Pumpkin Spice Latte

I look forward to the "fall" every year for the new flavors that arrive.  I say "fall" in quotey marks because I'm not much a fan of cooler weather, but by "fall", I simply mean the month of September arriving to allow businesses to think they can now serve "fall" items.  Inside our Target there is a Starbucks, and while waiting in line to check out, I just happened to notice they are now serving Pumpkin Spice Latte's again!  Yippee!  I wasted no time buying my decaf version since it was so late in the day.

Dynasty

When we moved to the metroplex around 6 or 7 years ago, the one thing that we immediately noticed was the lack of good Chinese restaurants.  In my opinion, there are 2 types of Chinese food in America-fast food (think food court style), and buffet style.  I am sure many people would argue with me about this, but I don't care.  Finding decent fast food Chinese was not a problem thanks to the numerous malls and Panda Express restaurants in the area.  But locating buffets was the problem.  We had been spoiled with the multiple Chinese restaurants Central Texas had to offer-all of which serve hot, fresh, tasty Chinese.  So while we were in town over Labor Day weekend, we made a point to stop by Dynasty in Temple.  This is one of the things I miss while in the metroplex!  I assure it is worth the drive!

Health Camp

Before you think this is a post about healthy anything, let me quickly direct you to the humor the owner of this burger joint has.  We have seen the billboard for Health Camp many times in Waco (just below the name of the restaurant it more correctly advertises "Burgers & Shakes"), and have been intrigued, but never stopped in.  Today when trying to decide where to eat, and not wanting the same old fast food, we stopped in; it was easy to get to-located right off the interstate at the infamous Waco traffic circle.

Despite it being 2:00 in the afternoon, the parking lot was full, and there was a line inside.  While we weren't particularly fond of waiting to get in, it is always a good sign that people are willing to wait to eat their food.  It was a basic menu of mostly burgers and few other entrees.  The "Super Health Burger" was a double meat-double cheeseburger.  I ordered a cheeseburger with fries and a drink.  My hubby order the bacon cheeseburger with onion rings and a drink.  I didn't check out Health Camp's website until after we ate; if I had I probably would have ordered a shake-apparently they are more tasty than the burgers.

Here is what we got:

It was very typical of an old burger diner-very greasy, but good.  We ordered our burgers all the way-they came with lettuce, onion, tomato, pickle, and mustard.  Tasty, but I am not sure that I would rank as the "best".

First Football Game

Somehow I got distracted and forgot to post this picture last week.  My son played his first regular-season game of the year on Thursday night.  It was an away game so I missed it.  They won 6-0!  Here is a picture a friend of mine posted on her facebook.  You can barely see my sons head-it is just underneath the coaches armpit. :)

Sweet Girl

I don't get to see our niece very often, but I did today-she is such a cutie!  My husband teases me because every time I see her I always paint her toenails and fingernails.  But it's okay-I never had a little girl, so I just enjoy my time with this one!

Santa Fe

My husband's uncle has recently been placed in a long term care facility in Temple-Santa Fe Hospital.  He has suffered from cancer for quite some time, and we were able to visit him for a while today.  While waiting to go up to the room, I read some of the different things they had posted in the hallways.  Temple is a railroad town where the Santa Fe Railroad came through.  Here are a few pics I got in the hallway:

4 Miles

I have tried running on and off ever since high school.  There were times when, for 9 month straight, I was faithful to run every other day for about 30 minutes.  But 30 minutes was (and always has been) my limit.  In an effort to get my pace down to a lower number, and prepare for a 5K, I have decided that once a week I should do a "long run".  I realize that this might mean different things to different people.  But for me-last week it meant I ran 5 kilometers (3.2 miles).  This week I decided to step it up another notch-I was going to add another half mile to last weeks long run.  But when I was almost home, I decided that I was so close to 4 miles, it would be a shame to stop running before I hit that milestone.  Yep-4 miles.  Apparently I am capable of more than I thought I was.  What I have done is simply raised the bar to what I thought my achievements could/should be.  (As for my running pace-the intervals and tempo run have been helping!)

I was here about 3/4 through my run:

Yuck!  Here I am after my run-attempting to smile.