A new year, a new blog.

Please join me over at my new blog The Relentless Unfolding. I will be sharing a frame a day of my family, life, whatever strikes my fancy, and occasionally a word or two or sometimes more. I have been known to be quite verbose, but am looking forward to speaking with images. Please come along with me!

Much love, Rane

mmm, fiber!

I've never seen anyone be more interested in the peel than the banana. I guess I better bananas to my organic list!

Breakfast at the Lederer's

My friend makes the most delicious and beautiful breads from her Swedish recipes. This one was thyme bread. For breakfast, I enjoyed it with butter and coffee in my new coffee cup. For lunch, it perfectly sopped up my mushroom soup and for my afternoon snack, it was great with blueberry vanilla chevre.




The coffee cup is my special way, along with a french press, to make decaf more appealing to me. It's taken a few days, but I think it might work. I'm so sneaky to myself!

Banana Nutella Muffins

This recipe is a variation of my "go-to" muffin recipe. I combine the dry ingredients along with between 2 - 2.5 cups of wet ingredients (fruit, mayo, applesauce, juice), then bake at 375 for 20 - 25 minutes, the more wet the batter, the longer you'll bake it.

1.5 cups all purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1 t. baking soda
1 t. salt

3 medium ripe bananas, mashed (or ~ 2 cups pureed fruit of choice)
1/2 c mayo (not light or fat free)
Nutella

Preheat oven to 375. Line muffin pan with paper cups or grease pan.

In a large bowl, combine dry ingredients.

In another bowl, combine bananas and mayo. Stir into dry ingredients just until moistened.

With a spoon, drop about a half inch of batter into the cups. Add 1/2 teaspoon of nutella. Top with more batter until cups are 3/4 full. If you like, top with another 1/2 teaspoon of Nutella.

Bake at 375 for 20 - 25 minutes, until toothpick comes out clean.

Cool in pan for 5 minutes before removing to wire rack. Attempt to wait to eat them for at least 3 - 4 minutes. Nutella is really hot and a burnt mouth makes it hard to taste the other 11 muffins you wolf down before the kids find out what that smell means.

Makes 12 muffins.

In review: September. Michelle is back from Iraq!

September saw the return of our sister, Michelle, from Iraq. She is currently stationed at Fort Hood and yes, she's ok. Here's most of us girls. Tracy, Karen, me, and Michelle. We look alike, don't we? Linda avoids the flashes because she's too big a star. ;->



Our resident reticent teenager even allowed me to photograph him. A rare smile. I am honored.



Kendrick drank and passed out texting in the backseat. If I were really mean, I would have finished his text for him!

In review: August

I just realized I have photos on my camera since July, which means I haven't sent any photos to Grandma. I'm a bad daughter. I must make amends.

So here goes. In August, we went to Jacksonville for my niece's graduation from her Naval training. Her class is the last to officially receive wings. She asked my dad, an old Navy pilot from back in the day, to pin on her wings. He was choked up with the honor. It was very sweet. He didn't even make her bleed at all!



A bunch of us showed up to support her! Everyone else gets to smile, while I wrangle the toddler.



Here's Tonya in the cockpit of the P3 she works in. This is supposedly all Top Secret and stuff, but everyone was taking photos, so I did, too. Tonya is a lovely goof, isn't she?

At the Museum of Flight

D_ and her son, R_, went to the Museum of Flight in Tacoma. Jack loves planes so I thought he'd love the museum. There were tons of wonderful planes including the F8F9 and the Aerocar.

Grandpa flew this plane - the F8F9. Neat!



This is the super fun 1956 Aerocar Model One. I think this was Jack's favorite by far. It's a car and a plane! My two favorite things! WOW!



There's a whole kids section with real airplanes and even a helicopter that are really small. Check it out!






Jack! In! Space!

Moms and Tots at the Seattle Aquarium

I'm a bit biased but I love that Jack loves marine life. He will happily watch almost 30 minutes of Blue Planet and point and cheer. He still doesn't really call me "mommy" but he knows the difference between an Orca and a Humpback whale. I can't help but feeling proud.

While in Seattle, we went to the beautiful aquarium. Sadly, my camera skills aren't the best so please forgive me. Since I think my son is too cute, I can't resist.

Jack really liked the Octopus. She was particularly active, moving about, flashing her colors getting all BIG and scary.



Ivy pauses a moment to have her picture taken.



An Orca skull. Those teeth are as thick as my forefinger.



A sea otter surfaces for a moment.



The funny thing I'm noticing as I look back through all my shots of the whole trip is that rarely did I take any photos of my friends. It's all kids, animals, and kids. Sorry friends!

Belly at 17 weeks

By popular demand, I am providing a belly shot. But not your normal belly shot. This is my POV. My belly is lopsided.



This is Jack sitting on my belly reading a book. See how crazy lopsided it is?




This is the view above the book. I put these shooting range earmuffs on him when I vacuum. He seems to like them a lot and goes into his room singing to himself and reading while I vacuum. It's a good thing.




Back to the book. Nothing keeps him for long when "The Happy Man and his Dump Truck" is open!

Catching up...

Hi there. It's been a while, how ya been?

Due to some level of guilt and the sweet, gently nagging voice of friends (ahem! you know who you are!) I am finally posting some pictures from our recent trip to Whistler, B.C. and the Seattle area. I called my "Great Tour of All Things I Didn't Do When I Lived Here" and it was incredibly successful!

In Whistler, my friend Greg and I did a ZipTrek Ecotour. 5 zip lines that get steeper and longer with 1 over 20 stories high and something like 2000' long. That was totally kickass and even more fun than it sounds. Greg and I were mostly speechless and grinning the rest of the day, but we did admit our next fantasy job was being a ZipTrek guide.

Please note the rakish angle of my helmet. I meant to do that. Sure.




There was something so ominous and strange about the steps to nowhere.




I even made a video of one of my zips. Super fun! I'm having troubles with uploading to blogger but the Youtube link seems to work. Pardon my colors - I don't know how to color correct video.

More to come later from B.C., the Museum of Flight, the Seattle Aquarium, the Woodland Park Zoo and much much more!