Awesome Weekend: The Friday Edition

On Friday we headed to Huntsville and went shopping for a few things-masks and rugs.  You know, Needful Things.

Alex had a birthday Thursday and so we joined him and his family and a few other friends for a jumping party at Shakalaka.  SO FUN!  I jumped, too and my ankle is NOT happy, but I had a blast and I did not even do anything other than jump.  They had a slackline pit:

Another pit with trampolines to launch from:

A trampoline floor that's bigger than the house:

A dodgeball court and I videoed but did not get a photo of the trapeze into another foam pit!

That upside down blur is Chan!

 After jumping, everyone was giddy and starved, so we headed to Katy's and she had some fruit all chunked up and waiting as well as loads of chips with salsa and hummus.  YUM

We snacked and visited a while.  I was a little overwhelmed from the jump place-it was LOUD, so I took up residence in a deck chair for half an hour or so and watched the kids come and go.  

This is Sammy's new baby, HoneyBee

Kurt and Robbie soon had a fire going, Matt showed up and the evening was rolling along.

We had chili and then it was time for mousse:

I have decided you don't outgrow the need to play, you just get told you do.

This was the point in the evening where Peg told the story (she's in her 70's) about how she dressed up as the oldest Bulgarian stripper and headed to a costume party (recently), then changed her mind and decided to instead go to the pharmacy where she got the man working there to video her doing a strip tease dance so she could e-mail it to some friends.
Then she went home and managed to lock herself out of her car and her house, so she had to call AAA from someone else's house and then explain to them and the AAA guy what she was doing dressed as she was.  She decided to give them a dance as well.  I nearly fell out laughing.

 DRAMATIC FIRE

We settled in to watch Forrest Gump on the outdoor screen, I stayed RIGHT by the fire, everyone else somehow managed with blankets.  I was 2 degrees from going inside!  

I never would have picked that movie, but it was a huge hit.  The kids loved it and the adults enjoyed seeing it again.  The screen started moving a little in the breeze and Inde was sitting with the passel of girls.  It warped Tom Hanks' head at the end when he was talking to the grave and she yelled, "No!  he's not handsome any more, don't let me see it!"  She was hilarious, when Jenny got in the cab and left she yelled, "AGAIN!?"
But the best part was the tree.  Chan said, "That's the tree they sat in as little kids!" and the girls all said, "Awwwwww!"  hahahaha!

Ben stayed with Alex and Rho came home with Chan.

We headed out around 11, as soon as we got in the door, everyone was in bed asleep in about 6 minutes.  I am not even sure shoes were removed in some cases.  I know we did not shower off the campfire smell, so around 4 Saturday morning, I had to get up and shower and change, it was giving me a headache!  I had to wash all of the bedding before we headed out for the day, too.

Other than that minor drama, it was a great day and I love my new rugs!  Well, maybe 'I appreciate how heavy they are and I like the color and I think they will do well helping keep the freezing kitchen floor covered' instead of 'love', but whatever.  That's a mouthful.

Mummy Race

We headed out today to hang out at the park and do the Mummy Race, which I have read about but never participated in before.

The kids split into teams of 3 and used 2 rolls per person to make a mummy.
Then the mummies raced around a short course and the mummy who had the most wrappings still intact at the end, won.

The all-boy team.  hehehehe

The artsy team!

The first heat...

We think MAYBE this is the winner, it was pretty hard to tell.  They were all flapping and unraveling, it was pretty funny.  We got to yell from the sidelines things like, "GO SLOWER!"

Next round!

The boy team was all about covering faces and torsos.

hahahahaha!

Every car that drove by slowed down and stared.
It was hilarious, they had to walk so stiffly to keep from breaking their wraps.

Jake begins to unravel and goes for the hunch.
Deb had them go through that gap in the trees, so mean!

eeee, he's so creepy!

After the race, the kids chatted more and the moms hung out a bit.  It was a very laid back afternoon!

On the south end of Cullman, heading to Hanceville is this vet.  I don't think they know what a vaccine is!
 I am assuming they mean antivenin, which I still kind of doubt. A 10 ml vial is somewhere around $550 and from what I recall reading, it has a short shelf life.
Maybe they mean mithridatization?
Maybe I should call them...I have many questions...

