ro-ad trip.

We’re getting really excited for our road trip! Here’s where we’ll visit:

We leave home for Livingston Montana, to stay at Trail Creek Camp for a night in a little shack :D

Then we’re off to Cody, Wyoming for a few days to spend time at Yellowstone National Park. Cody was the closest place with decent accommodations that were actually available. We’re staying at Pahaska Teepee.

After we have our fill of the great outdoors, we’re heading to Boulder to visit this animal:

and we’re staying at a Day’s Inn, for the “best value under the sun” ooooh ahhh… right??

Then we are leaving our Party Animal Adam, to visit the newlyweds, wait, they just celebrated their 2nd anniversary (today) so I guess they’re not newleyweds anymore… Andrew & Amy, in Salida, CO!

We’ll be staying at the Woodland Motel, where Kris is excited to get to use his Minister Discount. He told them he’d bring his credentials, but the people on the phone assured him that it was no problem because he sounded like a minister. HAHAHA!

Then we’ll be traveling through scenic Utah, possibly stopping at Arches National Park

but if its too hot, and time is a crunch, we’ll just enjoy the scenery from the car

Then onward toward Idaho, where we’ll stay in Twin Falls Ogden Utah for the night

Darren advised us that we’d get rabies if we stuck with our reservations at the ‘Americas Best Value Inn’. So now I’m bookin the Comfort Suites in Ogden.

After a good night’s sleep we’re on the road again homeward.

I’ll take lots of pictures :) These are all from the internet.

Dear Game Crazy

Dearest game crazy,
YOU GUYS ROCK!  Seriously.  I should know that already because we got my Wii from you in the first place.  Sure, you sell out of stuff just like the next guy, but YOU were the only one to be nice enough to offer to HOLD a Wii Fit for me when they came in.  AND you held up to your promises.  I’m still a little burned out from giving Best Buy a call on the release date to see if they had Fit in stock and driving the 15 minutes DURING WORK to get it, to find out it had been sold out for a few hours.  BOOOOOO!

I was searching high and low for Mario Kart this week as a Dad’s day gift and no one had it.  After going in and out of stores with not much more than a “tough cookies” type of attitude from sales people all over, failing at overpriced ebay auctions and finally giving up and getting my dad something different, YOU had Mario Kart (yet I’m sure other stores have it too now…) when I bought my Wii Fit today.  So I’m selfishly keeping said Mario Kart for myself for all the hard work and turmoil I’ve gone through in my searches.  sorry dad.

<3 miss.krissie

PS to those reading, if you’re looking for something high and low for the Wii, Game Crazy (part of Hollywood Video) can put you on a ‘wishlist’ and will call you when it comes in and hold it for you for the day.  So awesome.  Now to rearrange my living room to accommodate my new toys.

FINAL-ly Time

Its finals day for me. I had a busy weekend of … homework. I finished my color wheels, my color relationship tiles, and my final project.
KAPLOW! There’s a picture of my project before I did the cutting and gluing of the posterboard.

Click it for a better version, can you see the alphabet letters??

here is the final product, 2 halves of the alphabet in accordion style folded books. I got to use my Stampin up paper and stamps for the covers :)

Now I just have to go to class, help critique other projects and listen to my own, and do the ‘quiz’ as the teacher calls it… silly man, its a TEST!

Teriyaki Chicken Pizza

I had an uncooked Teriyaki marinated chicken boob (from the 3-boobed Costco Chickens) left in my fridge just calling my name: “Krissie, you need to cook me!” But we’d had the other 2 a few days prior with some pasta, so what do I do with that odd flavored chicken? I typed it into the Allrecipes.com search (that site is awesome), and KAPLOW, pizza!

With all the homework and final project preparations I have to do, I didn’t really want to make the dough, but I went to target to get the missing ingredients (cheese, sauce, pineapple) and they didn’t have any of those Boboli frisbees, so I drove home and pulled up my favorite pizza dough recipe and got the yeast in some hot water.

I made my do-re-mi in my fabulous KitchenAid mixer. I almost love that thing more than my laptop, almost. It slices, it dices, it juliennes! well not exactly, but I do have a slicer/shredder attachment that helps me out with cheese, and most recently with potato slices that I “fried” in margarine last week to eat with our crazy good Filet Mignon. (Am I making anyone hungry yet??)

