Playing With Our Food

Shane is working out of town again. Unlike last year when he spent months working in western Kansas, this time he's just 2-3 hours away in Springfield, MO.  Remember our trip in March when we spent some time at the Bass Pro Shop in Springfield?  They are expanding, and that is were he's working, during the night while the store is closed.  He's been told the job is only for this week.  Right.  The job last year in Kansas was only supposed to have lasted two weeks, and it stretched out to most of 9 months.  It's already looking like this job will run longer, too.  Even if it does, things will work out better than last year.  This time he's close enough to drive home on the weekends.

One night before he left, we had some delicious, but ugly, Star Wars pancakes.  Those pancake forms worked about as well as I expected them to, which was not well at all.

Yoda?

Darth Vader or a Christmas bell?

Better results on this Storm Trooper when I used the form as a cutter.

Luke, I am your bacon!

These were made with a new-to-me pancake recipe that we really liked.  I'll be posting it sometimes soon.

A Walk in the Park

We spent last Sunday afternoon Geocaching and trail hiking in a great park down the highway in Harrisonville, MO.  I had been in this park before, but I didn't realize how large -- and nice -- it is.

If you don't know about Geocaching, it's a fun activity involving a hand-held GPS unit.  On the Geocaching.com website, you can find geographic coordinates for "caches" that others have hidden.  You enter the coordinates into your GPS, then go seeking the caches.  Our GPS is an older, rather low-tech kind, which is perfect for Geocaching.  We can get just enough information to find a cache without being led right to it.  Geocaching can make a fun hike even more fun, but not all caches are hidden in the woods.  There are plenty to be found in urban areas, too.

Some caches contain little more than a roll of paper that serves as a sign-up sheet.  Kat likes a more traditional cache that contains small trinkets.  If you leave a trinket, you can take a different from the cache.

This is a fun activity for families or singles, regardless of where you live.

A dead tree (redbud, maybe) inside a live tree.

Gnarly old tree.

I think it's over there!

Not sure what she's holding up.

A girl and her walking stick.

Ah...here it is!

Looks like a coffee canister covered in camo.

Have a nice day!

A goofy monkey.  And a baboon, too.

We saw dozens, if not hundreds, of these.

Taking a break.

He was serious when he said he had a splitting headache.

Spring Break Kick-Off

Kat has spring break this week, and I mentioned last week that Shane is also off until some constructions job start up, so the whole gang will be home all this week.  We decided to "kick off the week off" by going to Springfield, Missouri, for the weekend.

We left early on Saturday, stopping at a discount grocery store and a small second-hand store in a town called Humansville on the way.  We are not preppers, but if any of you are, this particular discount grocery had lots of dehydrated foods in 5 gallon buckets and they seemed to be reasonably priced.  As for us, we only bought a couple of bags of pasta (fun shapes I don't normally find in the store) and a three pound bag of Sucanat.

Once we made it to Springfield, we spent several hours in one of the many large flea markets there.  The only thing I found for myself was a 3-yard piece of fabric in a seed packet print that I'll use to make a couple of aprons.  Kat found several things, both practical and whimsical.  Shane found nails...LOL!

After the flea market we went to visit my sister and brother-in-law for a couple of hours and went out for a Chinese buffet dinner before we headed to our hotel room.

Some of you may know of the AmericInn chain of hotels, mostly in the northern states.  This weekend, we stayed in th only AmericInn in Missouri, but Shane stayed many, many days in one while working in Garden City, KS, much of last year and accumulated many, many points toward room discounts.  When we went to Colorado last summer we stayed in one of their hotels and had all kinds of problems, but the location we stayed at this weekend is the nicest of the the four we've visited, and with the discount it only cost us $30 for the night. 

Kat loves the pool, and swam both Saturday night and Sunday morning.

We had to check out by 11:00, but it might really have been 10:00.  Hard to tell with the time change.  On a whim, we decided to stop by the Bass Pro Outdoor World.  We have a couple of Bass Pro Shops here in Kansas City, but they aren't as impressive as the original in Springfield.  Kat doesn't remember going there as a toddler, so she was very taken with the animals, both live and taxidermic. 

Live 'gator.

Three live turtles and one cardboard turtle.

Mother and child.

Live alligator gar.

I was taken with the huge fireplace, the outdoor cooking gear and some hillbilly novelties. 

I want this in my house.  The doors on that thing are 5 or so feet tall.

Redneck champagne flutes.

Because I have an adolescent sense of humor.

Looking at all that venison on the hoof makes a person hungry, so we met up with my sis and BIL again for lunch at America's Incredible Pizza Company.  Think Chuck E. Cheese on steroids.  Pizza buffet and games galore. Rest assured that this would not have been my first choice in eating establishments, but the games made Kat happy and the buffet made BIL happy, so we were all happy.  Besides, it was raining, so there wasn't a lot we could do outside.

By then it was 2:00 or 3:00 -- again, I'm not sure which -- and time for us to head home.  It was a quick ride, considering I can't seem to stay awake in a car anymore.  I slept half the way, read the other half, and we were home before I knew it.

It was a good weekend, starting off what I hope will be a good week, but it's going to be a madhouse around here.  I don't promise to post every day, but I do promise to try.

And now, before I leave...here's a family portrait...