STICKS, WATER AND FIRE

The boys and I got away for one night this past weekend. It was a treat I had planned before I realized it was Mother's Day. And judging by our calendar, I didn't see a time we would have been able to do it until late June. So I gave myself a little gift and took the boys to Enota for the night. We're not hard to satisfy. It had all our favorites:

Harrison: Sticks
Sully: Water
Me: Fire

Now for the pics....

We made it in time to feed, milk and collect eggs. Sully was torn between watching the chicken's red bottoms and the poop...there was plenty of poop to watch. and some funny goats that I feared had an appetite for tie-dye!
We got to see the new miniature horse
that was only a few days old...
and Harrison did some major egg collecting...
Sully looked at the poop on the eggs...
and then went back outside to study the poop some more...
then the horrors of all horrors...
he was trapped between the poop and the red-bottom chickens.
but he was able to safely escape and find more poop...
yeah...we didn't stick around to milk the cow. We watched the goats being milked and the first cow. By the time the cow that we were allowed to milk came up, I practically threw the kids in the water... They were nastier than nasty. We played in the water until dinner and then we hit the playground...

Another family abandoned their fire and we
gladly jumped in to stoke the cinders.
Victory!
There were awful thunderstorms that night. The boys never heard a sound and with three in a queen sized bed that was desperate need of a box springs...they were the only ones sleeping. Sully is a rule follower...if it's his rule...and breakfast should be eaten in pajamas....so I let him wear them to the lodge to eat some of the eggs we collected. He also has rules about using the proper utensil.
And then we fed the fish...
LIKE A

(Yes we still have Annie Get Your Gun songs stuck in our head!)

We were going to hike to the waterfall, but I left their hiking shoes out in the storm. There was a very safety conscious deer that warned us the trail was too steep for Crocs..."Turn Around! Never befriend people wearing orange! Is that buck scent or did you eat the eggs? The path is steep!" ...such a wise, old deer.
So we hit the falls close to the lodge...
sticks and water...
they really don't need anything else.

On the way home, we had to pull over and check out what made the Smokey Mountains smoke. If you are wondering...it's fog.
Then we hit Helen for lunch. Harrison asked questions nonstop. It's usually entertaining, sometimes annoying, and sometimes I just can't contain my laughter. He's also what I call a "guess reader". He looks at about two, maybe three letters and blurts out whatever he is thinking. So as we pass through the village, he says "What's an Alpino?" I don't know if it was fatigue or lack of diet coke, but I totally lost it. That was almost as good as his observation at dinner last night: "I think the earth is very entertaining for God and Jesus. They can just watch what's going on like a TV. They can look over here and when they get bored, look over here... What? What's so funny?"
We found a lunch place that took Amex and Sully was very excited...can you tell?
While Harrison relived the horror of the time I took him and the cousins tubing...that was not one of my best ideas.
Then we had dessert!
I had lots of homemade goodies when I got home and some flowers.
Bob made me something really cool and I'll post the pictures when it's finished.

Thanks, my boys, for a very happy Mother's Day!