Catching up, photographically speaking

 Dae's 16th birthday party:

Our weekend home alone, movies, mud masks and enough junk food to make me gain 2 pounds right before my physical:

Monday at Monte Sano:

Tuesday at Monte Sano:

I set up a 2-day volunteer time at the state park before we left for Disney for folks to come up and drop in and work for an hour or two.  It got great feedback, lots of RSVP's.

In the end, the ranger I spoke with actually did not make any type of list and was unprepared for volunteers at all AND no one but Katy actually showed.

Can't blame the weather, I call "LAME" on everyone.

We walked around for 2 days picking up trash.

The kids were awesome, they worked the whole time without any griping, other than a little lamenting over lack of people to hang out with.

They made the best of it, though.

Tomorrow we have game day at the park.  I added a small 'Halloween' type element to it and I am pretty sure attendance will be way off because of it.  Oh.  Well.

The rest of us (doomed) folks will enjoy ourselves.  The weather has been phenomenal, but just chilly enough at night to remind me...we have not cut the first piece of firewood this fall.

Feed a Cold

Careful what you wish for, the next best thing to sleeping in a hotel is sleeping in my own bed, which I am getting to do this weekend while Matt takes Jake and Chan off camping with Ben's best friends.

Our Benny is well and truly sick, proven with an even deeper voice and the fever he spiked this afternoon.

Somehow, I still managed to end up having to plan and pack everything anyway.  hrm.

I have a couple movies to watch and some hot oil treatment packs for our hair.  He drew the line at facials, but the weekend is BARELY started.  He'll cave.

I made coconut curry soup with rice noodles Thursday night and a pot of potato soup Friday afternoon.  He wants mac and cheese next.  We ate a whole pack of cookies and the rest of the jerky and he ate an entire can of coconut crunchy things that I thought were chips.  I have to quit snacking, I have that insurance physical Tuesday!

We watched the new Transformers 2 hour and 44 minute movie.  Holey Moley!  Yet ANOTHER movie in which the girl is there to look good in shorts, need to be rescued a few times and scream from the backseat. At least this time she's not covered in Vaseline.  She introduces her boyfriend, "His name is Shane and he drives."  WOW. That's quality writing right there. And, astonishingly, it was exactly enough back story on him-never mind he has an Australian accent, yet has lived in Texas long enough for him to be 20 and the Romeo and Juliet law to be in effect (pre-established teen relationship makes an adult-teen relationship legal).  I did not look that up to see if it was true, the probably made it up like every bit of the science they used, including ACTUAL science.  Like 'carbon dating' a silicone-based being from another planet.

We also watched The Signal, which I liked despite Netflix telling me I would not.  It was about...well, it's sci-fi.  Watch it and see.  If I say too much, it will give away the plot.  It has Tim from Oculus in it, that actor is SO cute.  I am ever-slightly bummed that I don't have a kid to watch movies and oogle the actors with me. Chan could care less about boys and Jake will occasionally geek with me, he has no head for faces-if we saw 10 movies in a row with the same 10 actors in all of them, he would not know who they were from one movie to the next.  He can pick out Nathan Fillion and Robert Downey Jr and sometimes Benedict Cumberbatch. That's it, everyone else is a new experience every time.  So yelling out, "It's so and so!" means nothing to him.  Ben refuses to enjoy looking at other people, much less discuss anything about them.

I tried to get him interested in doing something most of the afternoon, but he napped and then sat around blowing his nose and staring at me with bloodshot eyes.  He looks like he's into some serious drugs, poor kid.  I gave him Vitamin C gummies and lots of hot tea and Sierra Mist.  I don't have any serious drugs.

I hope Matt and the other two are not freezing, I am off to lay on my heating pad and read until I pass out. My left shoulder feels like there's gravel in the joint.

I just finished Tana French's newest book, The Secret Place.  BAM, it was about Stephen, which I totally called over 2 years ago.  I don't know who the next book will feature, her MO is to take a detective from the Dublin Murder Squad and write the book about that person.  The first 4 flowed from one into the next without much spacing and the next character was some part of the previous story line.  This one was a little later on and there were no back-up detectives, even in passing, other than Mackey-who has already had his own book.  Rob and Cassie never even got mentioned.  :(  The detective from Broken Harbor  was mentioned, but that was it.  I wonder if she will go into Conway's story next.  She partnered with Stephen for this one, but featured as much as he did...I don't know.  Hard to call.  Anyway, I am in that floudering mode where I don't have the next book in mind and I have dipped into a few I downloaded and ended up deleting all of them.  Nothing else is as good.

