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*