Category: General News

I woke up early this morning (first to go to boot camp) and then to shape and rise my pan de muerto.  Today – November 2 – is Dia de los Muertos.  Andrew has been learning about and preparing for this celebratory day at Kindergarten, and so I thought we’d celebrate as a family too.  Last night before going to bed, he drew a picture of my mom for the alter they have set up in the classroom to honor deceased ancestors.  I told him he could alternatively or also draw pictures of any of his great-grand parents who are no longer with us, but he said he’d like to draw just Grandma Margot because, “She was your mom.”

For those of you (like I was a few months ago) who are unfamiliar with this ancient holiday, here’s a little summary.

“Día de los Muertos” (Day of the Dead) is one of Mexico’s most traditional holidays, reuniting and honoring beloved ancestors, family and friends.

It is a celebration going back hundreds of years, that Aztec, Mayan, Toltec, Nahua, Tlaxcaltec, Chichimec and Tecpan indigenous peoples used to practice. In the Mexican culture, through this tradition, death seems to hold no terror.

“Día de los Muertos” is not a mournful commemoration, but instead,  a happy and colorful celebration where death takes on a lively, friendly expression and is not a frightening stranger. A very beautiful, commemorative and colorfuly adorned table with mementos of the departed, their favorite foods and symbolic offerings like water, salt and pictures of the loved one, is created. This is called the “altar,” where candles dispel the darkness, just as the souls are being illuminated from the shadows of death.

My recipe for pan de muerto comes from Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Mineral. I can’t attest to the actual bread yet (it’s still rising), but the dough is unbelievable!  It’s like cinnamon challah with extra butter:)

In honor of Dia de los Muertos, here are some photos of our beloved deceased ancestors.  I hope to think of them often with a smile today.

Here’s my mommy: Margot

Here’s Bryan’s paternal grandpa: Dandy (a.k.a. Grover)

Here are my sweet paternal grandparents:Grandma (Lucille) and Grandpa (Mike) Babler

Here is Grandma Harey (a.k.a. Lola Mae)

Those are the deceased ancestors for whom I have digital pictures.  Bryan’s Great-Grandma Doll passed away in 1999, and my maternal Grandpa Joe passed away in the early ’70s.  Oh, I did just find a photo of Grandpa Joe.

That’s Grandpa Joe standing in the middle (between his parents??).  My mom is on the bottom right with Peter, Kirk, and Katie to her left.

I hope you can find some festive and joyful ways to honor your deceased loved ones today!  I’m intrigued by this holiday that attempts to translate pain into celebration.  Should be fun!

Fondly,

Althea

Bryan’s sister, Melanie, has been visiting us this past weekend.  We anticipated her visit with such excitement, and it was positively wonderful to have her here.  I wish we could keep her here with us always!!

Mel has a long tradition of visiting us “up north” in the fall, and it’s such fun to have her here over Halloween!  Here’s some pics of our evening festivities.

The kids both wanted to be Blaze the firefly from the Tinkerbell movies.  Sylvia differentiated by declaring that she wanted to be a “mommy firefly.”  In recent days, she changed and decided she wanted to be a “mommy rat.”  I said that was fine as long as she wore the wings I sewed for her.

The kid’s costumes consisted of black clothes, bobble headbands, sewn wings (black set on top, silver on the bottom), and some yellow LED lights.  In Sylvia’s case, I wound them through her yellow tutu.  In Andrew’s case, I affixed them in a baggie on his behind.  They looked pretty cute!

At supper tonight, Sylvia decided that she was going to be a lion (Andrew’s lion costume from 2007).  The girl changes her mind…frequently.  However, she decided at the last minute to wear the firefly skirt but not the wings.

We did some pumpkin carving this weekend.

Here’s the one Andrew designed and Bryan cut out (Bryan added the horns).

And here’s Mellie’s cute pumpkin.  One scary (Andrew’s), one happy (Melanie’s).

Two of our nine back-yard-grown pumpkins became Jack-o-Lanterns.

Here’s Miss Sylv without her wings but with her cute glowing skirt.

Halloween sure is exciting!!

Here’s our crew before heading out.  We visited seven houses.  After five, both kids were ready to head home:)

They looked so sweet going up to doors together!

After getting candy, they liked to take a quick break and eat a bit of their loot.

Here’s Sylvia and Andrew getting their photo taken by our neighbor, Cindy.  Sylvia turned to look at me just as I took the pic.

Having kids is a lot of fun!

Heading back home…

Warming up with Aunt Mel.

Tomorrow (Monday) morning), Melanie and Sylvia head down to Texas.  Sylvia will be spending the week at Granny and Grandad’s house.   Sylv is so excited!  She’s been packing her bag for the last few days.  I fly down on Friday to pick her up.  It’s going to be an exciting week for her, and an exciting week for me!  Happy travels, girls!

Bryan’s’ sister Melanie is visiting us from her home in Dallas this weekend.  We’ve been having a great time together.  Melanie joined me and Bryan in a a crazy event called the Madison Mud Run.  When we woke up this morning, the thermometer read 27 degrees.  Yikes!

Fortunately, the day warmed up (all the way to 40 degrees:)  And even though she’s from warm Texas, Melanie was game to join in our cold weather kooky-ness.

And the run was a lot of fun!

Here are some pics of us before we started:

In those pictures, I don’t think we look as cold as we felt!

