PureTcrazy...rita

Ed just posted this pic. I should have taken my sorry butt with him!
 

If needs be, she can stay with me at my house.  So you have lots of offers :)

The only way I can afford to go to WDW is to be a cast member or the spouse of one (retired tho he is now). 
I'm too frugal aka cheap to spend that kind of money.

Mo > WDWMagic
 
TCD

Here is a picture of our contribution to the potluck at 4th of July in 2012 I think.
 

 
and one of Mama's absolute favorites for breakfast was country ham. She made Red Eye gravy to go with grits when we had it. This is actually a picture from Waffle House which offers a choice of Country Ham or City Ham.
 

 
Here was her traditional country ham biscuit from Hardees on the way to the Fort.
 

 
Another good southern treat is biscuit and sausage gravy.
 

 
Some of the suggestions from my area of the south are peas & butterbeans, greens & cornbread, country fried steak (not the crap you get in a restaurant) , Fried Okra, Chicken and Dumplins, Fried Catfish with cheese grits, cole slaw & hush puppies. Apalachicola oysters raw & fried. Fried shrimp and bay scallops. Oh and fresh creamed corn. I'm hungry! lol We got fresh green peanuts out of the field every year and boiled a ton of them for Mama.
 
I so miss having good fresh seafood. We have tried fried shrimp everywhere here and yuck. When we head back to the panhandle, we eat seafood! 
 

 
I'm just posting some random pics here I guess! lol here's a good picture with some white acre peas and greens.
 

 
I reckon I will have to be sure I bring some good food over to the fort when there are gg's! lol
 
How could I forget Register's sausage and Tupelo Honey!!!

You know I'm not a good recipe girl right?
 
Ingredients
 
Self Rising Flour
Lard or Shortening
buttermilk or milk
 
Preheat oven to 450 to 475. Put flour in a biscuit bowl or just whatever you have. Put in some lard. Use your fingers, a fork or a pastry thingy to cut the lard in. You want small little pieces. Make a well and add the buttermilk and start bringing together til it forms a ball. Don't over handle if you want flaky biscuits. Plop on a floured board and gently roll out about 1/4 inch or so thick. You can use a biscuit cutter or just a glass about the right size. Butter a pan and place biscuits almost touching each other. Bake until browned, fluffy and not mushy about 10 to 15 minutes.
 
OR
 
Mrs. B's Frozen biscuits are a good substitute! Bisquick actually works pretty well too, just add a pinch of baking powder.

Oh man. My dinner plans just changed.  

Yesterday I was posting about all of our delicious southern food. This led to some cravin's!
 
Country Fried Steak
 
Ingredients (keep it simple)
 
Cubed Steak
flour
Salt & pepper to taste
oil to fry
 
Season Flour with Salt and Pepper. I use a ziploc bag. Shake meat in bag while heating oil. When oil is hot, begin frying. Be careful not to get the grease too hot because you will want it for the gravy.
 

 

 

 
Gravy
 
Drain some of the grease out leaving the sediment and a couple or more tablespoons of grease. Add flour until you get a thickened kind of roux. Turn heat down and let it cook a while. Slowly add in beef stock while stirring maniacally. Keep slowly adding until it is to the desired consistency.
 

 

 
Serve with real mashed potatoes or rice, a nice veggie like peas or greens and biscuit or cornbread.
 

 
 

Here is a picture of our contribution to the potluck at 4th of July in 2012 I think.
 

 
and one of Mama's absolute favorites for breakfast was country ham. She made Red Eye gravy to go with grits when we had it. This is actually a picture from Waffle House which offers a choice of Country Ham or City Ham.
 

 
Here was her traditional country ham biscuit from Hardees on the way to the Fort.
 

 
Another good southern treat is biscuit and sausage gravy.
 

 
Some of the suggestions from my area of the south are peas & butterbeans, greens & cornbread, country fried steak (not the crap you get in a restaurant) , Fried Okra, Chicken and Dumplins, Fried Catfish with cheese grits, cole slaw & hush puppies. Apalachicola oysters raw & fried. Fried shrimp and bay scallops. Oh and fresh creamed corn. I'm hungry! lol We got fresh green peanuts out of the field every year and boiled a ton of them for Mama.
 
I so miss having good fresh seafood. We have tried fried shrimp everywhere here and yuck. When we head back to the panhandle, we eat seafood! 
 

 
I'm just posting some random pics here I guess! lol here's a good picture with some white acre peas and greens.
 

 
I reckon I will have to be sure I bring some good food over to the fort when there are gg's! lol
 
How could I forget Register's sausage and Tupelo Honey!!!

When Disney builds Mickey's Backyard Massage Parlor and Casino I will be a very rich man. You losers better start kissing up to me now.

I made a quick trip over to MK last night. Ed was eating with friends at Boma, so I was on my own. I decided on Pecos Bills. We had eaten here a couple of times years ago and it was pretty good. Nothing earth shattering, but decent. Not anymore.
 
I ordered a Disney quick serve staple, the burger. The toppings bar was chaotic. The onions were barely cooked at all. It was so horrid I couldn't even eat half of it. I was hungry, but could not choke the driest, coldest burger on the hardest bun down. It was busy, so there was no reason that it should have just been sitting around. The price for that burger, cold fries and a drink? 12.99 including tax.
 
