When we first left Wyoming and moved East, we lived in a burb of Charlotte, NC. We were pretty overwhelmed being from "the sticks" and then suddenly living in the burbs of a city with a larger population than the whole state of Wyoming! Since we didn't know too many people, we decided to do Family Fun Day at least once a month. I think at first Jarod and Sara were ok with this because they didn't know too many people either, but I'm sure as they started making friends and getting involved in school activities, they dreaded our weekend Family Fun Days! We had some really great times...we toured an abandoned gold mine, we drove around the beautiful country roads and found cotton fields. That was a pretty fun day, wouldn't you agree Sara? Sara and I wanted to get out and pick some cotton...we'd never ever seen cotton fields, let alone picked it...so we convinced Cleo to stop the car and let us out. Cleo and Jarod were nervous for us, ok maybe they were more concerned about themselves, what with all the stories we'd heard about "Southern pride" and protecting ones' crops. So Sara and I got out of the car, ran through the fields and yes, we did pick some cotton. Well, sure enough as we were in the middle of the field, the landowner slowly approached our car in an old pickup truck and you could all but see the shotgun tucked away right next to him on the seat of that old truck. Cleo and Jarod were livid...yelling at us to hurry up. We ran back to the car, as fast as Sara and I could run, but not before we had a handful of cotton and we sped off leaving behind a trail of dust! I had such grand ideas about the cute, crafty things we could make with that cotton, but as you guessed, that never happened, LOL! One of the most "epic" FFDs' we had was our trip to the "zoo" in Asheville. Cleo loves zoos and he really wanted to go to one, so he suggested we drive to the zoo in Asheville. I said "do you know where it is?" he said "no, but we'll stop when we get there and ask directions"...so with that we loaded into the car and headed for Asheville to see the zoo. It was a pretty drive, we'd never been to Asheville and we (Cleo and I, not so much Jarod & Sara) looked forward to a fun family day. We got to Asheville and drove around looking for signs that might lead us to the zoo...nothing, no signs at all, so I finally convinced Cleo to stop at the Chamber of Commerce and we can surely find a brochure for the zoo. We found lots of brochures for things to do and see in the Asheville area, but no zoo. I finally asked someone (much to Cleos' dislike...what man likes to ask for help??) and wouldn't you know, there is NO zoo in Asheville...it's in Asheboro, NC...SERIOUSLY??? We ended up at the Nature Center, which had a few animals, but it wasn't exactly a zoo. The kids were not amused, at all!!! We drove back home through Chimney Rock, which is a super windy road but had lots of really fun stores and a really good little place to eat...did I mention Sara gets car sick?? Umm yeah, she did not enjoy this route home...not one bit. We asked Cleo on the ride home why he thought the zoo was in Asheville...his answer, "Asheville just sounds like the kind of place a zoo would be"...that was before our look it up on Google days:)
Keeping all that in mind and all the fun times we had back in the day, Cleo and I decided this past Saturday we'd have a FFD with just the two of us. We normally like to be at home on the weekends, out in the yard or the woods behind the house, but the weather man said the high would be about 59 and it would be rainy most of the day. We ended up in McDonough, or maybe it was Hampton I'm still not really sure but the Atlanta Motor Speedway was in sight so we were in the vicinity. We found an Academy Sports store, which was Cleos' goal all along, and spent several hours there. The place was packed...packed like it was a closeout sale or something! Maybe all those people thought it was going to rain too...I don't know but there was a lot of people in that store. Cleo wanted to buy a pair of girly, camo rain boots for me...he had seen them in the online ad...so we headed for the shoe section first. It was a "madhouse" and Cleo was not amused at all that the herd didn't part when he walked down the aisle:) I took the buggy and headed the other direction...I did not want any part of what I thought would be a "scene"! I decided to head back after several minutes when I hadn't seen, or more importantly heard from Cleo. He was pissed...pissed because he couldn't find the exact boots he'd seen online and he really wanted me to have those boots (Bless his heart...yup, one of my favorite endearing Southern slang terms). He did mange to find a camo jacket and 2 cute shirts, with camo trim that he bought for me, and a few things he "needed" before leaving the store. He is obsessed with buying me things that are camo...I need to find a way to camo a diamond into this obsession...oh wait, that would be a lump of coal, yeah no I'm good...I don't know what I'd even do with a lump of coal except maybe wait a million years or so for it to turn into a diamond;)
We ended up eating a nice late lunch in Fayetteville at a place called Franks @ the Old Mill...it was AMAZING! We'd driven by this place many times and heard great things about it, but had never stopped. It was worth the whole trip. We will definitely be going there again.
So, my short story made long, the weather man was WRONG, it never did rain and it got up to 72 degrees...a perfect day to be outside, in the yard or the woods but in keeping with our FFD traditions, it was a fantastic day spent with my sweet hubby. I hope we have many, many more adventures and stories to tell on our FFDs to come.
3 years ago