So back to the pizza… I used a little alfredo sauce for the base, covered it in mozz cheese, scattered the cooked and chopped up Teriyaki Chicken boob, added pineapple (I buy the little snack cup version rather than the can, because its the perfect amount!), and carefully cut up some onion (I still have all my fingers!) and added that and a whole lot more mozz cheese. I tell ya, that’s the best pizza I think I’ve ever made. I probably say that a lot. Papa Murphy would be proud.

I got to have a second taste today, nothing beats cold pizza the next day, reheated is never good. Kris gets to use the rest of the alfredo sauce tonight with our spinach (cheese-filled) tortellinis! Woohoo! It’ll be a long night at school waiting to come home for that!

It Ain’t Easy Being Green

Phase 3 of my flower garden started a few weeks ago.  Phase 1 is winter hibernation, Phase 2 was Tulips that didn’t get picked by the little girls.  I told them I was sad last year when that happened.  Now Phase 3 are my Irises.  They’re so TALL and pretty purple.  The daisies have also begun to bloom.  Next will be the pansies and dahlias and late in the summer my tiger lilies.  The person before me definitely over planted, but its ok, I have some pretty stuff :)

This last weekend we went to Seattle for some fun.  Friday night we saw a comedy show at the Moore.  It was BJ Novak (the Temp from the Office… actually he was a boss and then went to jail too on the show most recently).  BJ was awesome, his openers sucked.  There were funny moments but really, I wasn’t too impressed.

Saturday we went to the M’s game and they won! it was a good game.  It was the first time I’d been to one with the roof closed.  It was raining and they decided to close it while we were there.

Then we walked 10 blocks to a sushi place that was really good (Nijo).  I only had a spicy tuna roll and a gyoza.  I ordered Kushiyaki Dinner, which was a plate of hot food that was really good.  I wasn’t really wanting much cold food (aka sushi) The Kushiyaki was beef, chicken and vegetable skewers with rice.  And the rice was seared at the bottom so it was nice and crunchy.

After eating, we went to see the Brazil vs. Canada Futbol game.  We had so much fun!  The game went so fast, and the fans around us were very cool.  We were rooting for Brazil.  My reasoning, because the only player I know and like, Ronaldihno (aka ronald the rhino) plays for them, though he had a hurt hammy so he wasn’t playing.

Sunday we were back at home, and I spent most of the day scouring through my butterfly photos that I took at the Science center on Mother’s day for my Alphabet final project for school.  I found a butterfly for each letter and sent them to  get printed.  I should get them soon so I can finish my project.  Its due next Tuesday!  I can’t believe school is almost over already!

After paying $50+ for my last tank of gas, I thought of looking up if I could take the bus to work or not.  I can.  But its 2 hours each way and it has a transfer.  4 hours of commuting out of my day is just not worth it to me.  Even if it would probably save me about $150-200 a month in gas money.  So much for wanting to be environmental :) I’ll just keep wishing for a hybrid in 2009 or 2010.

The Circus Came to Town.

Last night we went to Marymoor Park and saw Corteo. We had really good seats, though I’m not sure there were “bad” ones. We were centered to our side of the stage and not too close so that we’d have to crank our neck back to see things. We were sitting behind some tall people but such is life :)

Here are some of the things I saw that were my favorites:

This cute little girl/lady that floated around and let the audience gently push her around. She tiptoed across the audience saying cute things in her French accent.

Probably my favorite part was when they did the jumping on the bed scene. They were doing flips and all sorts of fun stuff. The ‘little boys’ seemed a little muscular for their ages though… :)

Here’s that little girl/lady again with an equal sized man. They did some crazy poses a bit like what she’s doing in this picture.

This was also cool. 4 men and 1 woman traveled around in these rings at the same time and sometimes did solo performances. All that spinning and wheeling around would make me so dizzy!

There was so many more amazing things about this show… jugglers throwing 20 clubs around, then changing to rings that looked like bubbles under the lighting. Women hanging from a chandelier by their necks. Human Trapeze artists (and by this, I mean they had no trapeze, they only used their arms to swing people around… of course they were human!)… Its only in town for a little bit longer. Go see it if you can. :)

Also, for Rachel, the 2nd half was shorter, and in my opinion, while there were amazing things that happened, I think the 1st half was more exciting.  There were a few acts in the 2nd half that I wasn’t too fond of, but enough good acts to balance it out.

