Amazing Grass Winner and....Happy Halloween!

Thanks to everyone who entered the Amazing Grass Superfood Kidz giveaway! According to Random.org, the winner is number 26......Clueless Mama!

We're wrapping up Halloween, it was a pretty mellow day due to the weather, but I got in two quick miles on the treadmill. It cleared up by trick or treat time, and now the kids are sacked out on the floor after their allotted two treats.

Now I'm off to raid their candy.......

Did the Ghost follow us home?

The house I grew up in has a ghost. The house is over 100 years old, and my mom still lives there, she bought the house 32 years ago. I feel like it's a good ghost, otherwise I think we would have been out of there a loooong time ago.

I have seen the ghost, so has my sisters, and believe it or not, Luke saw it last summer. It makes it's presence known in many ways, the microwave will turn on and off by itself, windows will slowly close, and one time a chair that rotates, slowly turned one complete turn. My grandfather got bugged out once, because he heard someone walking down the upstairs hallway, and he was alone at the time.

We believe that a farming family lived in our house, we have very old photos that the previous owners passed to my Mom when she bought the house. In the photos you can see the original house, with rolling hills in the background, where houses now stands. Those of us who have seen the ghost, have seen it in the same room.

I woke up one night, and looked over at the window, and saw a man standing, looking out of it, wearing a dark suit with a white shirt. My first thought was, "oh, that's the ghost." then rolled over and went back to sleep. My sister M had a similar experience, she felt like it was being a sort of guardian angel to her.

My sister A woke up early a few months ago, in the same room, to get ready for an early flight. The light was dim, and she looked over from her bed, and saw a boy, in the same type of clothing, looking at her. He reached over to touch her face, then he disappeared. Her first thought was "oh, it's the ghost."

Luke and Mike were sleeping in this same room on a past visit. During the night, Luke woke up Mike and said that there was a boy in there.

M said "oh really? is he nice?"
L said "yeah, he was right there"
M said "really buddy?"
L said "yeah, we were talking"
M said "okay, let's go to sleep"

at that point, when Mike realized Luke was talking to the ghost, he was comfortable with it.

We've been in our house for four years, and I love it, I've been comfortable here since day one. But sometimes I get a ghost feeling. Whenever I'm in the shower, I hear someone walking around, and it's not my kids. On her last visit, my sister A said she felt like there is a ghost here too, so now we're wondering where it might have come from. So we'll have to wait and see if we get any more signs.

I'm having a terrible time with my pumpkins this year, as the photo shows. The squirrels have gotten three of them already, even though I've doused them with windex! Didn't even get a chance to carve them, back to the patch we go.

Housekeeping

Hello rain. It's dark and nasty out, however my street looks kind of cool, with the bright orange leaves against the grey skies. I got up today at six, and now that it's nine o'clock, I feel like I've already got my to do list finished.

There are a few day's left of Breast Cancer Awareness Month....and here is a giveaway that Mel, over at Tall Mom on the Run is having. It's a Brooks for Her Jacket, Brooks created this collection to help support the fight against breast cancer. For each BFH piece purchased from March through December 2009, Brooks will donate 6.25% of the suggested retail price to three organizations that research and support those affected by breast cancer. Very cool giveaway, and very cool blog.

There are a few day's left of my Amazing Grass Giveaway, which ends 10/31!

Finally, Tanya at the Grab Bag gave me an award, the Heartfelt Award! Tanya posts some great looking recipes, I can't wait to try her Tandoori Chicken....thanks Tanya!

I'm in the mood for a little greek.

I have a hankering for something salty for dinner, so I'm heading to the store for the fixings for Mediterranean Pasta with chicken. I don't think of myself as a big chicken person, I love fish, and a good rib eye, but it's not my go to protein. I have about five recipes for chicken that I really like, and this is a good one. It reminds me of the four years we lived in Astoria, which is a big Greek neighborhood in Queens. I miss black squid ink pasta and shrimp, I can't find that anywhere but Astoria. And I never knew there were multiple varieties of feta, the deli carried 6 different kinds! Don't even get me started on the olives......drool.

I saw Tyler Florence make this pasta on the food network years ago, and I've tweaked it to my liking....I think you'll like it too.

Mediterranean Pasta

One pound of skinless chicken breast, cut into bite sized pieces

One cup of sun dried tomatoes, sliced (I get the oil free ones that come in a foil pouch)

1/4 pound kalamata olives, pitted and sliced, some into halves and some into quarters

8 ounces of feta cheese (I get it in a brick, and crumble it myself)

one, 8.5 ounce can of artichoke hearts in water, drained, and quartered

3 cloves of garlic, minced.

1/2 cup of milk (you can use heavy cream if you want to splurge a bit)

1/4 cup fresh basil (I pick the leaves, stack them, roll them like a cigar, then slice into strips)

3/4 of a pound of small pasta, like mini penne

salt and pepper, olive oil

I boil the water, and cook the pasta at the same time that I'm making the sauce.

1.Heat oil in a large skillet, and brown the chicken (or grill it ahead of time and slice it)

2. Add the garlic and tomatoes to chicken, saute about 2 minutes

3. Add basil, artichoke, olives and feta, saute another 2 - 3 minutes, then add the milk/cream.

4. turn heat to low, and cook through another 2 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

Drain pasta, and pour sauce over pasta, stir and serve. Yum.

Bruegger's Halloween 5K

Today was the Halloween 5k at Beaver Lake, it's a nature center not too far from my house. I didn't have any grand plans for it, I wanted to try and run a quicker pace than normal, but I felt like there were a few things that were throwing a minor glitch in my plans.

