Xing

You know those yellow road signs that say “___ crossing”?  (or “XING”, which when I read in my head, I like to pronounce “zing”.  It’s a lot more fun that way.)  I’m talking about the school-crossing signs, the Railroad Xing signs, the occasional Deer Xing.  No big deal, right?

Well lookie what I found:

Yeah, that’s right, TRACTOR Xing!

Now, I’ve seen this gem on this road quite a few times, and always thought about writing about it.  But when I saw this on this very road, I knew I HAD to share it with you:

 (pardon the glare- this photo op was a last second decision)

WHAT IS THIS?!  This is not a tractor, my friends.  This is like the T-Rex of tractors!  I’m sorry, but the Tractor Xing sign is deceiving.  This is not the same little tractor displayed on that sign.  I literally had to pull over to let this monster through, and he even has one tire on the grass!  Whatever it is, it was awesome.

If you look closely, you will see 2 kids along for the ride in Daddy’s dinosaur.  They probably laughed at me when they saw my jaw in my lap with my camera phone aimed straight at them.  I think I heard the little boy shake his head and say, “Don’t mind us, just headed out for some ice cream!”

Me?!?

Check this out!

I was contacted by Colleen Lanin who is the editor/founder of the wonderful TravelMamas.com and the Travel Channel Leader at Tree.com and I am so excited to announce that she asked me to be a guest-blogger for her website!  My first reaction was, "Are you sure you have the right, Alli-Bama?", followed by, "AWESOME!".  Travel Mamas is a website dedicated to helping parents learn how to travel with kids without going insane and she asked me to write a guest-post on Alabama!  Woohoo!

I am so glad to help promote the lovely state of Alabama because people who have never been here may have a perception of Alabama that consists solely of mullets and trailers (as I once did...guilty!).  There is really so much to offer here and I am so glad to share what I have learned with others!

The post is the feature story on the Travel Mamas website right now! You can read it here!  Enjoy!

Crawfish!!

For our good friend, Austin’s, birthday he and his wife, Rachel (equally awesome) hosted a crawfish boil.  Now, let me tell you a little bit about crawfish.  Ahead of time, I was told that crawfish are very similar to shrimp.  I can do shrimp, no prob. I love shrimp.  Then I saw the suckers and these are NOT shrimp, my friends.  These things look like something that city-folk would not touch with a ten foot pole. 

 (Sorry bud, it's true)

However, that is definitely not the case here in the South.  At a crawfish boil, everyone gathered around a huge table with holes cut out in the middle.  (Another first for me!)  And beneath the holes, they put trash cans…which made me think things were going to get messy.  

If by messy, I mean really really messy, then yes, I was right.  Here is what you do to eat crawfish.

1.            1.  Hold by the head and the tail.

2.            2.  Pull.

3.            3.  Eat the 0.0000004 oz of meat that appears.

4.            4.  Toss the remains through the hole in the table.

 

Ok maybe you get a little more than 0.0000004 ounces but for the size of the poor guy, he ain’t packin’ much meat.  (It may also have something to do with the fact that every time I pulled apart my crawfish, some of the meat would get stuck in the tail which was just as good as being gone forever – those shells are sharp! ) This means, that if I wanted to fill up on crawfish, I need to rip open and eat a ton of them.  They were so tasty, but I think I need to become a little more efficient at getting the meat out.  I wonder what the amount of calories burned is vs. the calories ingested?

Actually, I take that back.  Along with the yummy crawfish, they boiled potatoes and corn.  DELISH! And Rachel made Summer Beer which is a perfect mix of beer, pink lemonade, water and vodka.  Strange, right? Wrong.  It was SO GOOD!  Then, to top it all off, Rachel also made Austin’s birthday cake.  It was chocolate with peanut butter frosting (made from scratch), which, to this peanut butter fanatic, was the most awesomely awesome cake I have ever eaten.  

I am no longer interested in the calories eaten to calories burned ratio.