Smells like Christmas (sort of)

Tonight I was baking some peanut blossoms and finished a jar of peanut butter in the process. I barely had any left in the jar at all so I gave the jar to Chloe. It entertained her for about an hour. Mmmmm..... peanut butter. I feel the same way.

I am meeting with my AVID team on Thursday and since we always meet at lunch, I bake something different (a treat) every time. If for nothing else, they show up for the food. I found a peanut blossom recipe in my Pampered Chef Desserts cookbook but I also found my Grandmom's recipe (which she got from my Mom's Nanny Schroeder). Since I had the ingredients for the Pampered Chef one already, I just doctored their recipe with some hints from Grandmom (and Nanny). Not only did the kitchen (and whole apartment) smell good, but biting into one that broke in half (by accident, I promise) it just reminded me of the holidays.

In the process of transferring the cookies to the fridge, I must have dropped one because I noticed a streak of chocolate on the floor and Chloe gulping something in the living room. I was then reminded of the Christmas that Dolly, our fat yellow lab, ate an entire tray of cookies and a chocolate train (out of the wrapper) while we were at church and lived to get in trouble for it. That dog had a stomach of steel, however.

Anyway, we are on the lookout for an off-season bandana for Chloe. After the Mets ended their season yesterday, Keeper and I headed to Chase Field to catch the second half of the D'backs-Rockies game. I never thought I would cheer for Randy Johnson after he went to the Yankees (and we saw him get lit up by the Mets during a Mets-Yankees game), but now he's back in Arizona in his old age and it was kind of fun seeing him get his 295th win. Regardless, Chloe needs something new to wear from now until April. Any suggestions?

Keeping Busy Until Nicer Weather

I was at a loss as to what to name this post. Maybe I should have called it "The Boring Post". I wanted to throw something up here, but we haven't really done anything or gone anywhere exciting lately. School is super-busy for both of us. I am teaching a new class this year (AP Chem) and it is proving (as expected) to be a ton of work.
The club I sponsor at school (National Honor Society) is also a lot more work (time) this year as I have a super-ambitious president with lots of ideas. This is a good thing for our club, trust me, but as the faculty sponsor, I am giving them a lot of my lunch/after school time (meaning 5 hours of my precious weekend standing outside in 100 degree weather for a car wash). Soccer has started pre-season last week as well. Right now we're only going one day a week but we will up that to twice a week once October gets here. A new committment at school this year is being in the AVID program. This involves me mentoring five girls (2 sophomores and 3 freshmen). We meet at lunch three times a quarter and I check their grades and we discuss different study strategies to help them stay on track in their honors courses. AVID teachers also meet after school once a month and since I was on the "team" that went to Dallas, I am the head of one of our committees this year as well.
I also just got involved in coaching student runners to run the P.F. Chang's Rock-n-Roll Half Marathon this coming January. AZSR (Arizona Student Runners) kicked off this week with practices and I went on my first run with them this morning, at a park north of Phoenix. Our first Saturday run was only a mile, but these kids are not runners (yet!) and it was a challenge for them, especially considering that 9am is still too hot to run outside (for me) in September. The organizers of the program have already tried to get me to commit to their weekday practices but I have opted to attend the Saturday morning sessions for now.
On the business end of things, I am taking 2 online political science classes this fall (one at a time) to fulfill AZ Department of Education's requirements that teachers have college coursework in both the U.S. Constitution and the AZ Constitution. I really love spending one of my weekend afternoons doing reading and online assignments. Grrr. All faculty in my school district just had a huge technology upgrade; we got new MacBooks this week! But with it comes meetings, trainings, and "homework assignments" that "justify" the technology purchase. So in order to get my "extra" $500 in " Group Performance Based Pay" this year I have to attend all of these sessions and complete all of these assignments.
Anyway, this is it on my end for now. I am counting down the days until my fall east coast trip in mid-October. I am so excited to meet the newest addition to our family!

Are You My Mother?

While doing an early morning 11-mile training run this morning, Keeper and I encountered a coyote. Twice (same one). We couldn't help noticing some similarities... Then I was doing some reading and found out that coyotes can breed with domestic dogs in areas where both live. Like here. Hmmm....