I wondered how crowded the trail would get, it is tight when just two people are on it, so I knew it wouldn't be fast going with a few hundred runners there all at the same time. I've also been dealing with a sore throat and cough this week, not too bad, but enough to be annoying. My friend Insomnia has been hanging around this week too, Friday night I slept a total of 3 hours.

We had a good group running, my sis in law Jeannine (who I do all my races with), my friend Sheila, Mike's Aunt Carol, and her husband Bill (who ran the Boilermaker with us this past summer). J's daughter did the kids Fun Run, which was cute. Some of the kids wore costumes, one kid was decked out as Lance Armstrong, with a bike attached to his legs.

It was cool out, but thankfully not raining, and the sun worked it's way out by the time we made it to the start. Note to self, a surefire way to get the sun to come out, is to leave your sunglasses at home. I was trying out a new pair of Drymax running socks, which I just won in a giveaway from Marcia at Mission Possible. I was psyched, I received 6 different pairs, including some for tennis and hiking, which look nice with my Birkenstocks (what can I say, I'm a fashionista). We wore timing chips, but didn't cross over an activation pad when we started, only at the end, so I'm not sure how our time will be figured out. We all were waiting in a small field, then the gun just went off. Think of a crowd people running along, then coming to a complete stop at the trail head, where we had to funnel down to get onto the trail.

I go to Beaver Lake when I have time to run somewhere other than in my neighborhood, when I bring the kids they love to check out the frog pond, and the exhibits inside the building. There are a bunch of trails of different distances, I also go in the winter for cross country skiing. For the 5k, we ran the Lake Loop, which has boardwalks in some spots, and today they were wet and covered with leaves. Jeannine told me to be careful before we started, with my track record of clumsiness, if someone was going to fall, it would be me. I had a good pace, but at times I felt like it was a video game, trying to pass people while keeping an eye on the ground. I did stumble once on a root, but no biggie. Near the end of mile two, I heard a big rustle of leaves sliding, but I don't think whoever did it wiped out.

It was a quick run, but crowded, and I coughed a few times. After a while I gave up trying to weave around people, and ran next to a guy dressed as Elvis. At the mile 3 marker there were pumpkins lining the trail, with funky carvings, like the Yankees logo. At the end I was happy to see Mike and the kids, then don't usually make it to my runs, so it was great to give them high fives.

The clock said my time was 33 minutes, I think. Not happy with that if it's the case, but I didn't have the best conditions for something quicker. I still had a great time, and love my new shirt. It's long sleeved for once, and I think it makes me look a bit busty. Which isn't a bad thing.

One more week of Get Active.....

There is one week left of my little "Get Active" challenge. I hope my blog friends who took this on have been able to fit some exercise into your days. I know that Alicia has been working out a few times a week. But I have to give major props to Janie, she has lost 18 pounds! Go Janie!

I received two more awards, from Susan at Susan Fobes' Family Formula....the Loyalty Blog (for a second time) and the Kreative Blogger Award. Susan is a teacher whose blog focuses on her family, and focusing on the writer within her. Thanks Susan!!!

For the Kreative Blogger, I have to list 7 things about myself that you might not know. Hmmmmmmm.

1. I have a big family, four sisters, one brother, 27 first cousins, 6 nieces, 1 nephew, multiple aunts and uncles, and.....my parents have been divorced for 30 years.

2. I also have a big group of friends, which are also my family. A cluster in Rochester, and several across the country, but my core is back home in NY, we call ourselves the Fab Six. We have been friends for about 24 years, and although I don't get to see them as often as we would all like, when we get together, we always pick right up where we left off.

3. I'm Catholic, and I pray every day. I get so much out of going to church, it is comforting and it's the one place that never changes. I sometimes get emotional during certain prayers or hymns, it is a place where I can just BE.

4. I obviously love to run, but I also love tennis (played in high school), riding my bike, and if I could play field hockey again (high school) I would. Sometimes in the fall I smell the air and I am right back on the field with my hockey stick.

5. I love movies. Name an actor and I'll ramble off every movie they've been in. I watch pretty much everything, but there are just a few that have made an impression - in no particular order - Urban Cowboy, Places in the Heart, Steel Magnolias, American Beauty, Clueless, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Paper Moon, Almost Famous, Sense and Sensibility, Love Actually, Tootsie, Marty, Bridget Jones Diary, Once and Goodfellas.

6. October, November and December are my favorite months of the year, October for the fall weather, November for Thanksgiving (which I love juuuust a bit more than Christmas) and obviously, December for Christmas (and for what J&R call, 25 nights of drinking).

7. There was a three week period where I saw Bono in the flesh three different times, and not in concert. Once after a flight home from Ireland (where I told him I thought he was "just the greatest"), once at a work party, and once on the street. I kept telling everyone he was stalking me.

This will only take a minute

It is still Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and this is from an email I received this week:

The Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act is a bill which will require insurance companies to cover a minimum 48-hour hospital stay for patients undergoing a mastectomy. It's about
eliminating the 'drive-through mastectomy' where women are forced to go home just a few hours after surgery, against the wishes of their doctor, still groggy from anesthesia and sometimes with drainage tubes still attached.

Lifetime Television has put this bill on their web page with a petition drive to show your support. If you decide to sign it, you need not give more than your name and zip code.

Here is another photo from the Breast Cancer walk we all did earlier in the month.....we wore shirts honoring my mother in law and her sister, and I'm too busy yapping to pay attention to the photographer.