As crazy as it sounds, I actually ate again a little later when Ed got there. We went to Pinnochio Village Haus. I ordered the chicken nuggets. They were hot and good for chicken nuggets and the fries were hot too. Another 12 dollars.

In the Kissimmee area there is a large Puerto Rican influence. There is a local store called Kissimmee produce that has all kinds of cool things. I still don't know what most of them are! Lol Their deli is filled with deliciousness. I am on my phone now but will try to post more when it is easier.

Ed and I went over to the Fort to visit and have lunch. We left via Vista out to 535. They had set up overflow parking for the Fort out near all the Disney construction company places at the 4-way stop. I'm glad we got there early enough to park in the regular parking!

I'll bring about 4-5 chairs..  HEY GWEN!  the magic bands came today.

Did we tell you we like you being here too?

I will definitely come visit during WWW!

Thank you to Jason, Kelly and Z for their hospitality! We had a great time. It is so nice to meet fiends we've known for a long time! It's also wonderful to see those we know and love again! Good food and good fun!

That was my thought too.  Looking forward to the explanation in Kelly's TR.
 
FREEZE!!!!!!  :D

Camping with the GDF Family Made Christmas Complete!

Ok....sorry about the delay in posting updates.  I was working in DC this week and never got the time.  So let's move on.
 
INC and I had a date night planned on 12/27.  In the history of all of our trips to WDW over the years, we have never done a date night.  And it's not for lack of planning one....on many of our trips I had made ADR's for us to go out for a nice dinner, but we always end up canceling them and just doing something with the girls.  But this year, we were determined to make it happen.  
 
I had wanted to eat at California Grill for a long time and never had....again, not a place I'd take all the kids so it had never worked out.  I made an ADR a while back but not at the 180 day mark, so I wasn't able to get a later time slot to allow us to watch the fireworks during our dinner.  However, I had read that even if you have an earlier dinner and leave the restaurant, you would be admitted back up to watch the fireworks from the outside observations decks.  So that's what I planned.  
 
We started our evening by walking out the back of our site to the Settlement, and straight to the porch for a pre-dinner cocktail at Trails End.  
 

 
That is a Mai Tai in my hand, and a Pina Coolava in INC's.  
 
I've always found the Mai Tai's at the Fort to be fairly strong.  It also helps if I tell the bartender that I'm looking for a strong drink as I am raising 5 daughters and need it.  
 
After our drinks, we headed to the resort boat and made the quick trip across the lake to the Contemporary.  
 
We checked in at the California Grill podium downstairs, from which you are escorted via a dedicated elevator up to the restaurant.  One benefit of having an early seating (5:40) is that we didn't have to wait long for a table.  
 
We did not have a table next to the windows....but we were close enough to enjoy this view.
 

 
We ordered a drink and the waiter invited us to explore one of the outside decks while we were waiting to order food.  
 

 
One of the castle shows was going on.
 

 

 
We headed back to our table and enjoyed our drinks, and it wasn't long before the sky looked like this.
 

 

 
The waiter brought some bread.....and man was that focaccia good!  You can see it hiding under the rolls.  
 

 
Here's a close up....
 

 
I just may have asked for some more of that.  It was delicious. 
 
One of the reasons I wanted to dine at California Grill is that they do this thing called Chefs Unplugged that sounded appealing to us.  You can opt for either Vegetarian or Vegan, and they'll put together small plates from the various stations in the kitchen for you to try different things.  While you can make some specific requests I believe, the general concept is that you "get what you get".  And we are fine with that, so we ordered 2 vegan Chefs Unplugged dinners and told them to just surprise us.  
 
Here is what we both got.
 

 
Sorry the pic is a bit dark....but IIRC, clockwise from top left are Roasted Winter Vegetables, a veggie flatbread, some sort of salad, and an Asian risotto dish.  
 
It was all fantastic.  
 
This was our view while eating.  Ain't it purdy?
 

 
Not that I needed more food, but one thing I really wanted to try at Cali Grill was some sushi.  I love sushi, but since I rarely eat seafood anymore I asked if they do any veggie sushi.  The waiter said the sushi chef can do a selection of it, so I told him to bring it on.  
 

 
It was all very tasty.  But I ended up STUFFED.  So much so that there was no room for dessert, and I needed to walk it off.  We had a couple of hours still before the fireworks, so we decided to leave the Contemporary and go on a monorail tour, with plans to end up back at California Grill to watch the fireworks.
 
Stupid Monorail Selfie
 

 
First stop....the Poly.
 
They had fairly recently at this point taken down the construction walls in the lobby.  It looks different from what it used to, that's for sure.  
 

 
We walked around the Poly a bit, and the plan was to hop back on the monorail to go visit the GF and have a drink, or maybe something sweet.  
 
We went back out to the monorail station at the Poly, where a monorail was waiting for us!  
 
Only, there was a line and no one was boarding.  
 
Soon, there was an announcement that the monorails were down and it might be 20 minutes until they come back up as one was stranded on a beam and needed to be pushed off.  
 
