Great America

Way back a few weeks ago we took Melissa and her friend to Great America for her "friend's party". Oh EM Gee is that shit expensive.

If you buy your tickets online before you go and you have more 4 or more people going it's about $40 a ticket, then you've got $15 to park. Don't have anything to eat in the house before you go so you have to stop and get some breakfast. And gas. (1 1/2 hours to get there on a good day).

Then when you get there you can bypass the line to buy a ticket to get in but you get funneled into this huge mass of people waiting to get through security. For like an hour. I'm pretty sure the bulk of my sunburn that day came from standing in line waiting to get the wand passed over me to make sure I wasn't smuggling in any weapons.

Once we got through security the girls took off and I never saw them again until we met up to leave. Scott saw them once and they had two boys walking with them. I guess they somehow ended up hanging out with a huge group of choir kids from San Diego or somewhere.  So it was just Scott and Trevor and I. I had actually thought of not going since I can't really ride very many rides without feeling totally nauseated and messed up for the rest of the day. But then I was like ah, it will be a nice family day.

Which it was for the most part even though I spent most of my time sitting around waiting for Scott and Trevor to get off the rides.

Oh and did I mention that the food was super expensive too? Like $16 for a burger, fries and drink meal. Totally ridiculous. Next time I'm totally staying home. Plus it was early in the season so they didn't even have any shows going that weren't for little kids.

At least the kids had fun though. I kind of had fun. Staying home by myself might have been fun too though lol.

So here's a few pictures.

Scott and Trevor on some barf baskets

Scott and Trevor on a barf coaster

Oh look something boring I can do.

Hanging out by the new wood coaster, WHICH I actually did ride and it wasn't too barfy.

Being Silly

Up on the big sky thing that takes you from one side of the park to the other

This girl was reading a book while we waited in line for the bumper cars. I tried to see what book it was but my eye sight isn't THAT good lol.

Scott  and I rode the carousel on the top deck. The whole time we were riding the girl in charge kept repeating to stay sitting down because some little kid wasn't listening. That was enjoyable. We were talking about it when it was over, about how when we were kids they'd stop the whole ride and throw your ass off.

So that was fun! Birthdays done until next year! Well Jess is 21 on the 29th of April but she won't be here until June. Then we'll have a nice party at the house and it will probably rain lol.

Out and About

The other day I was driving home and we had the most awesome clouds in the sky. I just love the big puffy clouds.

It's baby geese season at the lake! We have a ton of Canadian Geese who stay here year round. The little babies are so cute! I was out for my run and came up on them.

So cute! My friend got a picture of them later swimming.

That night I ran 2 miles to the dock, watched the sunset, hung out for a little bit and then ran back to get my 4 miles done. (no I didn't have wine!)

 Another day out running the lake was full of these little ducks. The closer I got the faster they swam away though. We don't usually have very many ducks. We used to have a lot of mallards but now there is only an occasional few. I think someone said these are wood ducks but I'm not sure.

 The long view from "stump lake". This is my favorite spot when you can see the mountains.

 I just love the views around the lakes!

Melissa's Birthday Dinner

For Melissa's actual birthday we went out to Texas Roadhouse for dinner. Trevor decided to stay home since he had a cold so it was just the three of us.

I don't really like Texas Roadhouse all that much. The food is good but THIS

totally grosses me out. Yes, the fun is you can eat peanuts and throw the shells on the floor. Oh SO FUN. Yeah whatever.

I love this pair of glasses that she has. They are turquoise on the inside of the frame.

Sitting in the saddle for her free dessert.

I was trying to be good so I got the steak salad. It was really good (and about 800 calories) and I was totally stuffed.

After dinner we went over to Petsmart to get a new filter for Melissa's fish tank. We ran into my aunt and uncle in the parking lot so talked to them a bit. We got a new filter and a light for the tank. The light that was in there when we got it from my friend was burned out so it was fun to see it all lit up.

The fish was hiding down on the bottom there

 I can't believe she is 16 already. Time sure flies by quick doesn't it?

Easter Sunday! AND Melissa's Family Birthday Party

Finally, Easter Sunday!

I  got up and made Melissa's birthday cake and then Scott started making breakfast. I was working on cleaning things up a little more when I was walking through the kitchen and heard a loud POP noise. 

Then I realized it was my foot with this giant screw thing stuck in it.

I screamed, everyone came running, I pulled it out and bled all over the floor. After some pressure I was able to put a band aid on it and limped around the house for the rest of the day. Scott was quick to point out that this year it was me having a problem on Easter lol. Julie 1, Scott 20 lol ;)

I needed to boil some eggs for deviled eggs and potato salad and the kids had not used the egg dye I bought so I let them go ahead and do that while I was doing other things. AND mom fail forgot to take a picture of them dying them. 

I had bought a little chalk board paint egg kit at Target, those turned out cute!

The weather was total shit but Scott was able to BBQ chicken on the porch (it never did rain but it was super windy).  

We also had ribs that he made, nachos for the kids (Melissa's request), green salad, potato salad, and a few side dishes that people brought to share.

We had the kids go out and do an egg hunt real quick before it started raining. It was just Adrian and Ava running around picking them up this year. Next year the twins will be out there too!

The rest of the day was just hanging out in the house

With some birthday cake

and some presents

and Monday I went and got a tetanus shot, just to be on the safe side.

Club Easter Egg Hunt

I started this post last week, at the rate I'm blogging lately I'll be posting about summer at Christmas!

After the Bunny pictures I had to hurry home so that I could go help stuff plastic Easter eggs for the little community egg hunt on Saturday. I'd never been to the egg hunt before. When the kids were smaller we always had softball on Saturdays and I always host Easter at my house so I'm crazy busy getting ready for that. BUT I've been talking to a lot more people lately and someone asked me to come help, and you know, if someone asks you should probably go right?

So I made a bit of time to go down and help. This is the kitchen area of the clubhouse. This where they have some dinners and bingo every week along with a lot of other things. When I got there there was one table of ladies working on the eggs and by the time we were done there were at least 4 tables going. We started with the new eggs and then they brought in this big box of "used" eggs that we stuffed until we ran out of candy.

It was fun just sitting around and chatting. When we were done I ended up staying there for a few hours just talking more and Scott came down to meet me in the bar too. (the blue door in the top picture opens into the bar) My mom had my kids come over for a sleepover at her cabin with the other kids so we had a carefree kidfree night. Not that they are much work anyways now.

The next morning I got up and did a bunch of work in the yard until it was time to go down to the camp ground and help out. I got there a little late and they had already put all the eggs out so I didn't really help that day. My mom brought Robert and Adrian down and Trevor rode his bike over (they had an older kids hunt) and Melissa got volunteered to help put little bunny tattoos on the kids.

They had hot dogs for the kids (this is my goofy friend Bev) and after the kids got them they opened it up to the adults and there was still some left over when we left.

After all that I went home and worked on the yard a bit. I knew it was probably going to rain for Easter but still wanted the yard cleaned up "just in case". My friend Lupe kept bugging me to come have "one beer" with her down at the corner store so after I was done with most of my cleaning up I ran down there to get my mile in. 

Then somehow we ended up out in the boonies (that's what they call the area between the club and the river here) hanging out around a big bonfire. 

Scott rode his mountain bike out there and met us out there lol. Good thing I had decided I was "done" cleaning for the night.