Running, Teachers, and Skunk Cakes?

I know, I know, I have MIA lately on the blog front. This has been a pretty crazy few weeks and I have let my blog slide. I have so much to share today about all of the things that I have been up to. First off, is a little project I made for my daughter's teacher on the last day of school. How I wish she could just go right to 3rd grade with my daughter. I absolutely have loved Mrs. Walker and I wanted to make her a little thank you something. When I saw THIS post by Danni I knew that I had to totally steal her apple idea. Miss Danni is just amazing. I noticed that she made the top 20 today at 2S4Y. Let me just say, she is so deserving. Her teacher gifts are awesome. So here's my version of her cute apple.

Isn't she so smart? Mine uses Cosmo Cricket, Creative Cafe, and my immense scrap collection. The "thanks" is a Making Memories "looking glass" sticker. I have the cardmaking "looking glass" stickers and let me just say....I love them all. Usually there are at least a few stickers in a set that you know right away you will NEVER use. I can honestly say that I will have no trouble finding just the right homes for each and every sticker in that package. LOVE THEM! (Did I already mention that?)

After we got the last day of school finished up, we then had the last soccer game of the season for my daughter's team. When they received their uniforms, they were purple with a black and white vertical stripe running right through the middle. This stripe inspired the girls to name their team the "Purple Skunks". The coach was having a end of the year party and wanted to get a cake or something for the celebration but not too many bakeries have requests for skunks on their cakes so I said that I could probably figure out a skunk cake. At first I was going to make a sculpted 3D skunk, but then I realized nearly the entire thing would be coated in black frosting. Not only is black frosting disgusting as far as taste goes but it also turns your lips, tongue, and teeth a lovely rotting flesh color. So I decided to go with a half sheet cake with a picture of a skunk playing soccer. Much less black frosting. So here she is my "Purple Skunk" cake.Probably won't make it into a Food Network cake challenge but the girls loved it and it does look like a skunk. They were excited to be able to say that they ate skunk for dessert. I mean, how often can you say that?

Other than that, I have been running. Training that is. By the way, when I say running, it really is more of a slow jog, the word running just makes me feel better. I ran with my sister and brother this weekend in the Teton Dam Marathon. They did the half and I did the 5K (I'm not totally insane.) It was a hard run. The starting line for my race had you facing a killer hill and it just kept right on going up for the first mile and three-quarters. I was a lot concerned because where I train at home is pretty flat and I have been not feeling myself lately and my training was more of a struggle than usual. It was making me crazy and I even had them run a few tests at the doctor's office. They even asked me if I was pregnant (not only NO...). And all of my results were pretty normal (exasperating!), so I was worried standing at the bottom of that hill waiting to start. The run was a benefit for Cystic Fibrosis and a good friend of ours, Perrin Campbell, died about 10 years ago from that disease. So we had some "Team Perrin" shirts printed up for us to wear for this race. Perrin loved baseball and basketball but running is pretty impossible when your lungs are continuously "gunked" up. He always played baseball by using a designated runner. He would hit and field but someone else would run the bases for him. So on the back of our shirts we printed "Designated Runner" and his number "32" and his nickname "Pee Wee". They turned out great even though we made them "Laker" yellow (Perrin's team, he even met Magic and had a pair of his shoes). One thing was for sure, you could definately see us coming. It's hard to blend into the crowd in "Laker" yellow. How I miss Perrin. He was so much fun. He just became a part of our family. He's crazy cool! Since we were running for Perrin, there was no way I was going to let myself lie down on the side of the road and just let the ambulance pick me up. I was finishing that race! If Perrin could go through all of the stuff he had to go through just to make it through a day, by darn, I wasn't going to let some MONSTER hill get in my way. The beauty of hills is that "what goes up, must come down" and I was able to catch up my time on the downside. I ended up finishing better than my best training time which I can only attribute to divine intervention. I know I had help.Here is my sister Jessie running along. My BFF Jenny just happened to see her running along and took this picture. I mean, how can you miss someone running along in a "Laker" yellow shirt? She looks so happy but she is actually feeling pretty miserable. She had a nasty sinus infection and the antibiotics made her sick. Jessie is a crazy fast runner and had been training for a long time for this run and finished in just over 2 hours. Not her personal best, which she always tries to beat but amazing to me nonetheless. 13 miles in 2 hours is pretty dang good and normally she would have left my brother in the dust but he came in at about 1:55. Both of them are so cool and we had a fascinating early morning conversation on the drive to the race. Hilarious. When you come from a family of smart alecs, riding in car together for any length of time is NEVER boring.

We have another little race this weekend too so I had better get to bed so I can get up early to run (jog, whatever). I have a few more pieces of good news I would like to share but I think that I will just have to update later.