Camping

3-2-1 Cake Mix and Cake

This weekend was special. It is our annual Trails for Kids fundraiser. If you have been here anytime at all… you know that usually, we have this ride in April. Also… this year has been “interesting” (to say the least!) so we had to postpone until this past weekend. All summer long we wondered if it would even happen. I mean seriously…

But the time came and it did, in fact, happen! I can’t give away any of the details on the ride just yet but know, it was a MAJOR success! That would be an understatement!

On Friday night of our fundraiser, we have a bake sale. A few years ago I had a chocolate chip cookie in a cast-iron skillet go for $130. Well, this year I had something go for more than that… but that’s another story for another time :). Yup, I’m mean.

Today I want to share a recipe I’ve shared before… BUT… the cool thing is this is perfect for camping. And since this fundraiser involves camping, what better time to share, am I right?

3-2-1 Cake Mix & Cake

Ingredients for Cake Mix Setup:

  • A box of Angel Food Cake mix
  • A box of your favorite flavor of cake (chocolate, funfetti, lemon, you name it!)
  • A ziplock bag

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Funfetti Birthday Cake

Last week I described the cake on the left of the above picture. If you need a reminder, that’s a Chocolate Dulce de Leche cake. Yum! It really was an exceptional cake and I was extremely pleased with how it turned out. Although… maybe the bright birthday candles on it look weird… who knows.

Right now I’m sitting here watching recorded shows of Best Baker America. Their challenge was a mind-bending cake with Vanilla being present. Looking at my cakes above… I fail. Oh well! haha.

But today, let’s focus on that Funfetti cake on the right. And wow, there’s a lot of thoughts covered above in just a short period of time. haha… some days that’s how my mind goes. My husband jokes that I am the queen of Random! (more…)

Reasons Why I Don’t Drink

I’ve stared at this computer screen for over a day now trying to decide just how to word this. I think maybe that title should be reasons why I tend not to drink because I have drank. Every so often I may even have the occasional one, but not very often. In fact, the last one I remember was a year ago in Cozumel. Oh, wait, last fall I had a horrible cold and did a couple shots of whiskey to try and kill my cough. It worked.

Yes, I’ve been drunk, once. It was awful. Bad enough I swore I’d never do it again. I spent the whole night sitting in the hallway with a friend taking turns crawling to the bathroom to go pee. Then we thought it would be a good idea to walk around town. It is a small town, but still… Not our brightest move. The next day I had a hangover and swore I’d never do that again. So far, I haven’t. I was 25.

On my 21st birthday, I was the sober driver. I got everyone else drunk. I choose to be the DD (and not the designated drunk.. haha) so that if something happens, we have a way to get wherever, including a hospital if need be. (more…)

Memorial Day Weekend 2017

Memorial Day Weekend was spent at Beaver Lake. The night before we left to go down there, Deb and Grady said they were having difficulty getting all the trailers down so we volunteered to pull the dive trailer down for them. When we got to the lake, I had to giggle at the “big” truck pulling the little trailer. It’s a bathroom cleaner thing for campers but that sight just made me giggle so hard.

These 3 are back together again. Wow, did they make quite the team… they are the next round of shenanigan makers!

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Horse ‘n Around on Halloween

After we went to the Trunk or Treat at the hospital, Abug and I met up with hubby and Jared and went down to our campground where we ride horses. They were having a Halloween shindig called Horse ‘n Around on Halloween (I think that’s what it was called anyway… lol). There was also a Costume contest and a Chili Feed. Jody brought JP down with her and we dressed the girls up, but we didn’t get any pictures of them in the costume parade. We then took them back, dressed them back in regular clothing and went for the Chili Feed.

Normally I don’t like chili but they made some without beans so I tried it. I must say, it was good. Part of the reason I “don’t like chili” is I ate a lot of it as a kid. I kind of burned out on it. That and we made it so spicy that one bite and your lips were ON FIRE. This was mild and really hit the spot!

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Ride for Life 2016

Last weekend was a busy weekend! Hubby, Abug, and I were able to participate once again in the Ride for Life to benefit St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. With the sale of our house, it was kind of iffy leading up to the week if we’d be able to go or not. It depended a lot on if we got moved, etc. We were mostly moved (minus the garage, we did that this week) so we decided to take a weekend off from life and go to the ride!

Jared had his camper down there so we had a place to sleep, they took a horse for Abug and me to ride (why we didn’t take one of ours, who knows, maybe that last minute decision of actually going), and away we went.  Earlier in the week we discussed what we were going to eat Friday and Saturday night. I mentioned Chicken and Noodles for Friday night. Deb said if we had that, we needed mashed potatoes. So the idea was born.

