Parade

The first part of October every year the local community gets together after the end of the tobacco harvesting and has a festival. This years theme was Small town big heroes. They dedicated many of the events to local military, past and present. We Usually enter a small float in the parade, but havent the past 2 years due to work/school/life getting in the way.

This year Mr digger and lil dude rode the show buggy built by MTX audio and Buggynews.com in the parade, and rocked out to some patriotic Toby Keith along the way :)  The parade was actually a pretty good one, all things considered. The weather was great, and the turn out was the largest I have ever seen for the festival. Pretty good for a small town ;)

Day at the Zoo

Its been a couple weeks ago actually, I just always seem to run out of time to post our latest adventures, so today is a 2 for one day... you get to hear about our Saturday at the Zoo, plus later you will get to hear about our Saturday at the parade :)



My intentions as always never went like planned. I had planned to take 2 kids to the Zoo, lil dude and one of the girls. What I wound up doing was taking lil dude and all 3 girls. Im sure it looked like a circus had arrived at the Zoo.

Baby backpack for Freddy, stroller for baby J, and hope and pray that devil child listened to me that day. It actually went pretty well, all things considered. The one thing devil child insisted on seeing was, are you ready for this? The FROGS. Not the lions, the tigers, the zebras. The frogs.  it matters not that we have frogs at home, or that you can actually touch or hold them in the backyard. The frogs were what she wanted to see.

It was actually fun watching baby J (who at almost 3 isnt really much of a baby anymore :( )  She was definitely thrilled by all the animals at the zoo, big and small. She minded (better than I expected) and even asked me yesterday to take her back to the Zoo lol.

Ever look forward to something

Only to become really disappointed when it happens?

Me too. Tonight was a prime example. I have been wanting shrimp and clams from  Red Lobster for about two weeks. Thursday nights are typically date night, however the past couple weeks have been skewed due to other things going on in life. So tonight, I was treated to what used to be one of my favorite places to go out to eat.

Yeah, it used to be. First I am well aware that Red Lobster is not a "high" class restaurant, nor is it 5 star or anything of the sort. Living in the middle of no where in the South has not completely removed my ability to distinguish between a good restaurant and a decent chain. Anyway... When we arrived we were told there would be a 15-20 minute wait. Looking through the dining room I had to wonder why? Empty tables everywhere. Then it struck me as we were being seated about 10 minutes later. They were sticking us in the back dining area where one other family was present. They also had more than one child under the age of 10 with them.

My assumption based on the area we were seated is that they assume anyone with small children is someone no one else wants to sit near. Funny, yet ticks me off too. Evidently they have never seen my "look" that stops children dead in their tracks. They must not know that Mr Digger has an even better stop dead in your tracks look!  Oh well... no one got to observe how well behaved they were but me.

So bring on the food! Mr Digger got about 3/4 of the way through his salad and discovered a bug, of the gnat lettuce eating flying insect sort. Gag. From there the meal went down hill. The biscuits arrived, cold, and a bit stale tasting. They used to arrive fresh and warm.... There were 4 children and 2 adults at our table this evening. First time through the waiter brought 4 biscuits. Now I realize baby Freddy is tiny, and no one would imagine she has teeth and uses them to consume real food, so thats fine bring me 5 biscuits I wont complain... but when I order 3 kids meals and 2 adult meals, one would assume that 5 biscuits would be acceptable too. Evidently not at THIS particular Red Lobster, and maybe not even at all of them...  What gets my butt cheeks chaffed about the biscuits, is that they family that was seated in the back 40 near us, got their to-go boxes not too long after our biscuits arrived at our table. With their to-go boxes the waiter brought them 10 biscuits in a cute little bag to-go. Really? WTF? They have 4 people at their table, 2 adults and 2 children... and they got their biscuits on the table with their meal, and they got 10 to go, and you couldnt bring me enough so that the kids didnt have to get upset about having to share a biscuit?

My food was warm, not hot, and the fish... yeah it was rubberized Im pretty darn sure of it. I was served my shrimp, fish, clams etc... with no tartar sauce, no cocktail sauce, nothing. When asked, it was brought to the table, but these used to be normal items served with the admirals platter (which by the way went up in price over $3 dollars since I last ordered it).

So I blew my weekly carb splurge on rubberized fish, and luke warm clams and shrimp of which I ate a couple before I gave up. *big sigh*

Painting the Barn

Ive been considering painting my barn for awhile now. I want a red barn... it was gray. So I finally decided this weekend was the weekend! I am painting the barn. I went to walmart to get barn paint, which they used to carry in 5 gallon buckets for about $60. When I got there, they had 1 gallon pails, for 25 each. Umm hmm

So I came home, and did my research online, and found that Rural King had barn paint for the best price. Lil dude and I ventured off to Rural King early saturday morning. What was listed online for $42.99 was marked $62.99 and had a shelf tag reading $54.99 confusing much? Being the person that I am, I pulled up www.ruralking.com online inserted my zipcode, and pulled up the store website. Showed the clerk the price it showed online, and got the paint for the price I had planned to pay.

However my barn has not been painted since Ive had this house (over 6 yrs) and the weathered wood literally soaked the paint in. 5 gallons got me 2 sides done. I have 2 sides left PLUS the gables.

The worst part though, is that the paint is not red, as the bucket stated. Its a clay/brownish color. So not only will I be buying 1 more bucket of this at $42.99 then I will be buying TRUE red barn paint from TSC for $50 for 5 gallons and probably need 2 of those. I figured about $100 for this project and its easily stretching into $200 fast. *sigh*

When its done, it will look really good for pictures with some sunflowers planted in front of it though :)

Farm expansion

So after last summer's Great Chicken Massacre, I decided to order some chicks from www.idealpoultry.com Ive ordered from them before, and had good luck with the chicks I get. So I went online and started building my shopping cart, 2 chicks at a time.  The soonest ship date was September 21st, so I ordered my chicks for that date. 15 of them.

Well then I noticed Red, my broody hen sitting on a nest, when I poked her enough she moved to reveal she was sitting on 15 eggs. I figured they probably wouldnt hatch, simply because my biggest roo was only 5 months old.

I should have known better LOL chicks started hatching September 15th. I was gone over the weekend but came home to 2 eggs left. One partially hatched and one that didnt even try. So I figured I had 13 chicks running with Red. Nope just 2. Cute little black and yellow production red/barred rock mixes.

Then she overtook one of the other hen's nest and started sitting on THEIR eggs!