Friday My Town Shoot Out - My Favorite Place to "Run"

Today for the shoot out, we got to fill in the blank of "My favorite place to ____." I chose my favorite place to run.

We have only been here in AZ for a little over a month now, but I am still amazed at the gorgeous scenery compared to the Midwest. Everywhere you look, there are mountains around here! And we actually live in the edge of one of the mountain ranges here, so we have desert hills (as they call them) all around us. Today, I am posting pictures of the scenery that I get to look at every time I run the 3 mile path I do around our neighborhood.

I went to take the pictures as the sun was setting, and I got this gorgeous one with the cactus.

Soft Pretzels

Ok, so I got this recipe from my sister, and it is so easy and so good! They may not look very pretty, but seriously, they are YUM-O!

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

1 package active dry yeast

1 1/2 cups warm water

tsp salt, plus topping

tbsp sugar, plus topping

4 cups flour

1 egg, beaten

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Mix tsp salt, tbsp sugar and 4 cups flour.

In another bowl, mix the yeast and water. Add flour mixture. The dough will be very dry, but just keep mixing and kneading until it's all mixed in.

Sprinkle flat surface with flour, and form dough into desired shapes. The dough is extremely sticky, so it's hard to do anything with lots of detail, so I just do pretzel sticks.

Place pretzels on cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Brush tops with beaten egg.

Top pretzels with desired topping. In this batch, I did half with sea salt, and half with cinnamon and sugar. Don't be shy with the toppings, because you really do have to add a lot to make sure they aren't bland and you can taste it. Seriously, if you think you added too much, add a little more.

Bake for 12-15 minutes or until just turning golden brown. I overbaked them the first time I made them because I had it my head that they would turn dark brown like the ones you'd buy at the store. But, that's not the case. So as soon as they start to golden, take them out, and they'll be perfectly hard on the outside, and warm and soft on the inside, just the way pretzels should be!

We dip our salted pretzels in mustard, but I thought the cinnamon and sugared ones need a dipper too, I just can't think of one. Lemme know if you have any suggestions, or if you make the recipe, lemme know how you like it! :)

Prayers

So, as we do every morning, we woke up to Hunter climbing in bed with us.

Actually, let me say that just in the past few days, Hunter has realized that if he doesn't wake mom and dad up, he can get into anything he wants! Yesterday, we found him with an empty cracker wrapper, (he left all his crumbs on the couch), in the corner, playing with an extension cord.

Thankfully though, he woke us up this morning. He climbed in bed, and proceeded to tell us something in his two year old jibberish, but this time, at the end of his statement, he said "AMEN!" He had been praying with us. It touched my heart so much as his momma. He did it a couple more times before I left for work too.

I know he's too young to understand the meaning of prayers, but that is one thing I pray for during my prayer time, is to ask that he'll get the idea and importance of praying. I'm just so thankful, because I feel like him "praying" is the first step in the right direction. YAY!

Friday My Town Shoot Out - Domesticated Animals

Ok, so this week I get to post a picture of our little furball, Bella. She also answers to Belly, Belly-pants, Bella-pantalones, Stinkerbella, and Bellarina. The poor thing has lots of nicknames. :)
Anyway, I decided to go into my archived photos for this one, because I wanted to add a little humor. Let me explain this first one...when we lived in Illinois, Bella would come inside with actual mini snowballs stuck to her fur, since her breed (a miniature schnauzer) calls for longer hair. So, to help dry her off and warm her up, we would blowdry her after she went potty. Talk about a pampered pooch! This particular day, we decided to have some fun with the blow dryer. :)

This next one was the day we got her. Oh how young she (and my husband) looked! She was a sweet 10 weeks old and only 5 lbs.

And this one was taken this week. :) She is now just over 3 years, and full grown at a healthy 18 lbs.

Friday My Town Shoot Out - Aged or Weathered

Sorry I've been MIA the past couple weeks, but I'm back this week!

I took kind of a different spin on this week's assignment. Here is a picture of my son's hand after spending a couple hours in the pool. It looks all wrinkly and old and I thought it was funny. :)

New Puzzle

Ok, so we got this new puzzle for Hunter about a week ago. Actually, it's his first and only puzzle. Anyway, I picked it up in the $1 Spot at Target (I LOVE that place!) and Hunter LOVES it. He has been playing with it, and needed our help in the beginning, but he can now do it all by himself. I know I'm his mom, but I think that's pretty impressive for a not-even-two year old. If not, his jibberish talking on the video is still cute. :)

Bad Blogger

I know I haven't been blogging about much in a while...but honestly, there's nothing to really blog about lately.

I have been working, and we're still waiting on Greg's school to start so we just hang out at home all the time because of the heat and lack of finances. Our life is pretty boring right now, but it won't be like this forever.

We did go to the pool again this weekend, and Hunter got a little more comfortable this time. He even went on the big water structure. We picked him up though every time the bucket fell because the water would knock him over if we didn't. Towards the end, he pulled daddy's hand everywhere just walking in the shallow part of the pool, and Greg had to pull him away from deeper waters at one time because he said he just kept walking even though the water was at his neck! We're glad he likes the pool though, because I don't want him to be afraid of the water. The pool, unfortunately, closes next weekend though, so he's getting warmed up to it just in time for it to close!

Anyway, I think Hunter and I may pull out the jogging stroller tonight while daddy is gone - that is if it drops below 100 degrees...