Ice Skating & Camping shopping

Darly is taking Ice Skating lessons and her current session is over for her, but just about over for the rest of her class. See next week there won't be any lesson due to an ice skating competition at the rink and the following week is the final week...it's also the week that we'll be camping.
Darly & I got up early today to go practice. We have to go to the early public skate session because the summer camp kids invade the ice at the 1pm skate time. This doesn't make Darly happy, she would rather sleep in and go skate at 1. But she also doesn't want to compete for a spot on the ice either.
Our practice skate didn't go very well. Darly was very hard on herself. We both knew that she wouldn't be ready to test out of this class yet. However, when we got to class at 5:30 ... well I'm getting ahead of myself

after our skate this morning, we went shopping. I needed to pick up some camping items for our next camping trip. Items I needed: Tent stakes (I bent about 5 out of 12 on my tent in the VERY HARD ground!); a clear salt shaker (I ran out of salt cuz I had no idea how much salt was in it.); trash bags; dish towels (I just wanted them!); propane; metal flatwear & I was looking for some way to keep my coolers out of the sun so hopefully they stay cooler longer without me having to move them out of the sun!

So first we went to Big Lots. That wasn't all that productive shopping wise. I just bought the trash bags & towels there. And I'll be using the new towels here in the house and gathering up my old towels that I've already stained to use for camping.

Then we went to Target and actually walked out of the store with out buying ANYTHING!!! DH would be so proud! LOL!

Next door is Wal-Mart. We went in through the garden center and noticed that the folding beach chairs that Darly & I have already been using as cots were on sale for only $3!!!! I paid about $6 for the ones that Darly & I are using right now...each! I actually wanted to buy extra chairs because the price was so good. But I just got one for DH to use IF he ever decides to come camping with us. I could spoil Lilly and allow her to sleep on the chair, but then she would be harder to convince that she's not allowed on our beds. I did look to see if they had those pet hammocks that I've seen, but not at Walmart. But hey! While looking for that link for you, I found this link too! Lilly may still be in luck.

Next we stopped by the sporting goods department to pick up the clear salt & PEPPER shaker for only $1. Sweet! I first saw a prefilled shaker that came with 6 spices and mentioned to Darly that I would never use 3 of the spices in there. Then I looked up and saw the perfect shaker. Hopefully we'll never run out of salt again. I picked up the tent stakes too.

While in the sporting goods we looked at several other items...we originally went there looking for the propane and something to keep our food cool. I never found the way to keep my food cool, but decided that I would try to make something that I saw online. I have plenty of tarps and string. plus I have some leftover tent polls from my last screen room that bit the dust...I could even recycle the top of it for the tarp that I need if I wanted to. So I'm going to try to make one of those before spending any more money on this thing.

And finally I wanted to replace our plastic flatwear with metal. My friend Heather had told me that WalMart had some really cheap flatwear sets that I could get...and sure enough I found them. It took a bit of digging to find the knives though...oh and spoons that actually fit in our mouths, but I found them and paid $3 for 6 forks, 6 spoons & 6 knives. We should be all set!

After all that hard shopping we headed home to find that I had a package!!! I knew what it was when I saw the return address, but couldn't believe that my order was in that box. It was though. Wanna know what I "ordered"? It was this! Did ya notice how much I paid for it??? I'm so psyched! Too bad it didn't come this morning...then I wouldn't have had to rent skates this morning.

Okay now back to the skating thing. We went to Darly's class at 5:30 and I had Darly tell her coach that she wouldn't be there for the last class. So the coach decided to test her today. YIKES! Darly tried really hard but she didn't pass. However, the coach told me that this class is really hard and the kids rarely ever pass it on the first try. skills like the Bunny Hop and T-Stop are just too hard. The coach felt that none of the other kids would pass either. Luckily we won't be there to find that out. Yes Darly was disappointed, but she seemed to take it all in very well. I told her that we would check the class list and try to register her for the least crowded class. perhaps we'll avoid a class with a bunch of "hockey boys" like this time. Did I tell you about how one of them knocked Darly over? GRRR!