplish tasks that I had been wanting/needed to get done.  Here's a list of everything I did:

• Up early and headed straight to the gym - did a cardio workout with time on the treadmill and stairmaster (or stairmonster as my fellow bootcampers and I refer to it)
• Hung up the huge pile of clean clothes in my bedroom - I'm good at putting away folded clothes but for some reason hate hanging clothes up, so they sometimes stack up for a couple weeks :-)
• Cleaned my bedroom, including cleaning out my closet and making a DI pile
• Made a deposit at the bank
• Got my oil changed
• Did a little shopping while my oil was being changed... picked up a couple cute purses (they were both on sale!) and a new dress!

• Went to the office supply store to get a new toner cartridge for my printer
• Went to Zamzows to pick up some plants for my garden
• Went to the Asian store and Albertsons to get food for Mother's Day dinner.  I'm making pun.  Yum :-)
• Had lunch at Costa with my friend Katrina - we really need to hang out more often!
• Did two loads of laundry
• Cleaned the kitchen
• Had fondue dinner with my family and played a few games
• Came home after dinner and planted my garden
• Went to bed kinda early because I had bootcamp at 7am the next morning!

Another PR!

I told Beki this morning that blogging has made me feel like my life is just going in circles sometimes.  I definitely do some of the same things year after year!  Because of this, I had originally thought about not even blogging about doing the Race for the Cure... but I changed my mind when I crossed the finish line in 25:33!!!  That's an entire 40 seconds faster than I did Beat Pete a few weeks ago.  The best part is, Beki and I both agreed that we could have run faster.  I definitely had more in me at the end and wished I had gone just a little bit faster.  Maybe next year I'll shoot for under 25 minutes :-)

Chop, Peel, Dice, Slice, Mince

I spoiled myself today by purchasing a new knife set!  I bought myself a new set of knives probably 3 years ago.  I thought since I spent $80 on the set that I had purchased a quality knife set.  That shows how naive I was!  Since then the tip has broken off two of my six steak knives and the tip is curled on another steak knife.  I get irritated when I can't cut through something like Special K bars with any of the knives in my set.  I was fed up and decided to bite the bullet and actually make an investment in some knives.  I saved up my Discover Cash Back Bonus Awards (I love free money!) and put my phone rebate toward the purchase of this beautiful block of Wusthof knives.  I even put a couple of them to use tonight as I'm attempting a new recipe for tomorrow's dinner.  Here's to much more enjoyable cooking in my future!

My Beehives are Graduating!

I served in the Young Women's organization in my church for about 3 1/2 years.  I loved working with the young women - teaching them lessons on Sundays and organizing mid-week activities.  I truly formed a bond with many of them.

I remember working with the Beehives (girls ages 12-13) back in 2004-2005.  These girls were great!  I have tons of fun memories including Daddy-Daughter night and the night we attempted to make taffy at my house :-)  Well guess what was on my doorstep yesterday... a high school graduation announcement for one of the girls that was in my Beehive class!  CRAZY!  I can't believe how fast time is flying... That announcement made me feel old.  My little Beehives are graduating!

Flash Mobs to Support Chuck

As you know, I love Chuck.  It is hands down the best show on TV right now.  If I could only watch one show each week, it would be Chuck.  I have even gotten several co-workers hooked on Chuck by sharing my Season 1 and Season 2 dvds with them.  My co-worker Mark shared this story with me today.  Oh how I wish I could be in Chicago, Seattle, San Diego, or Philadelphia tomorrow to participate in a flash mob.  Wouldn't that be fun!?!  Here's to a Chuck Season 4!