Happy Friday!

 Hi everyone!  Happy Friday!  Long time, no blog.  I've been lingering around, reading blogs, commenting on a few, but the post writing energy was lacking.  I would start to write and then get distracted and not finish.  Today is a half-day for work!  The kids have their well visits this afternoon.  I enjoy half day Fridays.  

We've done a few fun things recently.

My mom, Alli and my two nieces went with me to Whiskers Cat Cafe.  I was so much fun.  It's $10 per person for around 50 minutes in the cafe and you get a drink.  The kittens are the ones up for adoption.  They have resident kitties.  I think one of them was as big as my Freddie boy.  One of my nieces is under the age of ten, so I just emailed to make sure it was okay if she went.  The owner thought she was perfectly polite and handled the kittens so well.  I noticed on their website that they are having a Paint and Drink night at the cafe a few times next month, I might want to check it out.  We went to Margarita's for Mexican food afterwards.  I think this is the second time I've eaten in a restaurant since all of this started.  It was odd, but I enjoyed the food so much!

I decided to try the whole pen pal thing again.  I flopped last time and I'm the worse.  So far, I've received two letters.  One I've written back already, the other one, I'm not sure how to respond.  But I will.  I've also sent a few off into postal mail land.  I have some literary postcards that I am going to send to a few people.  I'm having fun writing!

Peyton got his braces off!!  He wouldn't let me get a before and after pic though, because that's who he is as a person. :)

Alli's leg had started hurting her a weekend or two ago.  She though because she did a backflip and hadn't done one in a while.  Then, she felt a lump that hurt on Sunday. I made an appt with her drs office.  Her doctor was out, so we saw a Nurse Practitioner.  She felt Alli's leg and suspected a hernia.  They had us go over to a pediatric ER and see a certain doctor.  I didn't even know there was a Peds ER there.  We drove over there and walked right in.  From start to finish we were only there about 1.5 hours.  They didn't even check out temp there, probably because we already had a temp check sticker from the doctors office hospital.  They got her into a room and saw a doctor within 5 minutes.  The doctor suspected that it was actually a swollen lymph node.  The Peds Surgeon came in and looked at it and came to the same conclusion.  They did do an ultrasound to make sure it hadn't ruptured or if it was filled with pus.  Negative on both of those.  Thank goodness, it wasn't something serious.  We followed up with the Peds Surgeon earlier this week and it's mostly gone and he isn't concerned about it.  I have to tell you on the follow up, once we got in the room, the doctor was in there within 1 minute.  No jokes.    I have to give this hospital a 10/10 on their service and the doctors for their follow ups.  

I was re-elected to the Executive Leadership Team for the Kansas City Roller Warriors.  I am still in the same position.  I am over the Bout Productions (all the games we put on), Practice Committee and Facilities.  I enjoy it most of the time.  We had a meeting earlier this month to get a game plan going.  It was super productive and it was nice to see people in person!  I've been regularly attending Zoom meetings with league members on how to make roller derby more accessible to humans who want to play and humans who want to watch, as well as, community outreach.  My first plan of action is hosting a blood drive.  I have everything set up and it will be on October 13th.  The Red Cross rep told me they are short 4000 units of blood that week.  He said this is mainly because high school and colleges aren't hosting blood drives right now and that is where 25% of their donations come from.  I am waiting for the fliers from the Red Cross, then we are able to advertise and get people signed up.  This will be my first time donating blood.  I'm a little nervous, but I know it will be fine.  Once I have a practice committee in place, we will have the task of planning return to skills practices.  

Alli and I tried out a brand new coffee shop in our area.  I don't drink coffee, so I got a strawberry smoothie.  Alli got a vanilla latte and chorizo burrito.   It was all v good.   

Voter turn out was so poor in my county.  Only 40% of registered Democrats voted.  (41% of Republicans)  I did the mail in voting and checked on the website to make sure mine was counted.  It was received only two days after I mailed it.  

Tanner has been sending me pics from way over yonder.  He sent me some camels and a video of him playing golf in the desert.  I was like how do you find your golf balls and he said there are literally thousands out there.  I'm getting ready to send him another package and he requested Cheez-its and M&Ms.  I don't know if the M&Ms will survive the trip, but we will try.

NASA has a website, where it shows what the Hubble Telescope saw on your birthday.  Check out mine below.

My Facebook memories are showing fun times I had and I am missing those.  Ugh.  I want to travel.  I am going to have to cancel our California trip and I am super upset about it.

And here are just some pictures.