The Zoo. Or As my Godbaby Says: Da Jungle!

Hey y'all!

Ok, I know promised something fun with my hair, and I DID get something fun done to it... but I don't have any pictures.

I got some purple extensions, but they are buried in my super thick hair, so it's hard to get a photo of them. I love them, though, and when I go get my hair touched up in a few weeks, I'm definitely having them put closer to top of my hair. Haha. :)

Anyways.

Today was spent on our first camp field trip!

We went to the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens. I may be biased, but Jacksonville's zoo is the best zoo I've ever been to. And yes. I've been to San Diego. I was super NOT impressed with San Diego's zoo in fact. (Though I did love the Panda's and the Polar bears!)

But Jax's zoo is HUGE, with lots of different animals, and all of the animals have HUGE areas to roam around in. For being in captivity, they sure are living the life. (That was the worst thing about San Diego. They had a flippin elephant in a enclosed area about the size of my bedroom. It was so awful.)

Speaking of elephants. There was supposed to be one in this picture with me.... Photo taking fail, Baylee. Fail.

We had a lot of fun, and being a Thursday, it was pretty empty, so we were able to actually see the animals without fighting the crowds. (In Florida, it's usually pretty miserable to go to the zoo in 100 degree weather just to see the backs of people's heads...) I liked this lion, because we have the same idea of a good time. Laying in the sun. :)

For the summer, the zoo did this Dino Alive exhibit where there are animatronic dinosaurs. It cost $3.50, and would have been cool if I was under the age of 11. Since I was not, I felt it was a waste of money for me.. but the kiddos loved it a whole bunch, and I did come face to face with my favorite... a velociraptor! (A very green velociraptor!)

My favorite area of the Jax Zoo is the Jaguar enclosure. Jacksonville Zoo has had a huge Jaguar enclosure for as long as I can remember (but especially since we became the Jacksonville Jaguars!) and now they have built an entire area/South American part of the zoo around it. I love them so much. I took some pictures, but my kiddos are in it, so they don't get posted. :)

Bets of all, my kids were SUPER well-behaved today. Maybe it was because we had the group of the oldest, but regardless there was minimal whining, and no misbehaving. It was bliss. :)

We came back to camp, and proceeded to run around with the kids. Their favorite game was to lay across my stomach while I did sit ups saying "One Tubby Tubby. Two Tubby Tubby. " and so on. That is, when I wasn't spinning them in circles. By the way. Saying, "I can't spin you in a circle because I'm about to vomit," does NOT work on 8 and 10 year olds. They just say, and I quote, "That's ok."

Little twerps.

Then after my pt session with the kiddos, I went and ran three miles with Isabella! Haha. It's been a long, exhausting day, but it was one of the best I've had in a while!! Tomorrow is the camp 4th of July party, and I'm pretty excited. Baylee and I made a flag of red, white, and blue cupcakes. :) Stay tuned!

-Katy

Waterparks = Love

Um, hi. :)

Thanks for all the congrats on Shane and I being back together! It means a lot to me, and I know he reads the blog (I asked. :) ) so I'm sure he gets a kick out of it, too. Right now I'm just watching the seconds tick by (way too flippin' slowly!) until I can go visit him next month. :)

This weekend I went to Wild Adventures with my family and my friend Baylee. Baylee is the other counselor at the summer camp I work at, and we've become pretty fast friends. Wild Adventures is a theme/water park in Valdosta, Georgia, and we have season passes. It's only like a 45 minute drive from where we live in Florida, so it's not only closer, but cheaper than Disney. (Though Disney wins in quality! Every time.)

Baylee and I agree on one thing at WA. It's all about the waterpark!

So we spent all morning doing this:

I spent the morning going from this chair to the lazy river and back again. I sure do love waterparks. Baylee and I finally decided to ride a wateride, and we got all the way until we were the next people in line to get a float, and this happens....

They close the park for lightening. Murphy's Law, I tell ya. Baylee and I (and the rest of the fam) were huddled underneath an awning for shelter, looking like drowned rats.

Baby Bro took a different approach....

We were there to also see a concert that evening, (Casting Crowns, a Christian band) so we decided to go out to eat to give the weather a chance to clear. After doing a quick change in the truck (all while trying not to flash the old couple walking their dog....) in the Cracker Barrel parking lot, I did as much damage control as possible using a car door as a mirror.