Simple solution....we would just walk to the GF.  
 
So we did.  
 
It's a nice walk, not long at all and very pretty.  
 
Inside the lobby there was a Photopass photographer, so we got some pics in front of the GF tree.
 

 

 

 

 
We walked around the GF a little bit, but at this point I began to get concerned that if the monorail didn't come back up, we might not be able to get back to CG for the fireworks.  We could certainly watch them from the GF or the Poly, but never having had the opportunity to watch them from California Grill, I wanted to do so.  
 
I decided that we could take a launch from the GF to the MK and walk from there.  So we made our way to the dock at the hotel....and the line was HUGE.  
 
Apparently, when the monorails go down, transportation at the GF becomes FUBAR.  
 
That must make those people spending $800/night on hotel rooms feel really loved.  
 
A CM told us they estimated it would take 90 minutes to move everyone in the line to the MK via the small resort launch.  
 
So we bailed, and headed to the buses.  
 
The bus station at the GF was chaotic!  People were not happy....they just wanted to get on with their evenings.  And many of them were asking if there was a better way to get to the MK.  The short answer....no, other than maybe a cab.  
 
We waited a while, and it was getting closer and closer to fireworks time.  I wondered whether we could hoof it all the way to the CR....but that did not sound appealing.  You can't walk to the MK, so going clockwise around the lagoon wouldn't work.  I know you can walk all the way to the TTC, but I didn't know if there were sidewalks under the water bridge.  So, we waited.  
 
Eventually, a MK bus arrived, which also we going to the CR.  We got on it and it was packed like sardines.  
 
When we were turning into the MK bus depot, I noticed that there was a big backup of buses trying to exit the depot.  So even though our bus was going to the CR after dropping people off at the MK, I figured the process of loading guests at the MK plus navigating out of the depot and over to the CR would take longer than the time we could walk from the MK bus depot to the CR.  So that's what we did.  
 
We actually ran.  
 
Isn't that romantic?
 
While on the way, we passed under the monorail beam where the tractor was pushing the dead monorail.  So in all this time that it took us to walk from the Poly to the GF, wait for a boat, walk to the bus depot, wait for a bus, ride the bus to the MK and walk to the CR, the monorails STILL were not back up and running.  
 
FAIL.  
 
But, we did NOT fail in our quest.   
 
We stepped off the elevators into California Grill 5 minutes before the start of the fireworks!  
 
And they were worth the effort.  It was fun watching them from that vantage point.  Sweaty and all.   

Apr 30 - May 5
 
We'll spoil her silly :)

I have said before that looking of pictures of Anna make me cry.  The joy on her face - when I think of how her life might have been - it just makes me get weepy.  But those pictures with Rapunzel actually made me sob.
 
Maybe I need my meds adjusted.
 
Maybe i just need meds.
 
Or more alcohol and chocolate.  That must be it.

I guess this is a Trip Report.
 
The problem is, I had zero intention of writing one for our last trip.  
 
In fact, I didn't plan on it from even before the trip started, so I didn't take the pictures I normally take.  Very few foods pics.  Not many candid shots in the parks.  I just wasn't feeling it.  And I didn't take any notes to prepare myself for writing one.
 
And then, by the time the trip was over, I was so over Disney that there was no way I was writing one.  In fact, within a couple days of getting home I couldn't even bring myself to post here.  I wanted nothing to do with Disney.  I pulled off all the pics from the SD card and my phone, and downloaded all the Memory Maker pictures so I didn't lose them, but to be honest I never even looked at them.  They just sat on my computer.  And life has been so crazy busy that I didn't give it much thought.
 
Then, several days ago, I started looking at some of the pictures.  I saw some cute ones.  I recalled a comment that Kelly made a month or so ago....that it would be a crime not to share some of the Anna pics.  LOL.  So, here I am, writing a trip report.  
 
The problem is....I don't really remember a lot of the details.  I don't have the right photos to paint a chronological picture.  So this report will be pretty unconventional.  
 
Not to mention....I still kinda hate Disney.  I have no intentions of going back anytime soon, so writing about this trip won't be fun.  I'm not sure how it will go off.  It may just be an incohesive collection of photos, snarky comments and anti-Disney complaints.  
 
If this doesn't sound very appealing to you, I understand.  You don't have to read.  But if you are a glutton for punishment, then hop onboard.  
 
Here's a sample of what lies ahead.....
 

 
I've said it before, and I'll say it again....that kid cracks me up.  

Just stopping by to let you know I'm not dead, but just following My MARCH MADNESS.  Here is a utube video from one of the pilots of the Iditarod Air Force.  aka volunteers
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmjPQKAIiKY     it's about 15 minutes long.

The 2015 Yukon Quest race ended yesterday when Robb Cooke crossed the finish line with 10 Siberian huskys!  An all Siberian team will probably never win the Quest but they are very close to the original type of dog that worked along the trails with their mushers, running trap lines, hunting walrus and seals, etc.  They are the 'pretty dogs' of film, heavy, dense coats just made for living and working in cold climates.
 
http://yukonquest.com/news/cooke-claims-2015-yukon-quest-red-lantern