Life on the farm

The morning started out very early and we were so excited to get to the city and start that part of our adventure. So we set a couple of alarms, you know – to really make sure that we get up in the morning. Well we even woke up early and off to the bus station we went. The attendant told us yesterday to be there 1/2 hour early, so we followed her suggestion and was sitting at the station at 6 am. Well… when it was 6:45 (remember that we were suppose to leave at 6:30)  they announced that our bus was going to leave at 7:15 instead because we needed to wait for a driver. What? Then they announced that they were going to cancel our bus and we could take the 8:30 bus. When we asked what happened they said that they didn’t the math. So now we’re waiting in Syracuse just holding our breath that a Greyhound driver would actually show at 8:30 so we could get to downtown New York for our Broadway show. And let’s just say that these show tickets were not cheap. So finally  we were leaving the station at 9 o’clock. Yea, not cool at all.

Beautiful scenery, but we were hoping that the driver would go faster!

Lots of trees along the way

But if it was a 5 hr trip, we should still get there on time. But to make a long story a little bit shorter, we finally was walking off the bus at 2:30 pm. This was 3 hrs later than we originally thought.! I’m not saying that we’re experts on public transport, but this wasn’t our first rodeo either. I think it was one of the most disorganized travel that I’ve seen before. Now normally this wouldn’t be such a big deal unless you needed to be 10 blocks away at 3:00. We were so thankful that we had backpacks instead of lugging around a suitcase, and off we went weaving through the crowd and their umbrellas (yea, it was also raining) but guess what? We made the 10 block sprint with even time to spare. The new ‘wonder’ sandals that I bought worked great, but I’m not so sure all the water was so good for them. Daryl made the comment that we were going to be so wet when we get to the theater, but honestly we went so fast I don’t think we had time to get wet. We checked our backpacks into coat check and into the theater we went. And the show? It was great! Not only was the story good, but the singing was fantastic. We all really had the best time there.  It absolutely was worth the hassle and I would do it all over again if we had to. I mean how many times do you run 10 blocks in New York, with backpacks on, and in the rain, and then be smiling once you arrive?

So after the show we were still talking about how good the show was and that after the long bus ride, we sure had good luck that we made it to the theater, when Kyle saw a sign on the street as we were walking to our hotel that said that you could sign up for the lottery for tickets for the Letterman show that they were taping Monday afternoon. Now we have been trying to get tickets for weeks, but with no luck. How it works is that you have to answer trivia questions if you get called, and Daryl had his notes on the trivia questions in his wallet in case he got called. But since we never got called, we decided to try for this ticket lottery that we saw today. So I always knew Daryl was a schmoozer, but I never really knew how much! He was laying it on thick with the kids helping with the paperwork, and guess what? We got called and we got tickets. Way to go Kyle for seeing the sing and way to go Daryl for working it to help get tickets. We are really excited to go tomorrow and pick up our tickets and find out what we need to do. The show is a live show and will be aired on Monday night. Fun!

After all the excitement, we then decided to find something for supper.  We found ourselves in a small deli and had  some lasagna, ravioli, calzone, and some garlic knots. I’ve never had garlic knots and would order them again. Then it was time to get back to the hotel because we have a very busy day tomorrow.

We’re hoping for better weather tomorrow

These are Italian garlic knots

Amazing! I’ve been trying to figure out how to describe the day and the word just amazing comes first to mind. Let’s backup to the beginning of the day. The morning started with all of us dressed and now heading to the college for a Brunch. We laughed on the way there because the radio station was in French because we were so close to the border. But it did’t take too long and we found ourselves at the college at the brunch and looking for the auditorium for the festivities. We split up from Kyle and settled into our seats. As I was siting there waiting for the program to start, I started to think just where did the time go? And when did our boys grow up? Then I thought, I better not cry BEFORE it starts. Just as I was trying to be cool about everything, Kyle was calling and noticed that his hat tassel was gone on his hat. Daryl and Kyle met each other and with a whole lot of luck,  found the tassel under the seat buried in the mist of everything else. You know when you’re in a situation and think to yourself ‘man that was lucky’, well that’s what we thought at the time. Then the ceremony starts, and when the guest speaker has trouble not getting so emotional, now how in the world could you expect me not to? With smiles on everyones faces, we were so proud of Kyle on his Masters degree and wish him all the best in his future adventures.

CONGRATULATIONS!

I asked the guys for a nice hand shake picture and I got this

After some photo op’s we went to find something to eat. We found a Djrecks Subs. This is a very known restaurant in the North Country and we were up to trying something new. One thing to order there was deep fried pickles, and since I never had one before I was game. They were pretty good. With the weather really beautiful, we were so much more wide awake this time driving back to Syracuse to our next hotel. We checked in and it was time again to eat. And I wonder why I want to loose weight? OK, so we had the garmin in the car and our first stop was to this huge mall that had over 200 stores in it. Yea, it was huge. Our mission was to buy me some sunglasses and we needed also some suntan lotion.

Maybe not?

