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Icy roads made for a peaceful morning as school was first delayed then canceled. By late morning, the roads were fine, and I drove the kids to McDonald's. McDumpster's is what I call it. They do have good... um... oh, they have good French fries. Everyone raves about their coffee; I just don't really like it, though it does the job when I need it.
After a little drive around the countryside, we traipsed up the road to the northern part of our county to the Amish store.
I hadn't been there since the kids were little because, at that time, it took all day to get them ready, pack a lunch and sippies and my coffee sippy, make sure to have extra diapers and clothes, make sure we're between naps, and so forth; then finally to get to the store, handle fussy children with hunger and potty issues, then arrive back home as a puddle of Jell-o who still has to take care of home, family, and supper.
So I stopped going.
Then today the kids suggested it. Now that they're big, I can take them places with a fairly good chance that nobody, the kids nor I, will turn into a Jell-o puddle halfway through the store.
It actually was lots of fun. Kal and Kara first stared at the rainbow of colors in the candy aisle. That took their attention while I tried to find boring things like flour and oatmeal between their ubiquitous calls to come look at this or that.
This Amish store is the type where you don't have to keep your kids within 2 feet of you at all times. Granted, I'm aware danger can lurk anywhere, but it's small enough that everyone can see everybody else in there. Plus, on an icy-road Tuesday midday, we almost had the store to ourselves.
Needless to say, we came out with a plethora of candy plus the boring foods. I did walk past, hardly, the bags of dried marshmallows of the sort that are in Lucky Charms cereal. I get Lucky Charms just for those bits of dried sugar, and here was a whole bag! Nope, I had to model good character for the children and keep my crying over it inside me.
Kal had to pick up his jaw off the floor when he saw the meat counter. He's turning into his dad.
Close to the Amish store is the used food store. That's another person's term for it, and I find it fits quite well. This store carries all the overstock and almost-expired food that the bigger stores have to offload. I'm not keen on buying dented mystery cans, but I did find my favorite brand of coffee for less than half of the normal store price. And, as a bonus, the packaging was perfect.
I find I can only get a few things in that store until I get over to the freezer section, which again, makes my son pick up his jaw off the floor when seeing those massive cuts of ribeye and thick bacon--real man's bacon.
One other fun sight there, more fun to see than to eat, is this can of tripe. Do you know what tripe is? It's stomach lining. This one is from a cow.
I wish I'd recorded my children's faces when they found out what tripe is.