Golf, Art and the Meat Birds

As always, Gabe throughly enjoyed his time with family and friends at the Civiello Invitation which celebrated it's 50th Anniversary this year!  

While Gabe was enjoying golf the kids and I were getting back into "real life".  Nannie came to visit for a bit, we had a "let's clean out the freezer" dinner and did lots of swimming in the pool. 

On Saturday, Shannon and I took all of the kids to Reid State Park to the beach.  Well, apparently over the last year everyone grew up... we were at the beach from 10:30-3:30/4... like real adults. At no point did anyone complain, fight or whine to leave... no one had a break down.  The kids literally played in the water or sand (and seemed to enjoy themselves) all day.  AND Shannon and I got to visit like actual adults!  It was very surreal and we probably won't be going back to the beach for a while until the stars align perfectly like that again;) 

On Sunday, I had to have the meat birds in Skowhegan by 9am... I had everything prepared the night before as well as a perfect plan (there is a chance I was still a bit traumatized from the pig loading incident and since I was alone, it raised the stakes). The kids were all on board with what we were going to have to do in order to leave our house that early with 20 meat birds in back of the car. Everything was going smoothly until I went out back to load up the birds and saw white feathers and bird parts strewn everywhere. Only expletives were going through my head at the thought raising the birds for the past 8 weeks just to have them all eaten by someone else the night before their slaughter date.  I regained my composure to count the now free ranging meat birds that were supposed to be in the pen for easy wrangling.  Mercifully, we only lost two!  I was so happy I almost cried, except now I was running behind schedule and had to chase the birds around to cage them.  Luckily, full grown meat birds are not super smart or fast. Like old pros, Noah, James and I grabbed chickens while Ben and Audrey opened up the cage door and made sure no one got out.  I am sure it was quite a scene, but everyone did great.  

At the start of our 50 minute drive to the farm I realized that I didn't have my wallet... I had left it at the Bennett's house the night before in a beach bag I had not bothered to turn around and get last night because I thought it only contained towels... Naturally, the gas tank was empty and without a wallet I didn't even have the ability to withdraw money from the credit union... I raided the kid's wallets and scrounged together $10 for gas, which I sent Noah into the register to pay for partially because I haven't bought gas with cash in years and partially because we were now super late.  To summarize, there is no direct route between Skowhegan and Wayne Maine, so I spent the entire two hours waiting for the birds to be processed driving to get my wallet... The upside is that the kids were super patient and the meat looks amazing!  Tessier's Farm in Skowhegan did such a fantastic job I felt like I had walked out of Hannaford with the chicken:)