Baylee decided she has more class, and actually went and did makeup in the bathroom. Show off.

After the concert, we stopped at a gas station, and I made some new friends...

I fell asleep in the car, and even though I was supposed to go to a party afterwards, I went straight to bed when we got home at midnight. I'm such a grandma. Oh well. My bed was comfy. :) No regrets.

The next day I met up with Izzy for a 3 miler, and I was super stoked, since I've been craving exercise like whoa. You know. Because I'm too lazy to get off my butt and go do it.

We were supposed to be running/jogging, but we had so much to catch up on (ahem. Like me telling her all the gushy details about Shane and I getting back together...) that we ended up only jogging like a quarter mile.

Oh well. We still walked (briskly!) 3 miles, and bonding with close friends trumps exercise guilt any day. :)
Other than that, just back to camp life. My kids were so cute today.

We were walking to the pool, and somebody (I think it was BabyBro) said I was old. I got super offended. I'm ONLY 24! So then they all started saying (which turned into shouting) "You're so pretty, and young, and skinny, and AWESOME!!" It was so sweet. Well at first. Then they were too busy shouting over each other, it was like they screaming it at me. Haha. But they definitely redeemed themselves for telling me I was old. Little buggers. :)

Tomorrow is my late day, and I have another hair appointment. (Cara, before you get onto me about too many, this one is special! :) So you'll have to read tomorrow!) I hope everyone has a great week! :)

-Katy

Good news, More good news, Regular news, and Lance Larsen.

Hey y'all!

First off, I want to apologize for the sheer amount of photos in this post. :) And not nearly all of them made the final cut.

I have a few things to tell y'all, so be prepared for lots of news!

First, and most importantly: Shane and I are back together!! For those of you have followed me from my previous blog, you know I was engaged, and for reasons I'm still not comfortable disclosing, we split up.

Well. THAT was a bad idea. I love him more than life, and I am so incredibly happy to be back with him. We aren't engaged again, but we will be someday. I love him so much, and it's hard to keep all the gushiness to myself. :)

Second, which is directly related to number one, I am moving to North Carolina. It's a temporary thing, until I start school next fall (like 2012), and Shane gets out of the military. I'm finishing up the summer here in Florida, due to my commitment to the summer camp, and away I go!

Third, I received my SAT scores!! I was soooo nervous. I did VERY well in Reading, and I'm ok with my essay score. But I'm not pleased with my Math score at all. (well. I'm pleased that I did that well having studied zero amount of time, and having been out of school for 8 years.... but still. I can do better.) SO I'll be taking that again. But now I'll be sure to study, and I know I'll be far more comfortable now knowing what to expect. :)

Now. On to the photos. Please excuse my greasy hair in all of them. Today was a pool day, and I saw no reason to wash my hair the night before getting into a swimming pool. The fact that it had been 4 days since I actually washed it is irrelevant.

My good friend Lance is a professional chef (and new blogger. Go. Check. Him. Out. He's pretty flippin hysterical.) and invited me to dinner last night. Of course I was hesitant. I mean, who wants to drive 45 minutes after a long day of corralling children to eat gourmet food?

Oh right. Anyone.

So after cajoling me into showing up at his house to do absolutely nothing but have deliciousness made for me, I changed clothes (nope, no shower for this girl. My friends are SO lucky.) and hopped on over, jamming to the new Rise Against cd the whole 45 minutes. Love. Them. So. Much.

Here are the rest of the players in the dinner party extravagance.
Mikey Fox. Seriously amazing dude. In the top 5 of best men ever on the face of the planet. Love him. So. much.

Laura Lee. Co-blogger with Lance. Super pretty mom.

Cool girl Jenn whom I actually don't really know, but liked anyways.

And Lance's mom and stepdad. Unpictured. Sorry.

Dinner started off with (sorry have to revert back to Facebook, since it's too educated and wordy for me to remember. Did I say I scored well on Reading?! 250 is pretty good, right?!) roasted red pepper bruschetta with blueberry balsamic reduction and goat cheese. Delicious. So delicious. I'm now uber feeling Sophia's love for bell peppers. I just wanted more and more.