Then, after our 4-5 mile race and 16 obstacles, here’s how we looked:

We all had a great time!  Now, I’m ready for a hot shower:)

This blog post constitutes and open invitation to join me and Bryan and some of our assorted friends in a crazy run on Halloween morn.  The Madison Mud Run is a 5 mile race taking place in Verona.  I’m really excited!  Bryan signed us up (Melanie’s going to be in town, and she’s joining us!!!).  Our team name is the Mud Mummies.  So when you sign up, list your team as the Mud Mummies, and join in our kooky camaraderie!  We’re encouraged to run in costume, so I got a little pink tutu and some pink cat ears.  Not sure what kind of cat wears a tutu, but that’ll be me.

The thing that drew me to this race was the ridiculousness of it.  It’s got 16 obstacles.  Here’s info on them from the website:

Obstacles: This event will be filled with obstacles including:

1. Wicked Water Crossing: Waste deep cold water that will get you dirty and wet early in the race.

2.  Freaky Foam Tunnel: A dark tunnel with Halloween themed music and strobe lights filled with sudsy foam.

3.  Witch’s Wall Climb: A 5′ tall wall with rock climbing holds to help you scale it.

4.  Spooktacular Slippery Slope: A short, steep climb that is difficult to reach the top.

5.  Haunted Forest: A dark forest filled with creepy ghosts and goblins.

6.  Creepy Crawl: 30″ plastic tubes that are 10 feet long.  Crawl through these tubes to reach the other side.

7.  Obstacle Course of Doom: A 52′ long inflatable obstacle course that includes barriers, a wall climb, and a fun slide.

8.  Terrifying Tires: A pile of tires that is sure to slow even the fastest runners.  Watch your step as you navigate the treacherous terrain.

9.  Hell’s Hurdles: Picture a steep hill, going up of course, filled with hay bale hurdles to slow your ascent.  Stay fast and smooth to clear these hurdles.

10.  Skeleton Slip and Slide: 100′ of scary slip and slide, just like when you were a kid.  And just the the skeleton in the Olympics!

11.  Werewolf Wall Climb: Another 5′ tall wall climb.  This one has ropes to help you get over it.

12.  Black Cat Balance Beams: 4 inches wide and 40 feet long.  These beams are guaranteed to test your focus and footing.

13.  Spider Web Crawl: A 6 foot high pyramid of cargo nets.  Can you be the fastest spider through this challenging web?

14.  Pyramid of Pumpkins: A pyramid built from hay bales and pumpkins.  Scale this pyramid and head for the last two obstacles.  You are almost there!

15.  Scarecrow’s Swamp Crossing: One more challenge to slow you down and make sure you remain wet and muddy throughout this event.  This is just a warm up for the Mud Pit that is awaiting you.

16.  Mummy’s Mud Pit: Knee deep mud that participants MUST crawl through.  This mud will surely be cold, but don’t let that stop you.  The showers and free beer and chicken wings await you at the finish line!

If anything, these obstacles should provide a nice opportunity to catch a couple breaths!  I hope the weather’s not too cold!  And what to wear?  Probably something disposable!

Adam, Ashleigh, Anne, Julie, Natalie…you’ve all said that you’re interested.  I hope to see you there!!

My cousin Sarah lives in Toronto.  Sarah is, for those who know me, my mom’s older brother Peter’s daughter.  Over the last 33 years of my life, I’ve seen Sara and her brothers only rarely, but when I do, I always enjoy our time together.  They’re a fun, creative, tall, and pretty hilarious group.

Sarah…my cousin-in-Toronto…has a blog, which I consider to be a great thing because she is a pretty insightful and humerus writer.

A couple weeks ago, Sarah posted a story on her blog about a recent sky diving experience.  I so enjoyed reading it.  My heart pounded in my chest while I read.  I encourage you to take a few moments to experience vicariously what my crazy daring cousin tried.  What a way to celebrate a birthday!

To whet your appetite, here’s an excerpt from her post “I had a dream…“:

I just fell 2000 feet and it felt like nothing.  I’m not screaming or making any noise.  However, I am aware my mouth is wide open as I am in awe of this sensation, of heavy wind blowing on me, but I never really feel like I am falling, and after a while, the wind feels alternatively soft and cushiony and then hard and dull on my body.  This is terminal velocity.

I peer at my altimeter again, in a dreamlike haze.

7500 feet.

Almost time to pull the chute.  I reach back to touch the orange ball on Mike’s hip.

6000 feet.

Mouth still wide open, all the air entering my body, air I’m sure I’ve never breathed before and will never breathe again.

On September 26, I ran my first 5K race.  I know it’s old news by now, but bear with me:)

Three friends from Bootcamp and I met up on a beautiful September morning to run a 5K together.  Julie and Natalie have been running 5Ks for a while, but this was my first race since high school.  I was nervous!  After going to bootcamp for a couple weeks, I’ve gotten pretty good at pushing my limits, and I was hoping to run a good race.  Turns out, it was great!  Such a fun morning…I can see myself getting a little addicted to doing runs like these!

Here’s me and my girls after the race:

I don’t know these girls, but I loved their costumes!  I think I’m going to have to look for some tutus like this for the 5 mile Madison Mud Run I’m planning for Halloween!

And here are my race results.  I can’t remember what my speed was when I ran cross country in high school, but I think my pace in this race is at least as fast as it was then.  Granted, I was the slowest one on the team, but even so, it’s nice to know that I can crank it up:)

After this race, I went out and bought myself some cold-weather running clothes to help motivate myself to keep running this fall and next spring.  Inertia is a powerful thing.  The inertia of the sofa has a keen draw, but I’d like to keep the pattern of once- or twice- daily exercise in my routine!