Beach Vacation 2013

Last week we went to Navarre Florida for our nearly yearly beach vacation. Navarre is between Pensacola and Destin. We stayed in the same condo (The Pearl) and the same room as last year since we liked it so much. The condo has three bedrooms, three baths, kitchen, dining, and living areas. I looked up the square footage and its bigger than our first house (and 10x more expensive). My son brought two friends and my daughter brought one so we had three 16 year old boys and two 21 year old girls with us. As far as I know, they didn't get in any trouble, but then again, I was asleep by 10 pm every night. We all had a good time and with the big condo, never felt cramped. Anyway, here are a few pictures.

View from the front balcony

View from the rear balcony

One day I took the kids parasailing and we had a blast.

We went up about 500 feet. It was very relaxing.

The boys got dunked up to their necks :-)

I went up with the girls.

The boys

 

The girls

 

Hopefully we can go back next year.

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Biggest run month yet!

Without a race to train for, I haven't had much to blog about. I suppose I could blog more about food, but find it faster just to post pics on Instagram. I love looking at training and grilling pics there. If you haven't checked it out, you should. If you do, my username is Ransick (just like my twitter name and just about everything I sign up for).

Work has been crazy going from almost no travel to mostly travel. I counted my trips since January 1st and I've been out of town for work 24 weeks out of 31 plus 4 more traveling for fun. Luckily I like my job, the people I work with, the company I work at, and the products we design, develop, sell and support. All the solo triathlon training time has paid off in the mental toughness department :-).

Anyway, on to my running. I hit 118 miles in July! That is the largest run volume month ever and only the fourth month over 100 miles. I feel like I felt before my last half marathon that I PR'd by five minutes and thoughts of signing up for a half this fall and trying to hit 100 miles three months in a row is starting to cross my mind. We'll see. I do miss triathlons and watched quit a bit of Ironman Lake Placid last weekend.

 

Beautiful weather lately in the Midwest.

In other news, my love affair with avocados has reached a new level. I've been making fresh guacamole regularly and am honing in on perfection. What's your favorite guac recipe? I also grilled some avocados last weekend and they were amazing!

Loving my pampered chef avocado knife

 

 

I've been loving limes in my beer this summer too.

 

Figured out that a potato mashers works great for making guac

 

My guac recipe

• A few ripe avocados
• 1/2 red onion minced
• A couple Roma tomatoes blanched then diced
• Juice from a couple limes
• Fresh cilantro, minced
• Salt
• A clove of garlic, minced
• Half a jalapeño, diced

I'm in love :-)

 

Grilled avocado recipe

• Halve the avocados and lightly oil them with olive oil
• Grill on medium heat flesh side down for about five minutes
• Fill the center where the seed was with salsa
• Dab of sour cream on the salsa
• Drizzle fresh lime juice on
• Sprinkle with chopped cilantro

 

You're welcome!

 

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