Joe's Crab Shack Dinner

The first night in Anaheim we went to Joe's Crab Shack for dinner.  At least one person hadn't been there before, I can't remember if both of my friends hadn't or just one. There is one in Old Sacramento that I have been to several times so it wasn't anything new to me.

The first thing I did when we got there was order a large adult beverage.

Humoring them.. I look like I've drank my whole drink already.

DINNER! Huge dinner.

And gotta have a goofy picture haha. 

I had bribed the boys with $1 each if they could make it through dinner with out their mom yelling at them. 

It's a miracle! 

Great Wolf Lodge

Way back at the end of June I went on a road trip/vacation with my 2 besties and the 3 boys that belong to one of them!

We went to Great Wolf Lodge in Anaheim. They are building a GW just down the road from me about 10 miles so it was kind of cool to go "check it out". I doubt I will EVER go to the local one unless I some day have grandkids and there is a really good special lol.

Here we are all bright in chipper before we spent over 6 hours in the car haha.

My friend likes to make everything a "surprise" so the boys had no idea where we were going. Towards the end we drove right by Disneyland I was like OH NO! They are going to think that is the surprise! But they didn't. Weird.  

We got ears when we signed in and everyone got a wristband.

My friend takes A LOT of pictures. These are not ALL of them :)

The "Lodge" has a camp type feel in the lobby and has some activities the kids can do. We went down for the "dance party" that only one out of 3 boys enjoyed haha.

The rest of the time was spent swimming which they LOVED.  The first day we got there we spent some time outside. The boys liked that until they got a taste of the inside and then no one wanted to go back out there.

INSIDE has a little kids area (boys were too big for that)

BIG water slides which I went on all of them I think. EVERY time on the raft ones I'd end up going backwards. 

Little Water slides

Lazy River

(don't drag your legs lol)

Wave Pool-I went in for a minute or two, would be more fun if you were holding onto a kid

Surfing which the boys LOVED

one other area where there were some basketball hoops

They had a food/Bar area, you weren't supposed to bring in your own food and drink into the water area but you could buy theirs. I bought their souvenir cup the 2nd day to save some money (although they did have free water). 

(Dunkin Donuts in the hotel lobby)

Nachos from the snack bar

Downstairs there was an arcade and more food. The boys got to go to the arcade on the last day and had a lot of fun.  I didn't play any games because you had to buy a card and then put money on it. I'm too cheap for that for ski ball. 

There was a little bakery area and a pizza place. We got pizza one night and took it up to our room.

We went out to dinner the other night. The food was a bit expensive but it's a resort. Nice if you just had little kids and didn't want to venture out.

Beep Beep!

My "Mom Taxi" days are starting to be very limited! Wednesday I took Trevor for his driving test and he passed! Now to get him a vehicle and then I won't be driving anyone anywhere anymore.

Weird after all these years.

We are working on getting a truck from a friend of mine but it needs some stuff fixed up on it before it will be road worthy.

After his test we went to Ihop for some brunch and then went to the bank and opened him a bank account since we had the time and important papers with us.

Growing up all in one day! We went to a couple thrift stores, got some Blizzards and then went home. Fun day with the kid.

PS Blogger isn't sending comment emails to me again so I'm just answering in the comments section!

Mr. O'Malley AKA Kat

Over the summer this cat just showed up at my mom's cabin. Her cabin is her little house that is out by me and she only comes out on the weekends usually. Sometimes she comes for weeks in the summer and sometimes not at all.

So this cat shows up and he's so friendly but soooo skinny. Mom of course feeds him. Cat for life!

Someone had to have dumped him. She lives right next to the river so I think maybe someone just dropped him off over there. Definitely was a house cat in his first life. 

For awhile I went over every day between 8 and 8:30 to feed him. He'd be waiting for me and if I was late he'd be like GD it lady, I'm starving here! 

Mom finally made an appointment to get him neutered and when she took him in they said he was ALREADY neutered. When she did that she also took him to her other house where she is at every day.

Looks like he planned that one out well doesn't it!

Hello Fresh & Gym Time

Trevor and I have been trying to go to the gym on Wednesdays and Fridays. He rides his skateboard or walks over from school and then I come straight from work. (and then we go out to eat...)

I've been doing couch to 5k again on the treadmill and he seems to be doing walking/running on the treadmill and doing the elliptical and exercise bikes.

Last Friday I did week 3 day 1, which has 2 running segments at 3 minutes each. My legs were hurting so much by the ends of those 3 minutes. Ridiculous! But I hung in and did it even though the kid was yacking at me the whole time. I remember now I had to do these early ones by myself so I could talk myself through them. Just for fun I went back and looked at when I did week 3 last time and it looks like it was just as hard then, Rough.

I've been doing Hello Fresh for a few weeks now. They are a little spendy but it's nice because I'm so sick of trying to come up with some thing to make for dinner. I tend to put off going to the grocery store until I make a menu and shopping list but then I don't want to, and then we end up with pizza.
So this way at least we have something slightly healthier 2-3 days a week.

Here's a few I've made recently

I try not to pick many of the pasta ones, since pasta is cheap and I want to get my money's worth haha

This one had kiwi salsa in it, not that great of a pic sorry

This one used shallots and jalapenos that were supposed to "pickle' while you cooked. I only put a couple peppers in it. I ended up picking the shallots off since they gross.

