How to spend time without the family

Yesterday the family left for WV. I had no clue what to do with myself and was contemplating getting drunk and sleeping until work Saturday night until my friend, Lady T, called me. She invited me to come over for dinner and to hang out since I didn't have my family with me she would share hers. Now this sounded much better then the plans I came up with so off to Vermilion I went. And stayed. It was a great dinner, the kids cooked these awesome teriyaki pork chops and noodles and we made a salad and WOW was it good. Lady T and I stayed in the kitchen for a little while watching her hubby and friend install the new washer and dryer and stove that she had won. Yes you heard that right someone I actually know won something huge from a contest. Huge as in $10,000 in kitchen (and laundry) appliances! After all the excitement died down we settled in for a Star Trek Enterprise marathon. These are so my kind of people!

So anyway, it was way too foggy for me to go driving home at midnight last night so I stayed on Lady T's couch and drove home in the morning. That's where I am now, cleaning house and getting ready for the cable guy to get here so that we can get a new internet set-up and cable, which we haven't had in years. I can so see me not sleeping tonight... or the next night... or the next night.

5 days into school.... what to do now

I don't know.

Class schedule nailed down finally. Still working on the library schedule. Haven't even started on the scouts calendar, wonder if we have a board that needs decorating?

Why do I get myself into things like this? I love helping out, but really I keep forgetting to clean the house. Laundry is an issue too.

Weather's cold, were did the summer sun go? I think it liked FL too much and headed back south!

Suprise!

It's 4am right now. And guess what I woke up to??



A hot tub full of drunk people!! At 4am!!



I tell ya, my SIL never ceases to amaze me, Let's not even get started on the rest of those in the tub!

Home sweet home

We got in around 2am this morning. Straight to bed. In the am (actually I think it was after 12) we unloaded the van and cleaned up the house. It's amazing the amount of dust you get even when nobody is home.

I finally got to a Beta Sigma Phi meeting this year... granted it was in my house, but atleast I got to see everyone.

School starts Thursday (YAH!) More on that later.

Talk about a view.

Last night we went to the roof of the Aegean. It's only 5 stories up... with a little wobbly railing, and a straight drop down. But it was so beautiful to see the city at night from here.

I tried to write about this last night but my connection wasn't any good. So today I'm in the lobby and I'm watching the people as they check in and out of the condos. It's so fun, especially since we never have to check in and out ourselves since the in-laws check us in before we get here so they can get in and put stuff in the fridge and we just drop the keys on the counter when we leave... just need to remember to take the laundry key with us since that's not a renter thing, just the owners have individual laundry facilities here, otherwise it's the big laudry room on the 4th floor for everyone... at $1 per machine per load, I'd never have clean cloths!

Has it really been a week?

It's amazing that just last week we were on the road on the way here. Today started out ok, double red flag to start, but switched to single so the beach was fine, even if the waves were way to high to be in. We went out for dinner again. This time the Twisted Palm. We had the seafood dip (to die for, it was SO good) and oysters on the half shell. I haven't had raw oysters in years, so I decided to try one... Oyster on a cracker topped with cocktail sauce. It was really good. I think I'll order it tomorrow if we go out again. Followed with grilled talapia and coconut shrimp, good but I like what cousin A had better... steak! Then again the pizza Jman ordered looked good too. Oh I also had 2 Stress-inis... Absolut, Coconut Rum, pineapple and cranberry juice... very sweet but good. Topped the whole thing off with an excellent Key Lime pie.

Did I forget to mention the wedding...

There was a wedding on the beach a few days ago. Here's my favorite pic of it.

I love the sailboat (ship) in the background. I wonder if I should figure out who it was that was getting married and send them a copy.

NO SWIMMING!!

That's what we have today.

All that rain and stormy weather has made it a closed beach day!!

Life's a beach... and then it rains

Doesn't it just figure that it would rain during vacation. Last camping trip it rained, last vacation it rained. I know we need the rain but come on, it's like every since time we are down here we have 4 days of rain!!

So it did finally let up after we got back from lunch. Half the crew went to the pool and the other half went to the beach. Which left me all by my lonesom in the condo. (can you here the tears) I got quite a bit further in my book so I'm happy. I'm reading Wicked right now, well not right, right now since I left it at the condo and it's downpour rain so I'm not going back to get it. But you know what I mean.

At around 6 or so I go and get the swimsuit on and head to the pool. Everyone is there, talking, laughing, swimming. We are having a great time and the guys play chicken with the kids and jump in and have swimming contests. The highlight though was when Jman and his cousin decide to throw my BIL's fiance into the pool, chair and all. Wish I had the camera but with my luck, and the family luck, cameras and pools DON'T mix.

Rain again

Woke up early again today. This time from the storm outside. Not much thunder but lots of lightening and hard rain. Hard, vertical rain. Soaked the patio doors and everything out there.

It's finally starting to let up a little. The sun is coming out so we may actually have a good, if a litte wet, beach day.

Just to tell you about the pizza

It was great... a little salty but I'll get to that...

I got a small Pollo Bella which is 6 slices of roasted chicken, artichoke hearts, mushrooms and cheese with extra italian spices on the crust. It smelled so good my mouth was watering before I even took a bite. I have 3 more slices in the fridge for breakfast/lunch, just have to remember to brush off those spices... seems like they may have added salt to the mix, hence why it was a little salty, but if you don't eat the crust you'd never notice.