Home Again

Our second week was MUCH drier than the first, we did not have any big park plans, so we just came and went at random almost.

The drive home was uneventful, no cops or flats or smoke billowing from under the hood.  All things I am very grateful about.

We got unloaded and unpacked and did laundry most of Saturday, went to Dae's birthday that evening and spent Sunday messing with photos and running local errands.

Ben finally went down with the cold he has been skirting, yesterday was rough on him.  I have tried to bolster him with extra vitamins and sleep, last night we went grocery shopping and I brought home lots of nutrient-packed goodies, though he ate the surprise chocolate first.  That's actually not a surprise.  I fed him hot cereal with muesli and fruit today and he's at his computer doing math with a big bottle of water and a packet of tissues.  Tomorrow is a 3 day bike camping trip with his 2 best buddies followed immediately by 2 days of volunteering at the state park with the teen group and then a game day.  Then dance class and another birthday party.  It's going to be a busy week ahead.  Not a great time to be feeling super puny.

The cold is making his voice that one level deeper and he sounds so much like Matt now.  It's creepy, really.  Matt yelling at Jake to stop cheating on a game, Matt freaking out because a song on the radio has 'booty' in it (Ben is anti-body-anything at the moment) and Matt at 10 in the morning exclaiming the exquisite softness of the new tissues I bought.  I guess more surreal than creepy.  Plus, I have heard the actual Matt gripe about one nose hole being clogged and one being runny-and the annoyance of the random alternation. I have some of that going on myself, but as long as my lungs stay clear, I can handle a head cold.  After last year, I don't want to cough EVER again.  There's a life goal.  hahaha

The upcoming trip-tomorrow-I have done zero planning for.  I need to get the tent ready, find sleeping bags, plan everything out, pack...it all seems so horrible and time consuming.  Why can't I just stay in a hotel? Okay, sucking it up and off to pack, I don't think I have ever left it to this late before.

Camping Food

Camping is about 10% gear and 40% location and the other 50% revolves around food.  I know people who carry along grills and cooking and eating are their main events while camping.  That's fine, but we usually base camp and use the campground as a launch point.  No time for making complicated meals!  I have just about fine tuned our food and thought I would share it here, as 'what do you eat at camp' is such a common question!  Every conversation I have had with strangers while out camping involves food.

My main goal is to streamline foods to do 3 things-feed my picky eater and provide protein, good fats, carbs and fiber and keep to our budget.

Breakfast:
Grits with added cheese, jerky or pepperoni and sliced apples
Oatmeal with added nuts or nut butter and dried fruit
GF torillas with the options of nut butter and preserves, pepperoni and raw spinach, avocado slices with nuts or cheese.

Lunch:
GF tortillas or crackers and previous options plus tuna and pesto
Protein bar and raw fruit/veggies

Snack:
chips and fruit
teddy grahams and Nutella
goldfish crackers with cherry tomatoes

Dinner:
Rice with soup on top
rice noodles with raw spinach, avocado and nuts
GF pasta with pesto and salad

You can buy just a few things: raw spinach and cherry tomatoes, a bag of apples, a few avocado, a variety of nuts (we like hemp, flax, chia and raw almond), nut butter (hazelnut with cocoa, yum!) and a couple different dried fruits, look for no sugar added.  A pack of string cheese, box or two of protein bars, some bags of pepperoni, a couple boxes of grits and oatmeal, a few bags of microwave rice (you can still heat it in a pot or electric skillet if you don't have a microwave!) some cans or pouches of soup (Campbell's makes a really good curry soup) and a pack of rice noodles, tortillas, pasta, pesto, tuna, some butter and a bag or two of chips and you are set!  It's not a huge variety, but it's enough to keep everyone satisfied and it can all be cooked in a single pot or electric skillet. And it works out to under $2 a meal.  Around $100 for a week's worth, if you plan to also eat a meal out once every day or two.