Pork Tenderloin turned out really well

Tips for making these meals:

1. buy some rubber gloves for cutting the peppers that are in quite a few recipes

2. Cut open all the packages and have them ready to go

3. Don't just throw things in until the recipe actually says to (learned that one again yesterday!)

Overall I think they are kind of fun and if you aren't totally broke a good way to get some fresh meals with less effort. (PS didn't get anything free for talking about this..)

Also! The kids made this for the kittens out of the boxes. The kittens love it.

Sewing Key Chains & Movies

I just recently remembered that I could watch DVD's on my laptop. This is great since I have been sewing at the kitchen table (really it's just the kitchen sewing table at this point). Scott and Trevor are usually playing some video game or he's watching baseball soon to be football.

I went through my movie cabinet and pulled out a few movies to watch. Then one day when I was at the thrift store I picked up a bunch of chick flicks at $1.50 each to watch. I even found a couple of my favorites.

Hope Floats-when the girls dad drives off! Gets me every time. Pass the tissue!

Fried Green Tomatoes-This will always be one of my favorite movies

In Her Shoes-I forgot what a great movie this one is. I almost want to watch it again already.

He's Just Not That Into You- eh. I think I'll resell or donate this one, kind of makes me angry when I watch it haha.

Pretty In Pink. The 80's classic that we all loved. But WHY!?! Why did we think this was a good movie. I just watched it the other day and I cannot figure out what was so great about it. The only thing that was good was Annie Potts and "Ducky". Also this is the only movie that skipped a little.

Legally Blonde 2. Stupid.

The Holiday-Another good one

Someone Like You-I already forgot what it was about and I just watched it.. 

So I have been through all those. I went back to watching You Tube videos of pickers/thrifters/resellers. 

After I did the Dutch Hollow event I had to go through and reorganize my stuff a bit and clean off the dust (that reminds me I still have 2 more boards of mug cozies to clean up).  I went through my keychains and cut off all the ones that haven't sold in a long time. 

This weekend I worked on making some new ones. A lot of these I had already started. I emptied out my black/brown/gray bag of scraps I had cut. The good thing about these is if they don't sell eventually I can just cut them apart and I'm only really out my time since they are all just scraps. We'll see how they do!

Still debating on what I'm going to work on next! Do you have a favorite chick flick? I still need to find The Joy Luck Club on DVD. I have it on VHS. That's another one of my favorites.

knock knock is this thing on

I've done about 1000 things since I last posted here. So far behind! Work is so incredibly boring and when I get home I have a ton of stuff I want to do (and not do that I have to do-dishes yuck) and things to work on.

I've been doing a lot of sewing for all the craft shows I have coming up. I just had my first one weekend before last at Dutch Hollow Farms.

Of  course that ended up being the day that the weather was like I AM STILL SUMMER. The forecast was for 100 degrees and when I got in my car at the end of the day it said 106 so it was somewhere in that area.

Except for the anticipation of the heat (have I mentioned that I can't handle the heat? Pretty sure I have) I was excited to go to this new event with different organizers than the ones I usually do.

This is the first time for my new canopy since my other one got bent at the top of one of the legs (camping). I still want to try and get a replacement part for that if I can and then I'll have 2 if needed. This one is a little bit easier to put up than my old one and has gray legs.

My morning started with my alarm NOT going off, since duh it was on weekend mode. Bad Julie. So I was up an hour after the time I had originally wanted to wake up (which really was only like 1/2 an hour since I always give myself several smacks of the snooze button to wake up). I had already loaded the car so I just needed to get myself ready. Good thing!

I packed a little ice chest with 10 bottles of water. I had put them in the freezer and some had froze all the way and some had not, which worked out fine.

Do you see that stuff on the ground? It's almond hulls. Which make it really difficult to drag a wagon with heavy stuff in it. It took me 3 trips from the car to get all my stuff there and on the last trip someone had drove their car right in to unload. DOH! I wish I would have known I could do that. 

The event started at 10 and I was just about all set up by that time. It was REALLY busy so I didn't even get to take pictures of my booth until a few hours later. I probably could have used a helper. This set up works really well for when I have people on both sides of me. It allows a few people to walk into the booth at the same time. 

I sold a lot of the little zip bags that I call sunglasses cases. They just have a little bit of padding in them, personally I use a couple in my purse for all that little stuff that floats around.  I had went through all my character fabrics and made up a bunch.

I hardly have any wine totes left. I know I have some cut out already to sew up, I should do that. I sold that Patriots one at the end of the day to the booth next to me.

I was drinking water all day and at about noon I knew I was starting to over heat. The event went til 3. I asked Jess if her boyfriend could maybe come help me pack up (Scott was with the other kids at my niece's birthday party). Daniel was super nice and came and helped me pack everything up and load the car. What a relief to not have to do that by myself. I ended up drinking ALL the water I brought. 

All in all it was a very successful event and I did well! I'll sign up to do it again next year if they have it. Hopefully that's the last of our super hot days. What's funny is it was in the 70's the next day.

My next event is the Lodi Street Fair on October 5th. Hopefully this one will NOT be windy. If it is I think it will be my last time doing it.