So while Lancey-Pants was cooking up the main dish, I decided to help with prep work and peel some garlic. Until he pulled out two bowls and said he wanted to try a trick he saw on tv. He then put the unpeeled garlic in one bowl, covered the with the other and "Shake, Shake, Shake Senora". Worked like a charm.

Um. hello. I must try this.

Shaking so hard I thought I was going pull a muscle. If you go by the picture, it appears I did...

The unveiling.

I was unsuccessful..

The bowls were then passed around for everyone to try, and I kept stealing them back, determined to not let Lance...ahem.. the garlic win. I ended up jumping up and down and making a racket probably heard in Thailand, but I succeeded.

BTW. It takes much less effort to just peel the garlic by hand...

Then Lance unveiled the main course.....pan seared pork medallions with wilted spinach and a bacon corn and red potatoe hash topped with blue berry demi. No I have no idea what that means, and yes I just copy-pasted. I think it translates into 'Tastebuds in Love'. But that may not be a direct translation.

We settled down around the dinner table, pretending to be a group of people who love each other. Then Lance and I started flinging insults, everyone ganged up on Mikey, and the conversation soon turned to 40 year olds getting to various 'bases'.

Nothing but class with us, folks.

Dessert was ..... keylime pie with a shortbread crust and blueberry compost. It was supposed to be blueberry whipped cream, but Lance IDon'tKnowHowToCook Larsen whipped a little too much and made some blueberry butter. Seriously. Where do I find these incapable people?!

I suggested Redi-Whip, but it was shot down. Emphatically. With glares. And threats on my life. Geeze. So-rrrr-eeee.

Afterwards, while everyone else was cleaning up, Mikey and I did what any gracious guest does. We lit things on fire in the kitchen while everyone worked around us. Our manners are seriously legit. :)
It was an amazing time with mind-blowing food, and wonderful company. I know I was only invited because I promised to link up on my blog, so can all 4 of my readers please go check out Lance and Laura's blog? Maybe they'll invite me back someday... Haha. :)

Peace out y'all. I'm off to do sleep so I can function like a proper human being at Wild Adventures tomorrow. I might even wash my hair. It's only been 5 days....

-Katy

Katy's Camp of Children Torture.

Hey y'all!

How is everyone doing? I'm doing pretty darn fantastic, actually.

Camp today was fun, went to the pool and I actually got in this time! Haha. Got an awesome sunburn on my face. I didn't wear makeup today, so my face was totally unprotected from UV rays. Bad Katy. I am usually more careful than that.... Wrinkles here I come....

My kids are so cute. They love climbing on me. I mean, LOVE. I'm their personal jungle gym. They do the same in the pool. I think if I wasn't such a strong swimmer (and it's only like 3 ft deep) they would have drowned me today... Haha. The littlest one whom I have nicknamed Monkey, gets mad at me when I go into the deep end. He'll actually come fetch me. He then proceeds to jump on top of me over and over again from the side of the pool. Good thing he weighs like 8 lbs, haha.

I have some cute pictures of camp, but I am hesitant to post them, since they are all minors (actually very young children....) whose parents have no clue about this blog... So I am thinking not. There are a lot of creepy people on the interwebs after all.

One I don't mind posting since you can in no way see their faces is this one!

Last week we did a fun challenge with the kids. Once there were three, (two kids and me.) we wanted to think of something hard, since it's the two most athletic boys. So another counselor suggested push-up position. I was like, yes, planks!!

I did them for like 20 seconds. These boys had to have gone for two minutes and 30 seconds at LEAST. To say I was impressed is an understatement. Their little bodies were both shaking like a leaf, but they were flippin' troopers. Everyone else was like, "it's not even hard!" I was thinking ..... Ummmm... You try it. They stopped saying it after they made an attempt. Haha.

Other than that, I have an amazing trip to NC scheduled for next month. I'm not going to go into detail... but I'll give you a hint as to the cause. :)

Well. I'm off. Tomorrow is my day to come in late, and I have a hair appointment in the AM. I should clean my room a little.. I'm too embarrassed to take pictures now. So ^that is what you get for now. Haha. :) I'll try and get settled so I can show y'all soon, though! :)

Dinner Parties, Adventures, and Fathers...

Oh hi. How are y'all!?

I'm doing pretty well. Yesterday I went to a friend's for a dinner party. Let me just say Megan is the bomb.com when it comes to cooking some yum spaghetti!! I was super tempted to eat my entire weight in it. I didn't, though. I made room for the delicious stuffed mushrooms and bruscetta. (or however it is spelled/pronounced.)