We also hit the Asian grocery before a trip so we always have along new tea, fun candy, dried seaweed, tiny packets of jello with lychee cubes and rice crackers.  I usually make pancakes on our lazy mornings, I just put the mix in a wide-mouth plastic bottle, shake and pour onto the electric skillet.  We use nut butter, goat cheese and nuts to top them.

See my batter bottle in the background?  It's from Wal-Mart and had their pancake mix in it originally.  Reuse when you can!
Belle Chevre in Elkmont, AL has yummy goat cheese spreads.  We scored some goodies for the trip, but any good soft cheese spread will work.

mmmmmmmm! and the electric skillet wipes clean in about 10 seconds.

I like to stay away from complicated menus and having to bring along several pots and pans.  I do use paper plates and bowls and sporks from Taco Bell. We have water bottles that we drink from.  With a limited variety, everything fits in our limited storage space, too.  I bring along a plastic container with 3 large drawers and meals go in breakfast, lunch and dinner-one per drawer.  Fruit on top of the mini fridge, chips and tortillas on top of the drawers along with a bowl that holds little bottles of (smoked sea) salt, pepper, curry, ginger and cinnamon, which add a good deal of flavor variety, too!

Mingled with various meals out, this is a very good camping menu that covers all of our needs and keeps us nomming all week with no drama.  :)  Some of it can be thrown in a pack for eating on the go, too.

Half Way Day

Halfway through our trip today!  Here is a quick rundown.  We arrived at the campground Saturday after 13.5 hours of driving.  Matt got pulled over for running a red light in Roanoke, but the cop TOTALLY pulled up from a parking lot to the intersection about 20 seconds before and it turned yellow-red so fast there was no way to slam on the brakes!  He did not give us a ticket, if he had, I would have gone to court about it!

The WHOLE drive there were cops-Alabama, Georgia, Florida.  By the time Matt took back over driving just past the FL border, I had already counted 72 cop cars!!!  There must have been some kind of quota weekend or something.

Check-in was super easy, we are in campsite 2020 which is directly across the road from the bathhouse trail.  Other than on the bathhouse itself, there are no lights above knee-level in the campground, it is DARK at night!

We set the boys up in the new tent just behind the camper, it was about to start raining when we got here, so we got set up in about 20 minutes, it was the fastest time ever, everyone was giddy with excitement.  The boys each have an end of the tent, which is longer than the camper and Chan is in here with us.  That's working out fairly well, with all the rain we have everything piled inside along with our clothes and laptop bags and so on and that makes it crowded.  I have culled as much as I can and put it in cabinets out of the way and Matt has been staying on top of the laundry, so everything is clean and dry and put away.

Sunday morning we got up and went to Typhoon Lagoon from 10 until around 2 and then had lunch at the camper and went to Disney Quest from around 4 until about 8 and then walked around Downtown Disney.

Monday we went to Animal Kingdom from early magic hours at 8 until nearly close at 5-it was raining, so we left a little early.  We opted to just have an early night and came back to camp.

Tuesday we went to Magic Kingdom (via our boat!) from right after opening at 9 until 2 when the bottom fell out and we got SOAKED.  There was rain trickling into my butt crack, it was THAT level of pouring.  We came back to camp and changed and did laundry, I made a hot meal and then Matt and Jake went off to EPCOT and I took Ben and Chan back to Disney Quest.  I was not risking the rain.  They ended up busing over to join us just in time for us to leave.

Wednesday we went to Hollywood Studios from 9-4 and then to Magic Kingdom from 5 to 9:30-we had to stay for the Kiss Goodnight!  Matt and Ben went back to camp via the van, Jake and Chan and I decided to get creative and take the boat back.  Well, the last one left before we got there so we took the Monorail to the TTC and then a bus to EPCOT and finally a bus back to the campground and a final bus to the campground loop.  It was 11 before we walked in, we were SO tired.

Thursday was our class at EPCOT, so we got there before opening and attended the seminar on hydroponics and sustainable farming.  It was not as good as I had hoped-it was very informative and Laura was lovely, but the kids have always loved the moving around and trying new things that the Disney classes offer.  This was sitting still for 90 minutes watching her show the different fruits and veggies they grow and talking about how delicious they all are.  Then we left.  Okay-there was more to it than that, but dang!  Who wants to sit and look at juicy dripping fruits that look amazing and hear how yummy and nutrient packed they are-with no getting up for a closer look or a chance to sample?

