Click-Clack Mafia: Miller Time

Back in February, our dear friends, The Miller Family, who now live in Park City, Utah stayed with us for 3 glorious days!

Valla and Bella

Elliot and Natalie

Scott and Lauren (the old married couple)

Daisy got LOTS of attention and love

Little did we know of the crazy wild goose chase of a day that was just minutes away from unfolding!

For years, I've heard about how neat it is to visit De Leon Springs Park and cook your own pancakes on a hibachi style grill table. Sounded like a perfect adventure for our families right?! We called ahead and was told there was about a 45 minute wait. So we packed a few crackers and fruit and headed on our way.

It's a gorgeous park with a great swimming area that the kids tried really hard to fall into.

By the time we got there, the wait had exploded to 2.5 hours!! We decide that was too long to wait to eat and figured we'd take the entrance guard's offer of a $6 entrance fee refund if the wait was too much.

On our way back to the cars we were drawn to these amazing Oak trees that touched the ground and almost invited the most novice of climbers. The kids loved them and enjoyed being monkeys.

That is until the ~~sarcastic~~ borderline friendly park ranger pointed out this sign that all 10 of us (ok only 8 can actually read) walked right past. Oops!

So after we loaded everyone back into the car we returned to the guard gate to get our $6. He looked at our receipt and announced he told us he could only refund our money if we were in there a half an hour or so, not an hour.

Our receipt was stamped 9:54 and it was now 10:31.

Like most government employees, he had been robbed of his ability to use common sense and reasonable judgement. After some arguing, supervisor name and number requesting and a threat to call the police if we didn't move along, we donated our $6 and decided to pick up a quick breakfast and head to our next destination, strawberry picking which was about an hour away.

Call it intuition, a 6th sense or just Jason being smart, but 5 minutes into our ride Jason suggested I call the strawberry patch to make sure they were open and ready for us. I got a message saying all their fields had picked out the day before, a new batch will be ready to pick in 3 days. Lovely.

So now we have 10 disappointed people which include 6 hungry kids, 1 grumpy dad (at least in my car, can't verify Nick's mood either way) and 2 frustrated moms. I look to my left and spy the anti-Christ, Walmart. To see why I haven't cast my shadow over their threshold in 13 months, click here. But tough times call for tough choices.

We decide to go back to the pancake place, finish out our wait, eat and then enjoy the park. Jason of course assures us by making this decision, our names have already been called and we will be put back at the bottom of the 2.5 hour waiting list.

The two moms, ran into Walmart, bought bathing suits, swim diapers and more fruit to hold us over. I tried to hold my breath during my entire visit and I SWEAR management kept a watchful eye on my every move. Back to our friendly guard gate attendant we went, fully expecting him to exploit an additional $6 from us. He wisely smiled and nodded us through.

We all held our breath as we raced to the restaurant to see where we were on the list... our names were close to the top but hadn't been called. Hallelujah!

They were by far the best darned pancakes of the day.

Matching suits!

Our next dining out experience was much easier... reservation do that :)
Willow Tree, amazing German restaurant with wonderful atmosphere.

Who doesn't love to dance during dinner?!

Or just share lollipops.

Fun at the park

Emery & Kit at the park

A Carrington Park (our old neighborhood) Reunion!

Crazy girl

There had been a dead lizard at the bottom of our pool for about a week. The kids started talking about diving down to get him out. Here we are chanting on Elliott to get him.