I’m trying a new tool called “Press This” on my own blog, mainly for some training for GeekMom. I just want to see what Press This will do. Enjoy this recipe in the meantime 🙂
Bacon Stout Chocolate Cheesecake | Tide and Thyme.
The Navarre Beach Marine Science Station started in August 2009 and is run by Santa Rosa County and the Santa Rosa County School District. Its mission is to promote environmental awareness through education of the county’s marine ecosystem.
Just before the kids’ Spring Break, I had the chance to partially chaperone for Timmy’s class trip to the Navarre Beach Marine Science Station. My sons have taken field trips with their classes every school year they’ve been living here, and I suspect it’s an annual tradition for all the Santa Rosa County School District kids who live on the coast.
Nostalgic note: When I was growing up in Norfolk in the 1980s, my school system also had a Marine Science Center. I’m not sure if the program still exists, but I fondly remember an annual field trip to Crossroads Elementary School, where we’d spend the day petting horseshoe crabs, learning about turtles, flounder, the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem and our community’s nautical history.Â
The Science Station is really close, it shares a parking lot with the Navarre Beach Park beach access that our family uses quite often, only about 10 minutes from our house. It started in 2009 after the Navarre Beach State Park property was turned over to the county after suffering extensive hurricane damage in recent years.
Just before race time!
A couple weeks ago we took part in another Florida Panhandle tradition: the McGuire’s St. Patrick’s Day 5K Prediction Run on March 9th.
This is a race that rewards not how fast you can run, but how close you finish to a time you predict at registration time. It happens to be considered the nation’s largest prediction run. It’s also a race that welcomes crazy costumes and serves Irish stew, beer and the restaurant’s signature drink, the Irish Wake, for 3 hours after the first person crosses the finish line.
Our whole family was registered to do the race, but Timmy was sick the week before, so his baseball coach offered to take him to the Navarre Baseball opening ceremonies and we were able to meet him in time for his game. Jacob was excited to take part in the run!
Morning run in Navarre Beach.
Sent from my iPhone…pardon the typos!
During the Disney Princess Half Marathon weekend, we played hooky off-resort and went to Sea World.
On our weekend trip to Orlando at the end of February, I was hesitant to invest in one-day Disney World tickets. The solution came easily to us. Thanks to the Sea World Entertainment Hero Salute program, military members and up to three dependents can get one day’s admission per year to one of the company’s parks: Sea World, Busch Gardens or Sesame Place.
We have taken advantage of this program many times, from Sea World when Jacob was a baby, to Sesame Place twice.
We met up our dear friends Andy and Suzy with their kids, who we joined on our last family trip to Walt Disney World in 2011 and Universal Studios in 2012. We absolutely LOVE hanging out with them and we’re so happy they took the time to join us last month. We spent the day before the half marathon at Sea World.
Even though most of my gardening supplies will be shipped to Colorado this June, I couldn't help myself -- it's not spring without planting SOMETHING. Besides, for the first time since moving here, I have some outstanding, perfect compost that will not be able to move with us. From left to right: yellow squash, Big Boy tomatoes, and assorted herbs. The herbs on the far right survived the winter: rosemary, sage, chives and curly parsley.
2013 Garden
2013 Garden
Our new toy. Thanks to GeekMom’s Amazon Associates credit.
In February I got my Amazon.com credit for all of the product referrals I did over the holidays for GeekMom. It was a very generous payout and we bought some goodies such as a pressure cooker, a hangar for our family’s running medals, and a Soda Stream.
We got a very basic Soda Stream model, which included the carbonator with CO2 tank, one 1L bottle and a sampler pack of flavor syrups.
The system is very straightforward, and doesn’t even require electricity: screw a water-filled bottle to the carbonator and depress a button on top to carbonate to the level you desire (they recommend depressing the button three times, we’re still trying to figure out how much carbonation we actually like).
We all tasted several of the sample syrups that came with the system and they’re pretty good. Dave noticed that all the syrups were surprisingly low-calorie and upon further investigation, we noticed that they ALL had sucralose (otherwise known as Splenda).
Our take from last weekend — not bad!
This past weekend our family made yet one more trip to Orlando, so I could run my 2nd Disney Princess Half Marathon, and the boys could experience the early mornings and fun people watching with me. We stayed at Walt Disney World’s newest hotel, a value resort called The Art of Animation Resort, and we visited Sea World with our dear friends the McNabb family.
We repurposed the Incredibles costumes we wore last September, which was our plan all along. Unfortunately, my plan was for temperatures to be in the 50s like it had been most of the previous 5 years of this race. Instead it was quite warm. More »
Just before the Gulf Coast Half Marathon, Pensacola Beach, FL, April 2011. There are many things I had to do before I was ready to take this run.
I’ve discussed before how my brain goes through some pretty funky thought exercises when I’m taking long training runs (as well as long drives by myself).
On Friday I took my last training run before the Disney Princess 1/2 Marathon next weekend. Â This last run was somewhat delayed because the week prior I threw out my back somehow and I had to rest it for a week.
For this last run, I had to turn around after about 1/3 of a mile because I had forgotten something. This got me thinking about everything I have to do before taking a long run.*** I tend to get a bit Princess-and-the-Pea-ish about making sure everything is perfect, otherwise I could get miserable in a hurry.
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