fri-yay! was National Pizza Party Day!

It's Fri-yay!  And this certain Friday happens to be a special Friday!  Because it's National Pizza Party Day!  I planned a small little pizza party shindig at my work.  I, even, sent an email invitation (and I learned that one of my coworkers hate calendar items emails).

Everyone brought different items and we made the pizzas right at work.

We all have different lunches, so it was nice to have some hot fresh, made to order pizza.

Did you celebrate National Pizza Party day?

writers workshop: spring flowers

I won a President's Award

This is the dog.

Mother's Day

Mother's Day was pretty low key and I am okay with that. 

In fact, my breakfast was dinner on Monday night.

We went to my moms for dinner.  We had tacos and fajitas. 

My mom wanted a Home Depot gift card, so mom got a Home Depot Gift Card.

I got a Dutch Oven.

I might go get myself some cheap flowers though. :)

roller derbies: kcrw rink of fire

We're Number Four!

But I'm okay with that because I love the WFTDA!

Finishing Vacation Plans

I was finally able to finish our vacation plans for when we leave Yellowstone.  It's been a big blank on the slate for a while now.  I figured less than two weeks out that I should probably get it done.


Once we leave Yellowstone, we will head south to Rawlins. 


In Rawlins, they have a small museum called the Carbon County Museum.  It contains some interesting artifacts.  Like shoes made from a man.  The story is interesting.  Also, it's free.

I like visiting historical prisons.  They are fun and so much history involved with them.  We will visit the Wyoming Territorial Prison located in Laramie.

There are actually two historical prisons fairly close to one another.  There is also the Wyoming Frontier Prison.  The cost difference to enter one vs the other is how I made my decision.  One would cost my family $39 to enter and the other would cost $10.  Pretty easy decision there.  The other one does look awesome though and I think one of them was on Ghost Adventures at some time or another.  I can't remember which one though.




That night, we will stay in Cheyenne.




From Cheyenne, we head back to the great state of Kansas.  There are a lot of unique and cray natural features in Kansas and we will stop at a few of them.  We will stay one night in Hays, Kansas.  Super exciting stop over, right?


Kansas Things we are going to hit up: 
Monument Rocks
Castle Rock
The Bison Statue
The Sunflower Painting
Mushroom Rock State Park
Coronado Heights Castle
Jeffcoat Studio Museum


All of the Kansas things are free!  That's a big plus, especially at the end of a long vacation.


Now, I need to finish up some school work so I don't have to worry about it while on my vacation.

writers workshop: homecooked for the win

I'm not going to lie.  I have a lot of homemade comfort foods. 


One of my go-to favorites is Spaghetti.


I have to use a certain kind of spaghetti sauce: Cascones.  It has the perfect blend of spices and sauciness for me.  I'm a garlic person and this sauce has the perfect garlic amount.


To make the meat sauce, I use both Italian sausage and ground beef.  I put in equal parts of both and brown it all together.  Again, gets the right blend of things...this time meats.


I use angel hair pasta, just because I like it.


After it's all done, I use the Kraft Italian Blend Cheese to top it off. 


We usually have a small Caesar salad and garlic bread with it.

My cheap go to favorite is:  Polish Kielbasa and Macaroni and Cheese.  This meal cost under $10 and feeds everyone.  Target had Mac and Cheese on sale for 66 cents and the Polish Kielbasa for $3.47, so technically it was an under $5.00 meal this week.  I do add some extra cheese to the Mac and Cheese to make it extra creamy, but I almost always have cheese on hand.  This week, I used the Italian Blend.  It was the right choice.

Pizza is always a comfort food.  Especially homemade pizza.  I cannot wait to cook it over a campfire on vacation. 

My last favorite comfort food would be my enchiladas.  Everyone has their own way of making them.  Myself included.  I like both the white sauce and the red sauce and I totally combine them to make a super enchilada that the kids love and I love.  Here's my recipe if you want to be brave and makes some:

First off, you have to use chicken with the white sauce.  Beef or pork is just too weird with it.

I cook my chicken first.  I usually boil it in a medium pan of water.  Just enough water to get the chicken tender and white.  I take the chicken out and shred it.  I empty a majority of the water out, only leaving about half a cup.  Sometime I add a chicken bouillon cube.  I add one package of cream cheese and add the chicken back in.  I put in a handful of Mexican blend cheese, a few spoonfuls of sour cream and mix all the gloriousness together.  This is what I put inside the tortilla.  Once I get those all in the pan, I pour a can of the red enchilada sauce on top and cover it with more cheese.  I bake it until it's beautiful and golden.  I usually serve this with some chips and sauce.  We sometimes make an avocado dip.

What are you favorite comfort foods?