Thursday night I made up 4 batches of homemade noodles, then woke up Friday morning and my little helper and I went to work making Chicken and Noodles, Mashed Potatoes, and 2 pans of Biscuits. One pan was for us to eat Saturday morning, which oddly enough we wound up eating Friday night with dinner and the second pan was for the baked sale auction Friday night.

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Memorial Weekend 2016

I’ll apologize now. This will be photo heavy but I’m just going to do Memorial Weekend in one post and get it done. So Be Warned! 🙂

Our Memorial Weekend really started Thursday night. Tbug had a softball game… yes, she’s playing softball now. So we went over to her game and then she just came home with us because we planned on going to the lake. I have no idea if they won or lost or even kept score… But I can tell you that Tbug went around all the bases and made it home as if they were scoring a point. She even slid in to home instead of doing a summersault like she did earlier in the season. I guess you can take the girl out of cheer but you can’t take cheer out of the girl.

After the game we went to Jared and Karen’s house to borrow Karen’s truck (again, she needs that jalopy) and their camper. There was a tire that was starting to go bad so the guys decided to change it. We made it about 5-10 miles from their house and the tire blew. So I called Jared and asked him to come rescue us. I might also mention this was close to 10 or 11 at night.

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Trails for Kids 2016

{WARNING: Picture Overload… again…}

So what we were up to this last weekend? Well it involved friends, camping, and horses. What more could you ask for? Hubby took Thursday off and he and Jared worked on moving horses, trailers, stuff down to Underwood’s Crag O’Lea in Pineville, MO, for the weekends adventures. I met Karen after I got out of school and picked up Abug and she got off work, then we headed down.

The evenings meal consisted of Steak and potatoes. A good kind of hearty meal :).

Then our friends Tony & Stephanie couldn’t get power to their camper, so the men went to work trying to rewire the box and figure out why. And just like that (you know like 20 minutes later, not bad) they had power. Woot woot! Nothing like rewiring by flashlight. Tony had a flashlight on his head and every time he’d look away hubby would grumble at him because he took the light.

Then we wandered down to the tent. I guess I should tell you this weekend was Trails for Kids. It is to raise money for the Tri-County CP Center.

Once we got to the tent, we checked out the lighting that hubby/Grady/Jared/Jason helped wire up. There was a dance floor so I turned on baby girls favorite song, “Girl Crush” and she and daddy danced. Then Jared tried to teach her how to break dance.

Friday morning our plans were breakfast and then to hit the trails. We had Bacon and Eggs and steak left over from Thursday night. They got out tortillas and cheese and made breakfast burritos. I knew Jared came into the camper looking for cheese but it wasn’t until my second burrito that I actually found the cheese. I made the comment I thought cheese would make it better, but it really didn’t. And if you look at the plate of bacon, a few pieces are burnt to a crisp… I had them on my second burrito. I wound up not eating the whole thing. The burnt bacon was not so yummy but the other bacon was excellent! We also had hubby’s candied jalapeños. YUM!

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Woolaroc Rendezvous

{warning: Picture heavy!!}

Since we’ve become friends with Karen and Jared, they’ve mentioned doing these rendezvous things. We really didn’t know what that was but told them we would be interested. So basically, you dress up pre-1840’s, you sleep in tents, and that’s kind of the gist.

A few weeks ago, maybe even a month or so now, Karen and Jared showed us this flier they got in the mail for the rendezvous that happened this past weekend. Karen rounded up some clothes for us to wear and we were in.

Friday Abug and I loaded up with Karen and Jared and left early morning. It’s known that I’m not a morning person, they said they were leaving around 9-10am and I was like really (imagine that really in a whiney voice). Yes, really and I was there, rearing and ready to go, Abug in tow. Hubby was coming down after he got off work and picked Tbug up.

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Sunny and 68

Saturday morning the weather was predicted to be in the upper 60’s. The upper 60’s in January, really? Holy cow yes! And was it ever awesome!?!?

Hubby, Grady, and Jared had plans to help Chuck start cleaning the campgrounds that we use for the trail riding events. If you remember the rains in December after Christmas… there was mud everywhere. The refrigerator and freezer were full of water. The hot water heater was busted (I think that’s what I heard). It did a lot of damage to the shower facilities. There was 36″ of water before it crested. So they decided since they had a free weekend, why not go down and start the cleanup process.

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