Having some serious trouble

During our vacation we took 1,400 pictures. That is a lot of stinkin' pictures. It was two weeks of travel and we apparantly didn't want to miss anything! The trouble comes in because blogger is making it very difficult for me to upload, organize and find the pictures for each post. I am not sure how I am going to fix this problem or if I will just have to skip over all vacation pics and continue with posts about regular life. I really want my vacation pics on here so if anyone has suggestions it would be greatly appreciated!

Baltimore

After Fort Mchenry we went to Edgar Allen Poe's house and then to the cemetary where he is buried. It was a very interesting cemetary because a church was built on top of it. It was strange. We walked around there for a bit and then went into the Inner Harbor which was really important to me and my sister. Dad used to take us there and he loved the Inner Harbor. We then drove by dad's old house. It is the house I live in in my dreams. It used to be so beautiful-and still is, not much had changed. When dad was still alive and in hospice we brought up the "woodside house" and he said " I refinished 13 doors in that house!!" Everything else we talked about that day he was kind of soft-spoken about but not when it came to all the work he put into that house!! Anyway, that was our sightseeing for that day. I had a terrible time uploading these photos. I cannot get them to arrange in order. I am very frustrated and have given up on that task for now so they are unorganized and wacky-sorry. I feel it is better to have my computer in tact and wacky pictures than a computer that has been thrown across the room because I continued trying to fix the pictures. Also, I am getting frustrated because blogger has some sort of delay when I am trying to go back and delete words and letters. Ahhh I am done for the evening, hopefully I can find a way around these problems tomorrow.

We interrupt these regularly scheduled vacation pictures...

...to discuss our dinner tonight. I had some boneless skinless chicken thighs that I got on sale at Henry's. I never buy thighs I always buy breasts so I had no idea what to do with them. I had some coconut milk in my pantry that I didn't know what to do with either. Sooo, I went on an internet search for recipes and I found a few but I didn't have most of the ingredients. Well I found one where I was only missing one main ingredient (rice vinegar-which I sent Brad to the store for) and I had similar substitutions for other things I was missing. The Chicken is Sticky coconut chicken with chili glaze and then to accompany I made sesame noodles. Holy cow!! dinner was so good, and the amazing part... my kids devoured it! They were begging for more chicken WITH sauce. I thought for sure it was going to be too spicy for them. I did not have the chili oil for the noodles or the chili flakes for the chicken so I just used tabasco and chili powder and kind of added stuff just to give it a little kick. They all loved it! After dinner they wanted some cheese and did some sort of goofy butt cheese dance, and you are lucky enough to see a video of it!

Sooo, make these recipes for dinner it was easy and delicious. I especially loved the noodles, Yum!

Pig Roast

The pig roast was awesome! At first I wasn't so sure how I would feel about the whole pig roast situation but being there I was so happy I almost started crying. There was family that I hadn't seen in 10 years or longer and bluegrass music playing and a giant 95 pound pig being BBQ'd and cornhole going on in the background. This is family, this is what a get together should look like. 50 people all hanging out- some related, some not, all enjoying their time together. It was fantastic. It made me realize all that I have been missing out here in California. The only real, related family I had was my mom and dad. And now that they are both gone it is just me and my family. Brad has his mom and grandma out here and some other family a few hours away. I want to move, we want to move but we can't figure out how.There is a whole ex-husband situation for me and someone would have to give up summers and someone would have to give up the school year. We are trying to figure it out. Anyway, there were ladies there that were making homemade peach ice cream-it was soooo delicious!!! Pop was so excited about the ice cream and the pig roast.  By the way Pop was driving around my daughter on his ATV and I should mention that he is almost completely blind and I was terrified wondering why in the world he was riding around on that thing. I also should explain cornhole... in Brad's words it is redneck horseshoes. Bags of corn, like bean bags thrown into a piece of wood with a hole in it. Simple but very fun.

She was hot and tired and found a chair to have her dinner

Enjoying the bluegrass music

Being helped out of a hole he fell in

My cousin Jessica and her husband Clark. They were playing cornhole

Cornhole!

This kid has candy hooked to his shorts!

The munchkin playing cornhole


I forgot to post about going into Baltimore and visiting Dad's old house. That will be tommorow.

Fort Mchenry

We went to Fort McHenry on our second day in Maryland. This was exciting for my sister and I because Dad had taken us there sixteen years ago. She was only two at the time and I was 14. Whew, that was a really loooong time ago. Anyway, it was terribly sticky on this day and we were so hot. The kids were having fun going into the brick-lined tunnels and seeing all the cannons. We had a great time, and this being our first sight-seeing experience it was nice to show the kids all the artifacts. They however could have cared less and just wanted to be in some air-conditioning (we all did for that matter).

Tomorrow- Pig roast, cornhole and bluegrass at Grammy and Pop Pop's. (Cornhole surprised me at first too. If you know what it is comment, I am betting a lot of my Southern California friends have no idea what it is.)

Exhausted!

First day in Maryland we were exhausted. We didn't go to bed until 3:30 am. We woke up around 10:00am but we were just a mess! We slowly got ready and then headed to grammy and Pop Pop's house for the first time my kids and husband got to meet them, and the first time I had seen them in 10 years. Before we left for their house the bulldozer decided to take a rest on the floor by my Aunt Kim's giant dog.

The Princess fell asleep in Aunt Kim's arms-Aunt Kim was in heaven!!

Tomorrow I will post about Fort Mchenry!

Vacation

My amazing grandparents paid for us to go out to the east coast. All six of us boarded a plane excited for the trip ahead. I was so nervous that there would be nothing but meltdowns and crying. Thanks to all the pre-packed activities, the 2 flights out there and 2 flights back went fairly smoothly. We stayed for two weeks and visited lots of family and saw many different places. I will be posting about our excursions individually because there is so very much to post about! To start it off airport pictures. We arrived at our local airport very, very early. I was concerned that it would be busy and that the whole removing six pairs of shoes and then putting them back on was going to be time consuming. We were happy to not be rushed. We had packed peanut butter and Jelly sandwiches and after getting through security and making it to our gate we sat and enjoyed our lunch.