Turtle racing and chocolate covered bacon! Vacation 2012 - Stage 2

Stage 2 of Vacation 2012 took us to see Dave's mom in Missouri.  The town she lives in, hosts a festival every fall, and there is a small carnival that goes along with it, which the kids keep wanting to spend their money on.

Weather was pleasant the whole trip, and when we arrived at Grandma's house, (over the river and through the woods, really!) we all managed to cram into her small duplex.  This was easier in prior years, when the Monkeys were a wee bit smaller than they are now!  Still, there is a lot less of Dave and I, so I guess that makes up for it!  The kids crash on sleeping bags in the living room and we get the spare bedroom.

The festival has a 'famous turtle race', that of course, Monkey2 has been totally in love with ever since his first turtle won a preliminary heat.  So every year we beg for an extra turtle so the kids can race.  The locals always catch more than enough turtles, so this isn't a big issue.  Then after the race, the turtles get let go safely.  This year, we even caught our own frisky turtle!  It was sitting in the middle of the lake road, and so I stopped and snagged it.  That way it wouldn't get hit by a lake-car.

There were over 100 racers this year, and for the other Monkeys, we had to beg a couple turtles so everyone had their racer.  They were all amp'd up and rarin' to go, as turtles will, before the race, but sadly, every time one of the Monkeys' turtles had their chance at fame, instead of running to the edge of the circle like a good little racing turtle, they stood there, as if they were bolted to the floor of the stage!  Also, I totally forgot to take pictures of the racing!  Sorry!

We spent most evenings, walking around the park where the festival is, chatting with folks we know, and looking at the goods for sale, and trying our poor luck at winning the local raffles.  They always raffle off a lot of nice firearms and handmade quilts. However the raffles were not a complete loss this year--the kids won Grandma a ticket for a drawing on $20 at the local grocery, and she WON!  YAY!  Our first winner!

Another aspect of the festival is the food...not always a good thing, if one has been working hard for a year to lose weight and keep it off!  There were funnel cakes, fried oreos, ice cream, fajitas, bratwurst, burgers, turkey legs, BBQ, hand dipped corndogs....and this Chocolate Covered Bacon!

I am adding this pic to prove that such a thing exists, and in honor of Brigid, one of my favorite bloggers out there.  Brigid, I had some of the chocolate covered bacon, and it really was GOOD!  Though I think it would be better using dark chocolate.  That sign on the end of the trailer is the Big Bee BBQ team, just in case they ever come up Indy-way.

One night there was a duck calling contest. Any kid could participate, based on age groups, so all 3 Monkeys decided they could make noise too!

 None of them had ever seen a duck call, let alone tried to imitate the real thing, so this was amusing.  We knew there were some accomplished callers in all the age groups, so we didn't expect to win.  But they all had some fun trying.

Once the competition got into the older kids, the calling got very good, and it was harder for the judges to choose the winners.  All the kids got to keep the duck call they used, which was promptly reposessed by us parental units!  Hey, we like our sleep!

The weekend features a big parade, with floats, horses (Monkey1's favorite), classic cars, and lots of candy thrown at kids along the route.  This latter has been a problem for us in years past--the kids bug me constantly, begging for candy, and neither Dave nor I want to have the candy in the house, lest we be tempted too.  So as we did last year, the candy gathered by the Monkeys will go into the Halloween give-away bowl, and they will get to give it out, in costume on Halloween.  They they get to watch a scary movie or two (we are thinking Alien 1 & 2, or maybe some Tim Burton stuff), have some pizza and popcorn, and dessert.  They seemed to enjoy the change, and I certainly did!  Last years movies were The Birds (Hitchcock) and An American Werewolf in London.  Both classics of the genre.

I cherry-picked some photos from the parade, and the car shots are for my friend in KC, who appreciates a good musclecar more than most!

The parade of course had horses.  But the big palomino with the fancy tack was absent this year.  I hope it and its rider are ok...they were always the fanciest horse and rider in the parade.

Yeah, that one is a mule.  A good ol' Missouri MULE!  He was the tail-end Charlie of the entire parade too.

Not all of the visit was happiness and joy, though, for Grandma's cat had been ill.  Rip, as he was known, used to be Dave's cat from when we were first dating.  He was about 15yrs old, and had lost a lot of weight and had been obsessing about water, not to mention some noticeable behavior changes.

So Dave & Grandma opted to take Rip on that long, one-way trip to the vet.  Nobody was happy about it, but getting him crated up would have been difficult for Grandma, all things considered, so it was probably better that Dave be there to help out.  Rip did show a flash of his old personality, by trying to remove Dave's finger with his teeth, while Dave was attempting to crate him.

 The kids didn't understand at first, why Dave and I dug a big deep hole in the back yard.  I took them out metal detecting at the lake swim beach, while Rip went to the vet.  I told them to find Grandma a 'nice lake rock' for her garden.  They managed to find a suitable headstone for Rip.  Then, once they were back home, we told them what had happened, and they wanted to decorate Rip's grave, much like we had decorated my father's grave the week before.

The trip home was uneventful, and we got in early enough that I was able to drive 90mi west to get the dogs home the same day.  I think EVERYONE was happy to be home, sleeping in their own beds!  I know I sure was...

Vacation 2012-Stage 1

Vacation 2012 has come and gone--all too short as usual.  Our trip was like most of our family vacations at this time of life--fondly called the Grandmas Tour.  Both our mothers are still living, and with our young children, we want them all to have time together while they can.  ( I grew up without grandparents of any kind, so I want my kids to have that relationship that was denied me by death.)

Stage 1 of the tour took us to our favorite little piece of Heaven on Earth.  It is a 30 acre retreat, owned and managed by the church we came to faith through.  There is a shelter house, with kitchen facilities, flush toilets and showers, not to mention heat/AC !  We bring our sleeping bags and fishing poles, for there is a wonderful 3acre pond on site.

Normally this pond is a bass fisherman's dream.  This year however, with the drought in the area, the pond was down about 3ft.  The bass were noticeably smaller than in past years, and not as hungry.  However, they did bite for all of us, save Monkey1, who caught a crappie instead.  I did ok, too, with a couple bass, a crappie, and a mess of bluegill.

Here are some of the Monkeys' catches.

There were plenty of other critters to play with, chase, and/or catch up at the retreat.  Darned bullfrogs!  Those dunb things would always bite on a fishing lure...and they are most difficult to UNhook too.  There were a couple dogs up there, for the kids to play with.  One, Hank, is a lonely border collie, who stayed around us the entire time we were there--even to the point of sleeping outside the shelter house, to chase off critters for us at night, barking barking barking all the while...

Then down by my mom's, her neighbor has 3 more dogs, two of which are playful, with the kids too.  The dogs loved the extra attention, and the kids cherished more dog-time.

Rusty

Pixie

We got to spend time with my mom, and even persuaded her to go fishing with us one afternoon!  She said she hadn't been fishing since she was a kid herself, on vacations to Minnesota.  It looked like she had fun too, though I did wish I had a Zebco reel for her to cast with--the open faced reel was not her favorite.

It was a pleasant time, well spent with family and friends, and good food.  We actually managed to not gain weight, despite eating off the plan, and not getting any riding or much walking in.

Thus ends Stage 1 of Vacation 2012.