An Adventure

We were supposed to be in Kentucky for a family reunion this weekend, but due to some circumstances I'd rather not discuss....we're here at home! I really miss my family this weekend, and I felt really bad for my kids, but we're where we need to be right now.

Since we are here and all of our friends thought we were out of town, we decided to lay low and pretend we weren't here. LOL It's kind of like having a vacation at home. Our phone hasn't rung one time! Wow! We did tell Neal's parents because they were going to take care of our animals, but other than that "we're not here!" (That's our saying for the weekend)

Yesterday morning we got up and took Suzi for a walk down the street....about a mile. Since none of our friends live on our street, we figured our secret was safe. ;o) When we got back to our driveway, we decided to walk next door and visit with Neal's parents. We haven't had any time with them lately and we thought a visit would be nice. We stayed there about an hour or so. Neal made plans to come back at noon to watch the Va Tech football game on their big screen TV. Then we made plans to go on an adventure after the game. We decided to walk the permimeter of the 70 acres we live on...check all the boundaries and spray paint markings on boundary trees. And since we were going to do all that, and we knew it would take a couple of hours, I invited Grandma and Grandpa back to our house afterward for homemade pizza.

With plans made, we went on back to the house for breakfast (or by this time we could have called it lunch). Neal went back to his parents house for the football game and I started making the crusts. Beth and I did a bit of housekeeping chores and then she went on over to watch the game. Ben was working on something in his room, but before long he headed on over to Grandma and Grandpa's.

By the time the game was over, my house was clean and I had three pizzas, and two dessert pizzas almost completed. I'd never made dessert pizzas before, but I thought I'd give it a try. I used regular pizza crusts and baked them for about 10 minutes. After they cooled I put the "sauce" on them. The dessert sauce consisted of a block of cream cheese, a can of fat free sweetened condensed milk, a drop of lemon juice and about a teaspoon of vanilla. (It tasted yummy, by the way) On one of the pizzas I put coconut, chopped pecans, mini chocolate chips, oreo crumbs, and little pieces of Andes mints. Next time I'll leave the mints off, but other than that it was delicious! My other pizza I just put pecan pieces and crushed pineapple. I would have put coconut if I'd had more, but I didn't. It was really good! I loved the pineapple flavor. Yummy! But I'm getting ahead of myself....

Neal came back in time to help me finish put the toppings on the pizzas and then we changed into long pants for our adventure into the jungle, er, uh, I mean woods. We took a few backpacks along with bug spray, spray paint, and water. (Mental note: be sure not to confuse the spray paint with the bug spray) My Mother in law thought things through a bit better and in addition to the things we packed she also packed a flash light and toilet paper (you just never know!).

We started out on our hike a little after 4:00. The terrain was very uneven...up and down hills, we crossed the creek(s) five different times (finding the best place to cross), we walked through an area that had mountain laurel all over it and we had to walk hunched over up hill through it, there were briars everywhere, we carried sticks to knock down spider webs that were in our path, we had to climb over fallen trees, oh, and did I mention we took our dog? She had a great time. When we came to the creeks she would splash around and lay down in it. The cool water must have felt good to her. We're not sure how far our hike was...measured in miles...but we're thinking around 3 miles. It ended up taking us 2 1/2 hours to complete it, and we didn't sit down one time! The only times we stopped were when we spray painted the spots on the trees.

I kept thinking "if I only had my camera this would make a great post on my blog!" ;o)

When we got back home, I turned on the oven and put the pizzas in, and then took a nice, long shower! Neal's parents came back over after they showered and changed and we enjoyed pizza and salad. It was all really good! After we ate, we cleaned up and then played "PIT." That is such a fun game. We finally got in bed around midnight....with aching muscles and smiles on our faces!