Months Past

I trust everyone had a Merry Christmas!  We did although we had a wave of sickness move through.

So after my hiatus of two months I, like most, am setting a New Year's resolution to...wait for it...wait for it...blog more!  Bet you weren't expecting that one.

"So, Natalia, what HAVE you been up to the past couple of months?" you ask.  Well, I'll tell you.  The end of October, as you may have heard, was Halloween and I decided to make my costume!

Yep!  I was a CupCake!

Sorry for the bad quality.  My laptop recently crashed and I've not retrieved my photos from it so I'm having to use my FaceBook photos for some of these.

Then in November, I had a birthday cake to do for a young girl, turning nine, who likes to ride horses.  Her mom gave me the color scheme and this is what I created especially for her!

Everything was handmade from gumpaste and fondant.  I was pretty proud of my first horse and learned a lot from it too!

Then a couple days later I had a birthday cake to make for a great guy, Jason Womack.  He and his lovely wife, Lindsay, have been our close friends for over 12 yrs but I've known them since middle and high school!  They have both been involved with music pretty much their entire lives and he plays guitar (mostly) so I made this for him.

I was privileged to be able to share this cake with them since most of the cakes I make are for others and I never get to eat them.  BUT, I have to be honest and say that it wasn't my best tasting cake.  It was more like pound cake than the light cake I was hoping for.  For this I apologize, my friend, and hope for another chance to prove my baking skills. :-)

Now we get to Thanksgiving and it's such a magical time because for me it means the start of the holiday season and that's my favorite time of year!  We had Thanksgiving dinner at my In-law's home and my mom and dad were able to join us.  We always have so much food and such a great time!  But before we were able to enjoy dinner, Rachel, my sis-in-law and I ran in the "Run Through the Woods" race that takes place every year Thanksgiving day!  It was my first 5 mi race and I LOVED it!

Us at the starting line.

                                               Raych finished at 55 min. and I finished at 57.5 min 

After the race.

 Striking a pose for the paparazzi.

So AFTER the race we got to enjoy dinner with all the family!

Which I am not able to obtain pictures of at the moment but you didn't miss much there so don't worry.

I absolutely love decorating for Christmas and usually I start before Thanksgiving or shortly after.  This year I started after because of the timing of everything.  But I got it done and I was pretty pleased!

The fireplace...

The tree.

The weekend before Christmas we had a big announcement event in Market Street here in our community and that announcement I am glad to say is the return of The Woodlands Marathon, set for March of 2012!  This is under the arrangement of my sweetheart's new business, Launch MuntiSport!  He has had the support and participation from an amazing team of 3 other guys who have as much of a passion to see this happen as Rick does.  This is going to be a huge event and it has been a year in the making although the actual chain of events that led to the announcement only started a couple months prior!  Things have happened very quickly and we've had to go with the flow and bend with responsibilities.  This is a very exciting time in the Frank household and for The Woodlands Community!  To give you a better scope of what has happened here are a few links with articles.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/run/7344655.html

http://www.hcnonline.com/courier/sports/article_292f1f30-e28b-5cf0-b05e-6e81dacf6e10.html

http://www.texasrunnertriathlete.com/ME2/Default.asp

Now, we typically spend Christmas Eve at Papa and Nona's (in-laws) and let the boy's open one gift and then we have Christmas day at our house with all of my family, and this year, all of Rick's too!  So this year we had about 25 people in my home.  It was a bit crowded but still so much fun!  We took family pics and then I was only able to get pics of the aftermath.

 Christmas Eve at Nona and Papa's

 Casey and Corban

 The Three Stooges

Trying out their new chairs and checking out their stockings!

Christmas Morning!

There are a couple more videos but I can't get them to upload properly.  So I'll just provide more pics!

Corban got his "Bucket O Soldiers" from Toy Story 3 that he wanted!

Casey cleaned up with an Xbox 360 with 2 games and extra remote, Sonic Comics, a watch and a few other things!

Corban also got Woody!  Santa also brought him a rocket, Buzz costume and jet pack!

THIS is the Frank/Norrell Family

At the moment we have ALL boys BUT Rebecca, in the yellow sweater will be having the first girl in March! This is a very exciting time for all!  We are so thrilled to finally start evening up the odds.

This is The Resendez Family...

...and the Resendez/Frank Family...

Yes, there are a LOT of us!

Here's my little Buzz Lightyear

And when it's all over...

Even the dogs got to taste the delicious food that we had!  I actually cooked my first turkey this year with sides of dressing, mashed potatoes and green bean casserole!

Rock

Demi

Shadow

The aftermath...

