The skinny on April's visit

Blogging and I haven't been getting along lately. I haven't been blogging and I haven't been reading blogs. BOO. I do have an amazing excuse this week though! I had a visitor, a wonderful friend that I met in bloggyland, on Twitter if you want to get all crazy about it. Yes, I met April on Twitter (she's @aprilshowrs), and we became fast friends. I invited her over to the Sisterhood, where she was a champion supporter and she eventually became a contributor. Our first official IRL meetup was at Blogher in July, but her trip to visit me has been in the works since before that.

She arrived on Tuesday, and from that moment forward, we were on the go. I took her for her first REAL Tex-Mex, including table-side guacamole, and super-duper margaritas. Then we headed for my house where she got to witness a real life traffic jam. Then we hung our, watched the Biggest Loser, drank some beers, and chatted with each other on the 'hood. Yeah, we were sitting in the same room, but whatever!

On Wednesday we got all crazy and decided to head to Lost Maples State Natural Area. I knew the maples would be near peak, and I knew it would be an awesome hike with lots of photo ops. We were not disappointed. We ended up taking the 4.9 mile loop, with 1.5 miles being a steep and rocky climb up, and then another mile was a steep and rocky climb down. Did I mention I had Mia in a Kelty Kids backpack? Um, yeah. I had never hiked that far or that high with her, and it was challenging. Totally worth it though! I mean, look at these shots I got!

On Thursday we baked all.day.long. Friday was the Wild Game Dinner at my son's school, and I had committed to making cobblers and brownies for the bake sale. I've never made a cobbler so I googled recipes and found this one. Can you say heart attack on a plate? For reals, yo. As April and I melted the stick of butter in the 9x13" we laughed and maybe gagged just a little. Then when it came time to add in the TWO cups of sugar (I know, right?!) we skimped because we felt totally guilty for the fact that someone was going to consume this sweet buttery mess of dessert. So 4 cobblers and two batches of brownies later, I'm pretty sure we were drunk, or maybe close to it. Neither one of us had any desire to eat cobbler, and we might be totally scarred for life.

On Friday we geared up for the dinner, and it didn't disappoint. Perfect weather, so much amazing food, including elk, venison, antelope, fallow, oryx, axis, and much more. About an hour and half into the dinner, with more than 450 people already served, we started running out of food. Very scary because we had 2.5 hours left and dozen of people flooding in. We managed to scrape by with limited selections available during the last part of the dinner, but not one person complained. We raised a TON of money for the PTO, which will go into the school's activity fund to support, among other things, the end of year field trip.

I know I had fun, and I'm pretty sure April did. I mean, what could be more fun than coming to Texas and going to a wild game dinner, right?

The next installment of our trip, the Sisterhood Virtual EA SPORTS Active 5K, will come tomorrow over at at my Shrinking Jeans blog!

Come back later tonight/tomorrow because I'm going to tell you all about why I'm in California RIGHT NOW for EA SPORTS Active! It's so exciting!!