If there is any one random fact to learn about Ms. Katy (A.K.A. myself) it's that I live to dress up in a dress and heels. I'm not kidding. In Hawaii I used to make my friends go out to dinner JUST to dress up. I love it so much. I have more dresses than a department store. Haha.

It was a really good time, and I asked (demanded?!) Megan to do it again really soon. :) After dinner was the obligatory photo shoot. Not all pictures made it on the blog. There were a lot... Haha.

I even made Mikey (from the yoga adventure post?!) take a prom picture with me. :) I love these, haha. Mikey was sort-of used as a photo prop all night long. Poor boy. Who want to take pictures with pretty girls all night. He leads a difficult life, I tell ya.

Afterwards we headed back to Ellie's. The baby was at Nana's for the evening, so Ellie and i decided to go on midnight (or 2 AM...) adventure. But first I had to open Ellie's beer for her. I have serious talents. Sorry for any dentists out there!! :)

When we were in high school (and pretty much up until Ellie gave to birth to my godbaby.... children really put a damper on late night woods adventures....) we always went on adventures in the middle of the night. Whether to a haunted plantation out here in Jacksonville, or ghost hunting in St. Augustine, or a trip to Poet's Beach (a beach littered with sun bleached HUGE driftwood trees), or an Indian preserve in a swamp. Literally there is a pond named Gator Pond on the reserve. And yes, we've been there at night. Adventurous we are. Intelligent... that's not as guaranteed.

Well we were in a fun mood last night, and decided to go. The rest of our friends remembered they are grown ups and opted to stay and play XBOX. Haha. Lame.

Let me explain something about summer in Jacksonville. We call it "spider season". Because in the woods (all of them!) huge (and I mean as big as your fist huge!) banana spiders make these huge elaborate webs all throughout the woods. They cross trails, hang above you, etc. It's terrifying. So we set out hoping that maybe due to all the smoke lately, the spiders would not have been out and web building.

Wrong. After passing the trail head 4 times (the road is PITCH BLACK and there are no signs or indicators, you just have to go by memory. We were trying to go to Poet's Beach BTW.) we finally got there, loaded up our flashlights, and mace. Hey. We were two girls roaming the woods in the middle of nowhere at 2:30 in the morning. We're not the most cautious, but we're not total idiots! We got 10 steps into the trail before we ran right into one. Spanned the whole trail. Whoops. So much for adventure. Haha. So we took some fun pictures. Haha.

The road we are on is Hecksher Dr, and it is our favorite road ever. Also known as A1A. We want twin side by side houses on the water off of A1A someday. It's a special road to us. :)

Then we headed back to go to sleep. Yeah right. After more hanging out and Facebook picture updating. Haha. I'll just say it was daylight before I fell asleep. About 5 minutes later Mom calls. (Ok. Maybe 3 hours. But it sure felt like 5 minutes!) Gotta make lunch reservations for Dad's dinner. Ironically on.... Heckscher Dr!!! Haha. There is this seafood place out there that gets fresh seafood every day and it used to be the bomb.com. It used to be this little whole in wall joint that had super cheap, super delicious food that I loved because it was right on the river, and kind of unknown.

Now it feels like it's gone mainstream, the food is overpriced, and while still fresh, not nearly as good as it used to be. It's also cleaner. I'm a firm believer that legit seafood joints must be 'on the verge of being condemned' looking. But maybe I'm the anti-seafood snob. Who knows.

Um, and what would this blog be without a random photo of yours truly?! Like my mask?! I sure do. :)
Other than that, just working at camp and dealing with some stuff in KatyWorld. Nope. Don't want to talk about it. :)

I hope everyone had a wonderful Father's Day. :-)

Pedro is Calling Your Name.

Have y'all ever driven I-95 North through South Carolina, or I-95 South through North Carolina?

If you have, and you were paying even the slightest attention to the road, you have seen these:

Or some variation of the like. South of the Border signs. Pedro advertising for some sort of Mexican fiesta-esque attraction. There are a gazillion of these signs littering I-95 and they are quite humorous. I always look forward to reading them!

