Friday

Today we met the McMullens (minus Daryl) at Chick-fil-a for lunch (another tradition in the making) and let the kids run wild for a while. Nice. After that, Adam dropped me off at work so that Freida could cut out early. Unfortunately for her, my weak, sick and pathetic sister was looking and behaving like death up at the front counter, so Freida very kindly and mercifully let Katie go home early while Freida and I hung out and picked up the slack (love you kate!). We cranked some stuff out while putting up with "Bob the Builder" Mark and his wonderful assistant, the Sr. Turner, moving things around, nailing, sanding, banging and just generally making a lot of noise. Customers love that. It feels like things are happening. And, seriously, the store is looking GREAT! There's still a lot that we'd like to get done, but they're making HUGE progress. Anyway, I had gotten Patty to switch shifts with me so that she'd work tonight and I take her Sunday shift, so Adam came and picked me up and we headed for the "Midwest's Largest Youth Fair" up in Berrien. Great way to blow a bunch of money. $12 to get it (and Abby was free!), $22 in ride tickets, at least $15 in food - and only that little because a wonderfully kind and generous friend of ours from GCC happens to run a GYRO booth there and he GAVE Adam and me our dinner and drinks for FREE!! We easily would have hit $30 if that hadn't happened! All in all it was a great time for everybody. The kids loved all of the rides they went on, and if we were made of money, we could have done that for days. In the future we're going to have to get smart and actually do wristband day or something. They loved the food, they loved the flashing lights and the animal barns. The highlight was the "Miracle of Birth" Barn (sounds much more graphic than it actually was). There were brand new baby chicks and ones still in eggs in the incubator hatching away, baby goats, a baby llama, baby cow, baby pony, baby horse, baby cow, etc. Almost all of them were within reach and willing to be petted and the kids took advantage. It was awesome to see them marvelling at these brand new little (or not so little in some cases!) animals. It was a lot of fun. We're going to start saving up now for next year.