Waiting for dinner...

Today was spent talking and visiting everyone at the condo. We go to talk about the upcoming weddings. yes that is plural, it seems that Jman's aunt is getting remarried this winter and she and the BIL's finance were trading notes.
Once the rain stopped half the group headed to the the beach with the older kids going to the pool. The 3 oldest females actually had time to chat and catch up from last year's talk.
About 5 or so everyone decided they wanted to go out to dinner, we decided not to. Not that I mind, I'm not a fan of the Louisiana Lagniappe. It's not bad food, it's just I was raised on the real thing so anything less is just not going to cut it.
So we decided to order pizza from Merlin's Pizza down here. I ordered the Pollo Bella pizza and everyone else is getting a pepperoni... they just can't seem to try new things, I just don't get it. Atleast I got them to not order from Papa Johns or Marcos.
More on the food in a later post.

Early morning wake up call?

Why is it that I keep getting up at 6am?? I'm up before the sun or the beach chairs and umbrellas. This never happens at home when we have school or something like that... no it's when we're on vacation and I can actually sleep in if I wanted to.

Oh well... up, showered, fed, and ready for the beach. J man's playing tennis in about an hour, the kids are either going with him or to the beach with me. Should turn into a fairly uneventful day.

Sleeping with the surf

Just to let you know... I opened the patio doors last night and we slept to the sounds of the surf. It made the condo smell better too!

I think he's really asleep

Wow!! I thought he was just pretending to sleep. He's not. Now he's farting, YUCK!!

Wonder if there's space in the kids beds... it's going to stink in here.

Edited for content: Aug. 19

Sun, surf, and tv

You'd think that we would spent the day and night at the beach or pool but no. We are currently watching the Olympics on the tv. It's been on the tv for most of the day too. Yes we were at the beach and we did our nightly pool swim until it started to rain anyway. Then it's back to the condo, visit some more and now we are back at our place and watching the swim team getting metals.

It's funny, the kids bug you all year to go to FL to swim in the ocean and what do they do when we get here? Complain about the sand and the jellyfish. Pick fights with each other (there's 6 under 13) and gerenally make themselves miserable. Oh and even though there are at least 2 t.v.s in each condo they complain that the show they want isn't on the t.v. they want to use. Oh well, I'm chalking it up to the fact that the 4 older ones are all to close in age (9, 11, 11, 12) and the younger ones are only a year apart.

But I just have to say... my younger neice can SWIM. She's diving off the boards at home and gererally looking like a little fish in the water.

Beach day

Can I just say that I love hearing the waves when I go to sleep at night? I may not love all the sand in places that mother nature never intended but the waves... now there is something I can deal with at little sand for.

Ocean Breezes

Well we made it to FL in record time... about 16 hours!

I'm sitting on the patio as I type, listening to the waves crash and watching the sun come up (it's 6am here)

I can see the fishing boats getting ready to leave for the deep sea fishing soon. The lifeguards are setting up the umbrellas and chairs.

I know I had stated that I didn't want to come down this year... but I was wrong... this really is a wonderful place.

White sand, clear water, great family (ya I lucked out, I LOVE my inlaws)


View from the condo. I'm going to have to find my camera (hope I didn't leave it at the house) for a better pic of the beach.

More later.

Training dayz are gone again

Well I think I'm finally rested from all the training. Tuesday was fun, I learned some new t-shirt designs and did some more cooking. The evening course left a LOT to be desired, but I'm not sure it that was due to the material, the trainers, of the fact that it was training number 6 and I was really tired.
Yesterday was fun. I got to make a charcoal stove and a vagabon stove and a few charcoal starters. Then went to a SU training meeting... I started out not happy about it... then asked lots of questions and got some great ideas... Not thinking about it I think it was really good that I went and will hopefully be able to take the info back to the SU.
Then I got the kids and went home. Then to Timberlane for more training,, this time the Observatory. IT's STILL not installed, we've had to much rain. I find that strange since, ya it's rained but all the grass is brown around here. Anyway, it was cloudy and raining and we really didn't do much other then talk about what we will be able to do with the girls once we get certified on the equipment (we aren't certified now) and how it will be great eventually. We did get to see the moon (same magnatude that I get with my telescope) and we looked a Saturn for a few minutes until the clouds covered it (I didn't get a good look since my eyes need to adjust and there wasn't time for that) Oh well. Hopefully we get a real training on it soon.

Home again. Time to get packing. ETL is 8 hours.

Day one of training done

WOW!! That's all I can say about the camp that the training is at this year. WOW!!

As for the trainings...
I started with a hands on outdoor baking... Let me tell you that I finally feel comfortable about using a dutch oven for cooking at camp. And I now know how to get a box oven make correctly so that it will work (they tell me that I will be making one in another training later this week). We made a Lasanga in the dutch oven and a cheesecake in the box oven. As well as a cobbler and a dump cake. I had NO room for lunch!

Next on the adgenda was Silver training... Boy did I have a LOT of questions. Most got answered which is great and the trainers were wonderful with handling them all. They almost topped the trainers from the baking class!

Last on the day was the Journeys Roundtables. Not a lot to tell there, we talked about the new books and had the whole question and answer session. It actually ended early so I got home before 10pm which was nice.