Daddy-O and I decided to count them on the way to Jacksonville, NC to pick up my household this past weekend. 61 signs in South Carolina. Sixty-one. Isn't that ridiculous?! Some are hysterical, like the ones saying that "Kids keep begging, your parents will give in!" some were random like the one with a huge "HI" sprawled across it, and others were just boring. But the sheer amount of them is kind of ridiculous.

The best thing about South of the Border is, it's COMPLETELY DEAD during the day. I mean, there's nothing on, nobody is there, it's like a ghost town. So you see these signs for hundreds of miles, and then.... nothing. My mom is convinced it's a cover-up for a drug ring or something...

Speaking of drug rings.

This is my very fake house plant that we managed to fit in the back of my very packed truck. Drove across four states with this thing, and not until I hit Jacksonville, FL did Daddy-O tell me when it's flying in the wind does it look like a pot plant. Haha. He got such a kick out of this. So, since we currently have a yard full of cardboard boxes, we decided to put this on the front porch.

We're really trying to win "White Trash Yard" of the year. I think we're a shoe-in.

Speaking of unpacking, look who decided to come visit....

My mama's friend is a certified Wildlife caretaker, and she recently got two baby deer. One sadly died, but this little guy is doing great! Isn't he precious!? It made for a wonderful break from packing.

In other news... the smoke from Georgia and Florida being on fire reached us today. It's pretty bad. Jacksonville even had ash raining down. I saw some nasty comments about how people are complaining about smoke and fires when they CHOOSE to live in a desert. All I could think, was... that's really judgemental and harsh. (I know they were mostly talking about Arizona, but I still felt this close to home..) It's an ignorant statement, in my opinion. I just adore broad generalizations about people made by those not going through anything even remotely close to the ones you are insulting.

Makes my day.

Ok, rant is over. I'm out to shower and pass the heck out in my bed. It's been a long week.

Sleepy Girl In the House!

Hey y'all!

I am so beat. I started my new job today, and it's a counselor at a summer day camp, and it's exhausting. I just wanted to come home and go immediately to sleep. But I haven't blogged in a few days, so I figured I'd say hello!

I'll probably post all about this weekend's visit to NC to get my household goods (and the unpacking fiasco!) tomorrow, but I just can't muster up the energy to go back to the kitchen to get my cord for my camera phone... Haha. Laziness prevails!

Today was a fun day at camp, though. It was the first day, and we started by walking to the YMCA to swim. Oh Lord. Yes, we walked. 12 children are not fun walking companions. It's probably about a mile each way, and they were really feeling it on the way back, and as children do, were complaining. But honestly, they did really well, I was expecting far more whining!!

But I'm off to bed now. I'm going to read a little (started Jurassic Park last night), and then pass the heck out. Sorry about the lack of pictures.. I promise some tomorrow!! :)

Have a great day everyone!!

-Katy

Yoga With Friends

Hey y'all! First of all, I want to warn y'all that this post will be littered with random yoga pictures. Myself, Ellie, and our friend Mikey decided that Jillian Michael's Yoga Meltdown Level 2 was in order. It was beautiful.

We convinced Mikey by telling him working on cardio and yoga will help prepare for the Zombie Apocalypse. After all, being in top physical shape is paramount to survival. :)

Ellie and I were STOKED when we were able to pull off the above move! (She banned me from posting pictures, though. Haha.) Mikey rocked it, also.

Look at this spoon. It's completely flat. Totally weirded me out. Haha.

Other than crazy spoons and yoga meltdowns, the past few days at my besties were pretty blissful. I headed out on Tuesday evening to meet my friend Izzy for our 3 mile jog. It was wonderful! (I was a bad blogger, and took no pictures!!) Izzy cut her 3 mile time down by 8 minutes!! I was so proud of her!! Plus it was nice having someone to get me off my (of-lately) lazy butt!!

Then I headed to Ellie's house and read the second book in the Hunger Games trilogy while I waited for her to get off work. Yes. I read it in a day. I was honestly upset that I didn't bring number three with me. (I finished -and started - it today though!!) It's so fantastic. I'm seriously a huge fan of the series now. I recommend them to everyone!!

Tomorrow I leave to go get my household goods from North Carolina. Hopefully I make it further than last time! Haha. I'll be sure to take pictures of the road trip with me and Daddy-o. I hope everyone has a great weekend, and I leave you with this AMAZING video of my godbaby. She's my favorite person. Ever.