Every year for the NFL Draft we have our NFL inspired pizzas- I'll get to those in a minute, but before that, we've been up to some random things here and there. We took Calib out for lunch at Cheddars, and he tagged along to Costco, where Asa and him got into shenanigans.
One of our neighbors down the street was in Ohio for the weekend, so we had the pleasure of walking Oakley, her dog, while she was gone. It was nice to have a puppy young enough to take on the whole loop!
We ran into Sam one night, and he told us all about all the concerts he's been to, which turned into a "kids today" discussion, and Asa arguing about music taste with him. I got really bored and started taking out the trash instead.
Olivia got her hair cut in London, and is looking super cute in some pictures Jasmin took and sent to us. Super excited to see her back home in a couple weeks, though!
We got a free car wash coupon, so we took Calib's car to get cleaned out and run through the car wash so we could rid it of all the pollen. Calib declared it was his first time through a car wash, and I think he might be right about that.
We had a video game night with the Harvison's, Dom, and Nando. We brought Mario Kart outside, and then ended up playing the Oculus for half the night. It was so popular with the Harvisons, they went out and bought one the next day, so everyone has been one-upping their scores on Beat Saber.
Make your own chess club tshirt night got scheduled at the library- there was a flyer for it and everything!
But, I also had a felt flower class, that was pretty popular. Asa even got some chess club regulars to sign up for it. I kind of love my classes. I'm meeting new people (and lets face it, library people are generally my kind of people), working with my social anxiety and getting to teach crafting. It's a win all around. I love that we get varying ages, varying abilities, and everyone just has a great time.
And there were some gorgeous felt flowers out there being made. In a lovely twist, my neighbor happened to know one of the girls in my class and when her mom posted about how great it was, Teresa said it was my class, and the woman said I was just great- so of course Teresea sent me a screenshot of the comments. It was a really nice compliment I never would have heard without the random connection, so that was nice.
Mike happened to be at the libary and snuck this picture of me in there teaching my class.
The guys went to see the Super Mario movie one night, and rather enjoyed it. (Olivia saw it in the UK and said it was pretty decent, so they figured they'd check it out- plus, I can score $9 movie tickets with AAA these days).
I actually do two classes for my crafting- one on a Saturday and one during the week. Both were pretty full this time, and I even managed to get in some waitlist people. The second class even saw a couple of repeats from my first class, because they enjoyed themselves so much. I also had a group of home schooling tween girls, which was fun. Everyone made really pretty flowers, too.
And since it was a Tuesday class and the room wasn't being used until Chess Club- Asa and I got to set up some Chess boards, so they'd already be set up when Devon (the other volunteer) came in.
We got our new license plate in the mail finally. And, note, the speciality Bucs plates are different now. The Super Bowl made it onto the plate. (The Choo2 is a nod to my dads plate with the same letters/numbers because he liked trains so much).
I've been enlisted to print some new numbers for mailboxes around the neighborhood. I went and applied my first one- and a sawn (kind of the Wilderness Lake mascot). They turned out pretty good, so the HOA is thinking about having me do the numbers for a side gig. We'll see how that works out.
Walks have been a little too warm at lunch time, but lovely in the evenings. And there's still some baby cranes hanging around- and you know how I love to see those guys! (I send Allison pictures the first time I spot them every year, I feel like nobody appreciates baby crane season with me like Allison).
Some nights we go for walks down to the lodge too-
Usually on Wednesday when we can score some sort of dessert at food truck night. No pretzel or Boba truck lately (which is a bummer), but there was a funnel cake truck there, and that wasn't bad!
We're finally caught up on Survivor too- so we had a Sur-Fry-Vor night to celebrate (in case you don't know, that's where Asa makes homemade fries and we watch Survivor).
I also scored some great things from our Buy Nothing Group. You know how much trim I can use those beads for on Minnie Ears? SO MANY. And, I got a teapot. I'm wanted to get teapots and teacups for a fairy garden, but Asa like this one so much he stole it for tea.
And now, the Draft Pizzas. We debated how many to make (we usually do them over the first two nights of the draft). The more, the better. So I bought small crusts thinking we'd just have a bunch of tiny pizzas. But then, during game night the week before Dom wanted to see what everyone was doing the following Friday so we could do it again. I, obviously, was busy making pizzas. So on a whim, I invited everyone over for the second night of the draft- which made me rethink how many pizzas I should make. We went with the top 8 picks (and it's for the teams that earned that pick- even if they traded the pick away).
So on Thursday night we had three large pizzas for the four of us.
Pick #1: Chicago Bears sausage and
Pick #2 Houston Texans BBQ pizza.
And pick #3: Arizona Fiesta pizza.
It was a decent line up (though none of my favorites). And we had leftovers, which got eaten for lunch the next day.
And then we watched night one of the draft. Even though the Bucs weren't great last season, we didn't pick until like 19 or something crazy- all because we had to go and win our division. Do you know how long it takes to get to pick 19? I waited forever to go to bed. (For the record we picked a Pittsburgh DE named Calijah Kancey).
The second night, I invited everyone over for dinner, where we had four more big pizzas..
#4: Indianapolis Pork Tenderloin pizza (this is so simple- but among my favs).
#5 Denver Steak Pesto Pizza (Olivia's top choice, she was sad she missed it)
#6 L.A Rams California Fresh Pizza (basically chicken, sundried tomato pesto and roasted red peppers)
and
#7 Vegas Hangover Breakfast Pizza. Basically everything on a breakfast taco on a pizza (it's the first time I made this one- ever! Not too bad, but I might ass a kind of sauce next time).
Mike made it into the pizza picture (pictured at the bottom there is his mini dairy free cheese pizza), and not pictured is the fact that Teresa brought over peach cobbler for the 9th pick: the Atlanta Falcons.
Dom and Nando came over shortly after the picture was taken, and enjoyed some pizza with us- and then we spent the night out on the patio playing games (we're the only football people, so the second night of the draft was on TV, but we didn't pay too much attention). Anyway, we played Donner Dinner Party, and I was pretty good at being the Canabal, until Dom called out me. By the end of the night we had swapped Marcus for Mike and switched to Card's Against Humanity. Everyone had such a fun night, we're planning another game night soon.
And just for the record, we did print out mock drafts, per the usual to see how everyone did. 1 point if you get the right team in the right spot with the right player, half a point if you connected the right team and player, just in the wrong spot.
Calib didn't do so great this year, with a score of 2.5
Asa bested him with a score of 4
But the winner of it all was Daniel Jerimiah with 7.5
Saturday we hung out, had breakfast tacos, and watched the rest of the draft off an on. We're just not made to stay up so late. I feel like it's getting harder and harder to hang with the 20-somethings. Calib, Dom, Nando and Marcus might be the death of us. But, we love them anyway.
I leave you with tramatized Etta pictures. She really struggles when the neighbor dogs get barking.
Next up: One last Universal trip before our passes expire
