Angela and I had a four day weekend this weekend, but the REST of the family did not... Liz had said she was coming home for the weekend to do volunteer work. Well, she didn't make it home on Friday night and finally showed up on Saturday - only to announce she was just TIRED and didn't want to DO anything but sleep and rest over the little time she had at home. Well, being the sucker I am I said "sure" ... and off to bed she went to catch up on rest and enjoy her little time at home.
I on the other hand chose to get motivated and did some crock pot assembly this weekend. I did the recipes for 6 different dishes. I went to the store on Saturday morning and gathered all I would need to get it done. It was only $137 inclusive of meat which really surprised me as there was two different sections of beef and steaks in there... and they are NOT cheap!!
I did:
Quick Beef Stroganoff
Moroccan Chicken (looking forward to this one)
Honey Chipotle Chicken
Chicken Tortilla Soup
Beef and Broccoli
Fiesta Chicken with Rice and Beans
We have had the Chicken with Rice and Beans already and I'm not impressed... I don't know how to do rice in a soup without making it just too much rice and it taking over and making everything mushy apparently. it tasted good, just too mushy.
So - with 12 of these now assembled and ready to go I offered 1/2 to Liz - she took a few with her on the way back to school, however her freezer won't hold them all - so she will pick them up on occasion when coming home. Unless we eat them all first :)
Sunday we went to Sam's club. I swear that is my $200 store anymore. I did remember to get some items there too and split them up in the freezer (mostly cheese - we go through a lot of shredded cheese and I like having them in the freezer). Lizzie left for home while we went to Sams - when I got home she called to tell me she had JUST left and managed to lock her keys in her car at the gas station up the road. I chuckled and went to rescue her :)
Monday found me going with Mom and Dad to Columbus to check it out. They wanted to go to the National Civil War Museum there.
What I didn't know is I was in charge of figuring out where everything was but I didn't look anything up prior - we first started at the chamber of commerce
(http://www.columbusgachamber.com/history) It's a converted Train station and very pretty on the inside. The lady there was helpful and gave me the address for the Museum and the visitors center. YAY
What we didn't know was that the museum didn't open until noon - whoops!!! Even with my late start to the day it was still way too early and they were closed when we got there, so we headed to the river to see what we could see with the rapids and such. There were really NO good areas to park and see the rapids for Dad - drat it. We drove up and down the river front trying to find a good spot as well as drove over to the other side - no such luck.
As it was noon, it was time to eat and finding parking in the little narrow streets was hard, but I pulled over when I saw a spot and we debated what we would do for food, looked for things we knew, then decided to just go to the little coffee shop we were sitting right in front of - it was there, we were hungry so that's what we did. It was OK and filled the spot :)
From there, we looked at some nice old houses off of the river and then made our way to the museum.
The National Civil War Naval Museum (http://www.portcolumbus.org/) was a nice size little museum and had a wheel chairs for dad to use while there so we took our time and wandered around looking at the remnants of old civil war ships - one is the hull from an old iron side type boat - VERY big and quite impressive. It was the CSS Jackson and was 225 foot long and 54 foot wide. all that they have from it is the bottom of the hull - VERY large chunks of it - almost the complete thing - the only chunk missing is about 10' or 15' in the middle . They have a nice display that took me a minute to realize was the OUTLINE of the exterior of the ship as it would have been when in commission. (The gray scaffolding you see below)
It takes up the WHOLE room they had it displayed in. They are very shallow draft boats for sure!
what you can't see in the picture is where the name of the boat is would be the bump up for the wheel house and there was another 20' of smoke stack up there too! BIG.
Check out the exhibits in the link above - there are some good ones to include some HUGE flags on the walls as well as parts to one other boat and a few more mock ups of others.
We headed home from there. A nice drive home in the warm sunshine!
And not ONE picture that Mom or I took - even though we BOTH had cameras on us - we just didn't think to take a single picture - shame on us!!
Tuesday (today) is my LAST day off ... as well as Angela's last day. She chose to say home and sleep and bum around the house. I chose to get mom and head on out to the consignment store. I gathered all the excess Easter from upstairs (and honestly I didn't take everything I could, I was waffling on a few things). I ended up taking a box of Easter to sell as well as three bags of other things; one of girls clothing, one of odds and end lunch bags, thermos's that we don't use any longer as well as an older clock radio that has been phased out for a new variety and an old pen/pencil desktop organizer that was positively childish for my girls ages. All in all a good haul to take in and I came home with nothing but $$ from the last time I dropped stuff off :) BONUS!!
So - it was a staycation of sorts. I miss the days of travel hither and yonder to get stuff done at the little house... but with Butch not having the extra days that the kid and I had it was hard to get away.
