Today was our last rest day ): You guys might all be excited to have your kids home soon, but I think just a few of us are pretty bummed to leave! Yeah, it’s way too humid, there are too many spiders and the showers are misery, but some of us have learned to love life at the barn! I, for one, will definitely be sad to leave!
We started off this rest day as we start off most rest days — with a delicious breakfast as cooked by Maddawg! We had pancakes galore, with as much bacon as we could cook before our burner gave out. Maddawg, Jess, Callie, and Maggie dedicated themselves to the cause, and made custom pancakes to order!
Afterwards we did some chores, then all piled into the vans to commence our rest day activities. We had quite the day of activities planned, so the sooner we started, the more activities we could complete! We went straight to the Ale-8 factory, and stocked up on Ale-8 t-shirts, keychains, and all other sorts of useless doodads that had the Ale 8 logo on them. The receptionists there were incredibly patient with our enormous group, especially when we all had armfuls of t-shirts and were all looking to check out at pretty much the same time. Ashleigh and Meredith bought Ale 8 flavored lollipops, and pretty much regretted their decision immediately. Word on the street is that the Ale 8 flavor is only good as a soda …
After the factory it was nearing time for lunch, so we headed to Lexington, so we could eat at some local flav — aka a shopping mall filled with the same restaurants any other mall in America has. After chowing down, we set the kids free in the mall for about 45 minutes, so Kyle could continue to mix the day up by playing golf, which obvi he never does. Not actual golf, of course, but he found some virtual driving range thing in the Dick’s Sporting Goods, and smacked balls into a screen. Riveting. Ellis, who I guess literally got dressed in the dark this morning, wore bright blue pants with a bright blue shirt. Obviously we all made fun of him immediately for wearing blue on blue and being so tacky, but Breezy and Lolo win the award for most dedicated to harassing him. They probably mocked him for 45 minutes on his poor attire choices, and he almost changed when we got back to the barn. Emphasis placed on “almost. “
Unfortunately some crazy weather was rolling in as we left the mall, so instead of playing Ultimate and then going swimming at the local poo as we had planned, we bailed and went back to the barn. Nerr and Lolo got into a tickling match in the van, and it ended up with Lolo legitimately laying on the floor to escape Nerr / get a better vantage point to tickle her. By the time we got back to the barn, we thought we might still have enough time to at least get a couple jumps off the cliff near the barn, but by the time everyone changed into their swimsuits and loaded up into the vans, the clouds were so ominous and we decided to kick it at the barn instead.
Which was a great choice, because as soon as we got back to the barn, the skies opened and we got a really pretty awesome lightning show. Luckily the barn is filled with an assortment of games, so we busted out Rummikub, Nickolodeon Trivial Pursuit, and Risk. Rummikub and the Trivial Pursuit game turned out to be a bust (even a Trivial Pursuit aimed at children is way, way too hard), Beans, Delivery, Carson and 2 Chainz went strong with Risk. Apparently it is a game that could take hours upon hours to play, and as of this writing, the players all took a break, and now no one knows what happened to the board. It has legitimately disappeared. Since we are such a competitive bunch, we also broke out into some feats of strengths type games at the barn. I made the mistake of offering to arm wrestle Meredith for use of her marker, and the always-sweet Mere-Bear actually took me up on it! Which obviously turned into an all-out arm wrestling war, where I got beat by everyone. Delivery was a pretty bomb arm wrestler, and Jess with her super-long arms was also quite the contender. When arm wrestling just wasn’t enough, someone had the great idea to start Indian Leg Wrestling. If you don’t know what that is, it’s basically two people laying next to each other, alternated so your toes are next to the other person’s head, and you link arms, and then twist your legs around each other and try to flip the other person over your head. Niko and Eric were super into it, and had some pretty epic matches. Meredith was pretty strong at it, as was Rachel! She definitely made some pretty impressive take downs! Dinner was mac and cheese, straight after which we all got to work writing our notes, since tomorrow is our last climbing day and a note day. The kids have all been writing notes to the seniors as well, so everyone is writing a lot of notes! I don’t see as many random objects being written on, so I think everyone is taking this note day seriously and writing stuff that’s more heartfelt instead of outrageous.
We’re all holed up in the barn now, and there are chess games being played and there are concerning amounts of kids piling themselves on the sketchy bunk beds.
Stay tuned for our last climbing day tomorrow! Rumor has it we are hitting up Roadside again and maybe the Lode!
BREAKING NEWS: Callie signing in here, live reporting the events at the barn at 10:32 this evening (I was proof reading the blog for Caillin at this moment and have taken it upon myself to update it). Kyle has just walked into the barn with an armload of ice cream, which in and of itself is not surprising, but everyone was floored when he revealed that all the drumsticks and cookie sandwiches and pints are for the kids and not just him! He is letting the kids come up and choose an ice cream item in sound-off order. Caillin has leapt up to snag a pint of Cherry Garcia, though she needn’t have hurried since that’s the world’s worst flavor of anything and nobody else would’ve wanted it. Anyways, as I write this, the now incredibly energetic kids have started a chorus of “thank you kyle!!”s, and it seems he has once again managed to buy their affection. That’s the latest scoop (ice cream pun) from the barn, so this is me signing off and relinquishing the blog back to Caillin. Stay classy
on the road with team texas 