It took me 2 days to get everything cleaned because I was being so lazy!  The food was put away of course but the dishes lingered.

And that my friends brings me to today!  I made a Ham Asparagus Strata from a BHG mag recipe and some Lemon Creme for an order of Lemon Blueberry cupcakes (will post pics later).  Now, we are off to another friends bday party!  If I can just get Rick to put the xbox controller down!  Sorry Don!

My First 5K

Good evening folks!  I hope you have had as an incredible day as I've had!  What?  Your day wasn't incredible?  Well then, let me tell you about my day so that you can share in the incredibleness of my day, shall we?

As stated in the previous post I have begun running.  It wasn't easy and it wasn't even something that I ever viewed as something I wanted to do.  Well, Rick, my hubby got started a few years back and has been doing incredibly well.  He's completed 3 Triathlon and several other small runs here in our area.  He also got picked (lottery system this year) to run in the Houston Marathon coming up next year in March, I believe.  I am so proud of him and he has come such a long way.  Not only has he improved his health but he looks incredible as well!  Love you my Honey Bunches of Oats!  Along this incredible (there's that word again) journey he started he has researched, read magazines, talked to anyone and everyone who runs, bikes and swims, and has read forum after forum regarding these sports.  So, you see, by the time it actually got around to me putting on a pair of shoes (recommended by my hubby of course) he had done all of the hard work for me!  Essentially, he became my coach, trainer and biggest supporter!

I started my "athletic" journey just about 7 months ago.  I started out walking of course.  I use the BuddyRunner app on my phone to log my walks/runs.  It's actually pretty cool because it tracks your course, elapsed time, pace in min/mile, elevation fluctuations and of course your distance.  I can sync all of this info to  the web and track my progress.  Anyhow, I started out walking and my first logged walk was .62 miles in 21 min and 17 sec.  Yeah, I was turtle slow.  I wasn't fully on board yet so that affected my effort.

As you know from my previous post as well, we have 3 dogs.  Two of which are large breeds and need good consistent exercise so they don't go stir crazy.  I used them as motivation to get me moving and Rick had taken one of them on a couple of his runs before so I knew they were up for it.  So having the "incredible" (word of the day people) support of my husband and some great dogs, not to mention protection, to run with I began running!  I don't want to bore you with all the details of my past runs but I'll just tell you that I started with my first 1.5 miles in March in 23min 49sec at 15'10" min/mi, to my first 3.66 miles in September in 54min 47sec at 14'57" min/mi, to TODAY!  I ran my first 5K race which is about 3.1 miles and I did it in 34 min at a pace of 10'41"!  Now that may be a bunch of mumbo jumbo to a lot of you but to a runner that's what it's all about!

Here are a few pics, albeit bad, from my phone's camera to help you share in this incredible event from today.

Us before the race.  Since Rick had signed me up through his work we had matching shirts, "awww", and we were trying to look for others from his work but there were so many people we couldn't find anyone.

The SEA of people!  This was only a small portion.  I believe the announcer said they started with about 1,800 racers for the first one and today there was over 38,000!  That's a lot of people ya'll!

We were in the non-competitive category and the Family walk started first then the Competitive Runners then us.  So we were able to get closer to the front once they started.

After the race they had a huge area where everyone could go and hang out.  People were handing out snacks,  water, hand towels and other goodies.  While walking around we ran into one of our good friends who has a prosthesis on his left leg from a motorcycle accident.  He and his wife are incredible people and we are blessed to know them.  It was great to see him out here too!  Yes,  that is a banana sticking out of my belt and a Luna bar. :-)  I told you they were handing out snacks!

So, that was the start of my incredible day!  Yes!  There's more!  Since the boys stayed with Papa (thank you Papa!) Rick and I were able to stay downtown for a bit and spend some time together.  After the race we went to, REI, an outdoor recreation merchandise store.  If you haven't been I highly recommend purchasing a membership and going!  We hung out there looking at cool stuff and trying on shoes.  Then, we went to a very unique Persian restaurant called Kasra's.  It was very delicious!  Sorry, I don't have pics of that. :-(  We got to sit and eat and talk!  Without being interrupted by little munch-kin voices! But wait!  There's more!  When we got home I went straight up stairs and took about a TWO hour nap!  Oh man, that felt good.  I ended up bathing the dogs when I got up and just hanging out with my honey and boys...how awesome is that!

To round out this incredible day I will go to sleep knowing that tomorrow will be me and my sweetheart's 12 year anniversary!  Yes, I have been blessed with being with one INCREDIBLE man for over 12 years and I wouldn't change it for the world!  So, I leave you with this...aren't we cute...

God bless!