Well the sunglasses were easy, but suntan lotion just wasn’t going to happen. Now remember 200 stores right? But we’ll find some tomorrow and we went to find some supper. We found this one bbque spot, but the wait was 1 1/2 hrs. We checked the garmin again and saw that there was also another restaurant that was close by, so off we went. It was pretty close and when we finally found a spot to park, we noticed that it was a city biker bar and no one was eating. But we saw that there was a lot take outs and so we ordered. It really was a local hangout, and man the food was good.But wayyyy too much of it. Back to the hotel we went and repacked our backpacks and packed the car for a fun time in the city tomorrow.

We needed to get up and leave early to get to our flight, so instead of sleeping I decided to just stay up and work on getting everything organized. So at 1 am we gave William a hug and headed North to the airport. With William just starting his new job, he’s not able  to go with us. He’s also going to be checking the cattle and other animals while staying at the farm. We really appreciate him helping out. So we had no issues with our flight, and when we get to New York – Kyle is waiting for us. This is an odd feeling that your kid is the responsible one who is in charge of getting you at the airport, but we also really appreciate this. I guess it’s kind of nice having grown up kids. Once we got our luggage, our first thing to do was to check out the bus terminal and get or tickets for Sunday night. It wasn’t a problem finding the terminal and then off to the college to help Kyle check out of his dorm and to see the town that Kyle called home for the past year. But I’m guessing Daryl and I weren’t too  good of company on the drive because we pretty much slept on and off the next two and a half hours until we got to the dorms. When we looked at what needed to fit in the car, we weren’t too sure that it was going to fit and also us all in the car.

Stuff to pack in the ar

I can’t believe that it fit!

But the guys worked on it and soon everything was ready to go. But we soon realized that we were starving. We stopped at a fast food restaurant on the way to the airport at 3:30 am, but they don’t serve breakfast until 4 am. Now chicken nuggets can go a long way, but after about 10 hrs, even they give out. We went to a local sub restaurant and Kyle said that we had to try poutine.

Poutine – very popular area food

This is a French Canadian food that is a platter of french fries with chese and topped with gravy. If you’re thinking that this sounds fattening, I’m thinking that you are probably right!

Kyle standing outside one of the college buildings

I snapped a couple of pictures of Kyle at the college and then the next thing to do was to head to the Canada border and find our hotel. It wasn’t too hard to find at all,  and we found ourselves checking out the St. Lawrence river and Canada from our hotel.

Outside our hotel

After a fun meal at a local restaurant, we called it a night around 10:30. We’ve got a busy day tomorrow!

OK, the first thing that I learned was that I am definitely a stress eater. I know that I posted about this before, and once again tonight I can prove my theory is correct. I got home from work and my list to do was very long. Well I grabbed a container of pickled herring and this is what it looked like when I opened it

Before

And this is what it looks like after about 5 minutes.

After

I also was able to get a terrible belly ache along with it.

So the next thing that I learned was that snakes and lawnmowers don’t go well together. I wanted to re-mow the ditches and yard because it was looking pretty bad, but I also knew that the ditch was pretty wet and I would have to mow it with the push mower. Yea, the snake ditch and push  mower. But as the afternoon went on, I did see two snakes and the one poor snake got all caught up with the mower. I did feel bad for a couple of …. seconds.

While I was working on getting everything mowed, Daryl was still working on planting. Everything was going well for him until things started to go wrong. He stopped for what was supposed to be only a couple of minutes, and found out that he was spending way too much time on the mill, he finally gave up on that and was going to get his tractor home from the repair shop. Well, one thing went to another, and soon he was calling because the tractor belt broke and it needed to get that fixed now. We knew that we were going to have a tight schedule, and I guess it was too tight after all. He did get the corn all planted and only has a little bit of beans left ot plant. The Co-op came out and sprayed before the rain started tonight, so that was actually one thing that actually did work out! In the mean time, I think I better keep the chickens out of the corn until the mill gets fixed!

Working this year with Daryl’s new planter

Bulk fertilizer

Sunday was Mother’s Day and I think we did a really good job this year with the gift for Mom. I don’t know if you have trouble with coming up with good ideas for your Mom, but sometimes we do in our family. But this year we knew that she wanted her wallpaper down in her kitchen, so that was the game plan. The only ‘rule’ Mom had was that if we started to take the paper off, we had to make sure it was going to get finished. OK, I don’t think we ever started something that we didn’t finish – but I guess maybe she was just making sure that it didn’t happen. We kind of took shifts in this whole kitchen remake and it started on Saturday morning. We were a little worried about how the wallpaper was going to come down since it was up for quiet some time. But when I called Mom that a couple of us would come over early to see if it was going to be easy or hard to come off – she had most of it down by then. I guess no turning back now! The hardest part of the whole kitchen remake was trying to figure out just what color to paint it. After waiting for someone to show up in the morning to help Mom and I decide on the color – we took matters into our own hands. She said that she had some leftover grey paint in the garage and we started mixing it with white to lighten it up. We put some samples of different tints of the color on the wall and it wasn’t long until a couple sisters showed up to vote on what looked the best. And as the day went on, not only did Mom’s kitchen get painted, but also her hallway got a fresh coat of paint. The only thing left is to find some new curtains and she’s set. We also got her some flowers for the front of her house. I think she has probably the prettiest flowers around in the summer, so getting her flowers is always a sure bet. And guess what we had for dinner? If you guessed home made noodle soup – you’re right! I think everyone was a winner this weekend.