DISCLAIMER: If you consider yourself a coffee snob or coffee enthusiast, you may want to navigate away from this page. What I’m about to share with you might be hard to handle.

You’re at the office, it’s about two hours till the day’s over, YOU NEED COFFEE, but not just any coffee you need that magical mystical chocolaty mocha.  Your stuck AT your office, breaks are over, there’s no way for you to obtain a “quality” mocha before you break down into a pathetic mess of mocha cravings.

Enter the latest greatest instant office mocha.

You’ll need three ingredients for this crude yet effective drink.

Here comes the technical part, add HOT water & stir.

Enjoy.

An amazingly delightful mocha, instantly! Just hide the evidence, and don’t tell your coffee enthusiast friends!

The other night we enjoyed a festive holiday party at one of my co-worker’s homes. Let’s just say she had 11 Decorated Christmas Trees! Yes, there was even one in her sewing room, jealousy was dripping off me. I managed to capture a few images, between the baby chasing, eating & pinata hitting!

We each got to take home one of these adorable elf’s, as our party treat!

I’m a sucker for gnomes.

The owl & fairy tree, this was one of my favorate trees! Covered in fairy, elves, birds and other flying creatures.

No holiday party is complete without a 13 month old Mrs. Santa Clause running a muck! Etta was dressed to impress in this GoodWill find for .99 cents! She even had on a pair of glittery Dorathy Shoes which I had been saving for a special occasion.

Mr. Frost has visited us. Or as my co-workers call it “freezing fog”! To sum it down into a nutshell… It’s COLD!

Highlights of this week include:

1-Washing Machine Broke-Etta’s gone from cloth to disposables (during this crisis, and it is a crisis, when you have a household of 3 and a half!!!).

2-Crazy Daze at work, busy finalizing clinical placements, no time to eat, breathe, or blog during this craziness.

3-Mr. Frost.

4-Thanksgiving Festivities conclude, Monday with a Margarita dinner party for the family (all 9 of us), enchilada casserole & much juggling.

5-Recovery from the very lovely, long weekend.

6-Pretty in Pink - 2 night marathon (so glorious).

Here is what Mr Frost left behind in his wake….

The world’s a whole different place before the sun get’s up.  I haven’t experienced it much in the past few years. But this week, I’ve experienced a whole lot of it!

We’ve re-arranged the baby & Mama & Papa work schedules, and now I find myself waking up at 5:20am. It’s quite a shock, since I used to be a 8:00am sleeper-inner, but I’m adjusting. Now I get my 8 hour work day in before 2:00pm and that’s just fabulous! More time with baby in the afternoon makes for a happy Mama! Let’s just hope I  can do it all again next week.

As the color’s of the leaves change from green to yellow, orange & red, I’m reminded of just one year ago, when my belly was fully ripe with baby! It’s amazing to think about… I was going through past Halloween photo’s  getting some  costume ideas flowing and found these treats, I thought it’d be awfully nice to share them.

Here I’m pictured 19 days before she was born, just as the leaves we’re changing their colors! And below, just 4 days before she was born, on Halloween of course! We we’re quite cute as a “Deviled Egg”. It was actually a super easy outfit to make. I took my mom’s original bright red empire style prom dress,  and sewed on two pieces of felt, the “white” and then the yellow “yolk”, then put on the matching cape (that she actually wore to her High School Prom) and added some devil horns and a tail. Oh, and for the icing on the cake, I added some chocolate cupcake earrings, so I was “Devil’s Food Cake” too!

During  September I had two near death encounters with Squirrels. Yes. Squirrels.  As you know, I’ve been participating in the BTA Bike Challenge, so for the whole month, I’ve been riding my bike to & from work, with a little help from Public Transportation (aka the city bus), on the way to work.

Last friday, I was greeted on the bus with a very chipper 26 student school group, thankfully I didn’t actually have to carry my bike onto the bus (there was still a spot on the rack out front!). They were the most entertainment I’ve ever had on a bus ride. Each stop, turn, jolt, they Oooohed and ahhhed, and tried to stay standing (there was no sitting room left!). Each exciting attraction we passed they, Ooohed and ahhhed… Is that a wolf? A wolf? A wolf?…. It was quite a fun ride, and yet I was so thankful to be off the bus, and riding my bike the rest of the way to work!

So. How did I do this month? Well, 11 commutes, with a 68.8% commute rate! Not to bad, considering I had a week of vacation, and a holiday during the month. I rode approximately 77 miles, and saved 68 lbs of carbon dioxide! I also saved a pretty penny on gas, and my bus ride is free (thanks to work!).

Back to the squirrels, well, they frequent the bike path that  I take for a couple of miles on my homeward commute, and they are very suicidal, running in front of me on the bike, jetting across the path, luckily I haven’t killed one yet!

I hate to say it, but I’m a sucker for a challenge. I can’t say no to a game of Scrabble. I can hardly say no to anything.  So, when I heard about the Bike Commuter Challenge, I knew it was going to be getting my exercise this month.

http://bikecommutechallenge.com/

It’s simple, who can get the most people to ride their bikes to work? Each day in the month of September, every team member logs their bike trips to work & home, the team with the most riders/miles/calories burned wins! Doesn’t get more fun than that. And lucky me, I now live a mere 6 miles from my workplace (before we moved I lived more like a quarter of a mile), just the perfect distance for a bike commute.

Now we’re almost to the end of September, and I’ve biked 60% of the day’s I’ve worked this month!!! Not to bad! Before the challenge, I hadn’t ridden once! And I do cheat, I take the bus for free in the morning, then ride 6 miles (mostly downhill) home (I would hate to arrive at work all stinky,  we do have a shower, but are lacking the curtain).

There are some crazy kamakatzi’s who’ve biked 100%, now I can’t feasibly do that, but I’m still having fun. And isn’t that what matters?