We stayed at EPCOT until dark, riding everything and walking around World Showcase until I seriously thought my feet were going to go flat.  They HURT, good grief!!  What is going on right now is the Food and Wine Festival and there are 25 kiosks from different countries selling 3-5 different foods and 5 or so beverages with their distinct flavors and you walk up and order what you want, swipe the band and pay for it and try stuff!  We had DELICIOUS fried cheese from Greece cooked in honey with pistachios, kimchee hot dogs, ravioli, Matt and I split a Red Stag lemonade (go USA!) beef kabobs, haggis...sweets from Norway, a sweet corn cheesecake with caramel from Mexico.  I know there was more, I can't remember it all.  We were STUFFED, we have to go back, hehehe.  There's still so much to try.

Air Supply was playing live, we stopped and watched them for a while.  Saw a couple shows, watched the Italian mime, spent a LONG time in Japan, walked the hedge maze at Great Britain, tried on Sasquatch hats at Canada and so on.  Generally had a great time.  As we were leaving, we decided to check out Sum of All Thrills.  Seriously-the most fun I had all day.  We also rode Maelstrom, it closes for good Sunday.  I am SO sad about that.  Poor Norway.  :(

Today (Friday!) we got up and went to Blizzard Beach for about 4 hours and had a great time.  We headed out and got lunch, came back and did all our remaining laundry and Matt took Jake and Chan back to Disney Quest.  Ben turned down going too, but now he's bored and has taken to just eating stuff at random and sighing.  I am going to see if he wants to walk to the pool and roast marshmallows with Chip and Dale.  :)

We are having a blast, even the rain has not been too miserable.  We were able to dodge it fairly well at Hollywood Studios, we had a long lunch during one storm, went to see the Little Mermaid show in another downpour and so on.  The new Star Tours Star Wars ride has 53 different random 'tours'.  We went to Endor, Hoth, the Wookie planet, that planet Amidala is from, went through the Death Star and once we wrecked, smashed the front window right out.  Matt and Jake made light sabers.  Jake is bummed his is only 7 feet long.  Matt is geeked because there is a panel that comes off and inside are different crystals that can be changed around or removed to make different effects.  He has shown me 3 times and Chandler 4 times. Then he just sat and took them out and put them back over and over.  He and every 9 year old boy had the same look of total fulfillment at that ride, that whole, "I KNEW IT WAS REAL!" look of satisfaction.  Oh, and Jake bought an Ewok and named it Jean Luc.

I know there is a TON I am forgetting, but I have a zillion photos and I will blog later on about it all.  No doubt they will jog my memory.  :)

Tomorrow we are doing NOTHING.  I was going to clean the camper and get the laundry done, but we did that already this afternoon when the rain hit.  I just need to make a list of the food we still have and get a menu together and maybe run to the store.  Sunday we are going to Apopka to the springs there.  Monday it's back to Animal Kingdom, Ben loves that park!

I am hoping a couple days to lounge and explore and just be still will revive us.  We are tired, but sleeping and eating VERY well.  The campground is large and packed, but not noisy much at all and never after 10 (so far).  We have been to the pool once and not anything else-and there is a TON.  Horses, archery, trails to ride, bike and walk, 2 pools, nightly movies, nightly sing-alongs and marshmallow roasts, 4-5 restaurants, 2 stores, 2 arcades, volleyball, tennis, tetherball, boats and canoes, kayaks, shuffleboard, playgrounds, the beach where you can see fireworks every night at 9, Magic Kindgom is just across the lake, oh and the Electrical Lights parade every night on the water-it goes right by us!  Right now there is a campsite decoration contest for Halloween and activities every day with that theme plus regular arts and crafts offerings.  Somebody has their golf cart done up like a haunted pirate ship.  There's a campsite with a TON of purple streamers, I think it's actually Princess themed and nothing to do with Halloween.  I am feeling a little bare with my 2 LED lanterns...though they do change colors.

Okay, we are off to sing along with Chip and Dale and roast some marshmallows!  And if my feet end up in the hot tub a while, all the better.  :)