Baking up a storm, and other random thoughts...

So, my friend Terri and I will be entering the Cherry Bake-Off during our town's Cherry Festival, which is coming up in June. We both love to bake and so we've been pouring over cookbooks, looking for anything cherry. We talked with some ladies at the Chamber of Commerce the other day, and the rules are that you can use any kind of cherries (candied, fresh, canned, frozen, dried) so long as the recipe contains cherries. I pretty much knew what I wanted to submit as soon as I found out I could use maraschino cherries...my mom's cherry nut bread. It is a yeast bread but is actually more like a coffee cake, filled with cherries and walnuts, with a confectioner's sugar glaze. Growing up, she use to make it whenever she made baked beans in the crock pot. I baked a loaf of it this morning. Yesterday afternoon, I made a batch of Cherry Coconut Squares, which I found in my Marjorie Standish cookbook. They turned out really well, so I might have to enter those, too. Anyway, Terri and I have agreed to be each other's taste-testers over the next month, so by the time the bake-off rolls around, we'll probably be about 10 pounds heavier, and sick of cherries.

Yesterday, I took Camden to his first antique tractor and car show. It took place at a local winery, not too far from our house. Let me tell you, it was quite a thrill for the boy. I think he may take after his Great Uncle Ken, who has a great love for antique autos, tractors, wrenches, and such. Camden wanted his picture taken with just about every vehicle there. We promptly sent some of our photos to Uncle Ken, and Camden was thrilled to find this morning that Uncle Ken had emailed a bunch of his tractor pictures to him.

Steve was home briefly on Friday, but left on Friday afternoon for drill. It seems like he's been gone forever! His trip to South Carolina went well. We'll pick him up this afternoon, and luckily he has tomorrow off, so we'll all get to spend some time with him then.

Only six days left until the race! I'm getting a little nervous but I'm sure I'll be fine. I had a good run this past Friday which boosted my confidence - - I think I was feeling a little bad that I had to miss my last two training sessions with Steve out of town. I've stuck closely to my training schedule, and I'm really feeling like I can run the whole thing. If you'd like to visit my race website, you can do that here.

Griffin is down for a nap, so that means this is my chance to shower. Yippee!