Linking up with Mama Kat's Writers Workshop.  You should go take a look.

roller derbies: coed draft night

On May 5th, we had our draft party for the coed teams.  The Usual Suspects gained six new players.  That's a lot.  We lost a lot because people wanted to take time off from roller derbies for the summer.  Slam and I put a little table together for our new draftees.  Since it was Cinco de Mayo, we had to have tacos.  Slam fixed up some super yummy shredded chicken and brought some tortillas. 

I grabbed the fun stuff and the hard orange soda and some regular orange soda because we do have some minors and I will not get in trouble for that.

We ended up sharing with everyone that was there and the new peeps were super happy with what we gave them.  It was a fun night.

Field Trip: Ernie Miller Park

I passed my background check.  Yes, you now have to pass background checks to go on Field Trips with your children.  Which is all fine and dandy.  My Girl Scout background check took a total of five minutes to come back to me, I was pretty boring.  I do know of a couple of parents who haven't passed the Girl Scout background check.  One because she had a sex offender living with her (so she was 86ed from volunteering) and the other one had a felony.  Her felony was littering in a river during a float trip.  Missouri is serious about their rivers.  She was able to volunteer but they had to keep an eye on her and make sure she didn't litter again.

Anyway, I went on a field trip with Peyton on Monday.  I had the day off because it was Truman Day!  As long as I work for the State of Missouri I will have that day off.  It's written in the State Constitution. 

We went to Ernie Miller Park.  They put on a pretty awesome ecology program for the children.  During our scavenger hunt part, I found deer poop and a huge garter snake.  Those things smell so bad.

We visited a couple of ponds.  Abundant with amphibians.  Which is a good sign!  You know why, right?

This was a fourteen year old tree.  We counted the rings.

The creek was a little polluted.  We have had some big rain storms and it washes everything that is unwanted into the creek.

The kids had fun.  I shared my lunch with about 12 other kids.  I always bring extra because, honestly, what the school provides for the kiddos suck.  It was a ham sandwich, carrots and applesauce.  That is not enough for a bunch of fifth graders.  My son shared his lunch also.

Bat Houses

To finish up our Woodworker Badge, the girls made Bat Houses!  The girls are working on their Silver Award and this is one of their beginning steps.  There are a lot more to go, they are making decent progress though.

The girls have met their prerequisites for the Silver Award:  they are in seventh grade, they are registered Cadette Girl Scouts and they have completed a Cadette Journey.

The first step to the Silver Award is to identify a problem they are passionate about.  The girls are passionate about animals in our area.  Alli likes bats. Abbi likes bats. We have bats everywhere.  Bats are important.  They are pollinators and seed dispersers.  They eat pesky bugs (I.e. Mosquitos) and they are very important in the cave ecosystem. 

Bats carry lots of myths about them.  Like the carry rabies.  Only .5 of 1% of bats have rabies.  That's a super small percentage.  People are scared of bats because of this.  Also, that they are vampires.  They have powers to transform themselves into human form and drink blood.  Bats are not blind, they just can't see color.  They also won't fly in your hair and get caught.  They can detect and avoid things as small as a piece of hair. 



Base of the Bat House

The second step is to build a team.  Alli and Abbi are on this team.  They verified the other night that two of the other girls will also be on the team.  Two of the girls in the troop have decided to break off and do their own project.  Something to help students that fidget in class.  I have no idea.  They were trying to explain it and I was lost.

Using the caulking gun to seal all the holes.  Bats like warm and safe and dry places.

The third step is to explore the community.  The girls have looked around and discovered there are not very many bat houses in the area.  The girls would like the houses to go into an area where the bats will have a safe place to live.  The girls would like to have a conservation program where they make a presentation and then give the bat houses to the area that lets them hang them.  We are still working on finding a place.  We had originally wanted them placed in the Girl Scout camp but that was quickly shot down by council.  It is what it is.



Step four: Pick a project.....I was ahead of myself and described it above.  They have also moved on to Step five to develop the project and step six is to create a plan of action and put it in motion.

Screwing in the slats.

Filling all the holes.

Putting in the mesh.  The purpose of the mesh is to help the bats cling and climb up into the house.

Scissor safety!

Using the vise grips to make sure the wood is secure before screwing it in.

Expert woodworker already.

Finished Bat Houses!

The meeting before the Bat Houses, we went to a local Home Depot and did a scavenger hunt.  Alli and Abbi made up this scavenger hunt.  I didn't save it on the computer.  They had to find all the tools that are described in the badge.  They had to compare hard and soft woods.  They had to find levels and price them.  They also had to make sure the shelving was level at the Home Depot.  It was pretty even.

The Girls are meeting soon to apply for a $100 grant to build more bat houses.  We are making them do all the paper work and the proposal for the project.  The $100 will go a long way in creating the bat houses and putting a program together.

roller derbies: fountain city championship game

We're Number Two....but it was one hell of a game.