Save It

I’ve sent out most of my Save the Date announcements at this point.  There’s still about a dozen I need to hand-deliver to family and a some without postage, so unless I don’t know you, its on its way soon!

Here’s how I made them in case you’re interested.

weekend warrior

This weekend we drove over to Pullman to watch our good friend “The Reverend” (beebs– he’s our wedding officiant) graduate at WSU. We were going to stay the whole weekend but we both decided that a day at home on Sunday was needed. My reasoning, because I had homework. My teacher loads us down with it. I’m not used to that. Our project was called the Stupid Cow project and I agreed. I wasn’t very happy while doing it. Its done now though.

Since I had my homework done and it was nice out, I decided to make my neighbors (the ones I don’t like) look bad by mowing the lawn. They never mow theirs… its pretty pathetic. I think its about 6 inches now. My Reel mower is a bit stiff and squeaky at the moment, it needs some WD40 or bearing grease or something, but it did the job. I mowed my other neighbors (the ones I don’t mind) lawn too since it was getting long, a bit too long for the reel mower too but I huffed and puffed through it. I got quite the workout! My arms are aching today. Those neighbors always mow my part of the lawn so I figured its the least I could do. I also finally got the weed eater out and cleaned up the edges of things a bit. I had to dismantle that and get the line to come out right so it would actually work though.

A couple months ago I planted grass in my side yard that was pretty much barren. its slowly growing in in patchy areas. The snow (twice) didn’t help, so I’ll have to reseed that and cross my fingers that it grows in.

I found out the other day that the Avril Lavigne concert I was going to has been canceled since she’s got laryngitis. Sucks almost as much as when I had to sell Fiona Apple tickets because no one wanted to go with me. That was a long time ago. Hopefully she’ll reschedule late summer/early fall or something.

I’m having my first Stampin Up workshop on May 18! I’m excited :) but I hope some more people show up than just my mom!! It’ll be fun, ladies, I promise.

reason number…

WOW. I went to lunch today to the Mongolian Grill in Woodyville… (so good.) and I was just SHOCKED at the mess these ladies were letting their kids make in the restaurant. Its not like its chuck-e-cheese, but they sure made it look like it. There were noodles, ice, rice, chopsticks, car keys, toys, cups… you name it, it was on the ground.

This picture doesn’t even show it all but I didn’t want to be SO obvious that I was taking a picture. They were letting their kids run around like animals and they almost knocked my little table over while I was eating. I gave one of the moms dirty look and they kept their kretons away from me after that.
I have MANY reasons (so many that I’m sure I’m in the millions) not to have kids. First and foremost, that if you can’t handle kids, you shouldn’t be a mom. And I can’t handle them. This reason for today would be that I don’t want my house to look like the floor that this restaurant looked like. I felt bad for the people who work there. Those ladies had absolutely no control over their kids and they were barely even paying attention to them. If they really wanted a girls day out, they should have gotten babysitters.  Maybe their secret to keeping their house clean is to go to restaurants when they need to feed their kids.  I’ve never seen such bad parenting and horrible behavior from kids, though I’m sure it happens everyday.

killer onion

I made pizza last night… hawaiian. Canadian bacon, pineapple, bacon and onion.

While cutting the onion though, with a steak knife (its a ginsu, its sharp enough…), the skin on the onion slipped and I cut my finger really badly. I actually got light headed while Kris cleaned it up to bandage me. It was a deep cut and though I made some pretty KoolAidish looking water while I ran my finger immediately under the faucet, he says I was light headed from the sight of it, not blood loss. It was bleeding a lot though and I’m not sure how you know if you need stitches or not but I think that’s when the bleeding doesn’t stop, and we managed to make it stop. I should have used a chef’s knife instead.

Also, here’s the recipe for the pizza dough I’ve made a few times now, its awesome. But the cooking temp is wrong. It should be 425, not 350. I cook on a pizza stone in a gas oven, so maybe that makes a difference but the first time I made it, it was not done after 20 minutes at 350. It WAS after 20 at 425 last night though :) Oh yeah, also, it says to use bread flour. That’s important, don’t use normal flour or it won’t turn out. I mix it in my kitchenaid and it comes out perfect.  After it rises it is a little sticky so you have to flour your hands when you take it out and again when you spread it on the pan/stone.