I woke up at 5am on Saturday. I have a really hard time sleeping when I’m excited about anything :) I finished baking the Key Lime and Pink Lemonade cookies and dad threw the bacon wrapped chicken together for me.
While that was cooking, I grabbed a quick shower..to tame this unruly crazy hair of mine. Needless to say the second I walked outside it went from perfectly straight right back to insanely frizzy. We loaded Charley Tango up with the table, tent, chairs and food coolers and I was off to grab my cousin. After a 30mt haul to pick her up, it was another 30mt haul to grab CB and off to Camden we went. It was raining really, really hard on the interstate. I still have some mild anxiety when driving from my accident. Thankfully CB & Shelley kept talking to me and it took my mind off the driving.
Despite the rain, we made good time. I endured a lot of ribbing about my “old lady” driving. Better to be slow and safe than fast and dead in my opinion. We stopped off in Lugoff to pick up one of my favorite boys! He’s on break from school this week and I am super glad his mom and dad let me borrow him for the day. I haven’t seen him since Christmas and it’s always a special treat to be able to hangout with him. How we managed to cram both guys in the backseat I’ll never know..but somehow we got them in there. The boys hit it off right away and I was relieved. In case you haven’t figured it out..Lemon kind of worries about stupid stuff sometimes..and she’s trying to learn not to worry about everyone else because she has no control over stuff like that.
It took us about 20 more minutes to get to Springdale. We really didn’t sit in traffic long at all. I was quite surprised. I found my parking space with little difficulty. The boys had everything set up within about 15mts. They were impressed at how prepared I was. We had our own tent, chairs, enough food for a small army and Birthday cake!
We got lucky. The parking spaces on both sides of mine were empty so we had a fair amount of space to ourselves :) Our neighbors were super awesome! To the right was a really sweet couple from Wisconsin. Sabrina and Dan are Army :) We talked shop for a bit as my uncle (Shelley’s Dad) is in the Army. They had brought a corn hole set and it wasn’t long before some good old fashioned smack talk ensued between RJ and Shellster. A game began and I must say RJ whipped Shells pretty bad..twice. Dan had an awesome grill that attached to the hitch of his truck.
I must say it was quite an impressive grill! He told us it was the Margaritaville Tailgating Grille. He has a very loving wife :) Sabrina gave it to him for his birthday a couple of years ago. That bad boy retails for $1,199 on eBay. The boys and I were curious so I looked it up online. Needless to say..at that price Lemon won’t be getting one after all :)
It was a bit overcast the beginning of the day..but as the day went on it began warming up and the sun finally peeked out! No rain :)
RJ and headed up to the paddock to see the horses. He’s so sweet to me :) There is a running joke at the cup..What horse? Most people go to the Cup to drink and never actually see the horses. I’m not one of those people. RJ and got to stand right at the paddock for the walk around. I was in heaven! I’ve dreamed of going to the Kentucky Derby and must sadly admit that I’ve never been able to go even when I lived in Kentucky. The Carolina Cup is basically a mini-derby :)
We scoped the horses out and made a little wager. The loser had to buy the winner lunch on Sunday :) RJ picked horse number 7 and picked 3. It’s probably not a smart idea to bet against a girl who’s shown horses her entire life. I know quarter horse and thoroughbred conformation like the back of my hand..but somethings you just don’t tell boys :) Needless to say, at the 1/4 mile mark my horse was 2.5 lengths ahead. By the time he hit the finish line he was 5 lengths ahead! Free lunch for me :) Poor #7 brought up the rear in 6th place out of 7. I ashamedly admit I might have given RJ a hard time about that for the rest of the day. He got me back in race #5 though because my horse scratched.
RJ and I walked around and scoped out the walk about hats and a few other vendors. I must say I thought my homemade hat was as cute as any pre-made ones that I saw. We spent the rest of the day talking, walking around, eating and playing corn hole. It began to look cloudy about 5pm and they were calling for rain so we decided to pack up and head home. I left CB at the races lol. He was hanging out with his fraternity brothers and wasn’t quite ready to leave.
Shelley and I dropped RJ off then made the hour drive home. It was really fun to have her to myself for a whole hour. We don’t get to spend a lot of time together because of work and our crazy lives. I enjoyed it! I finally dropped her off at her brother’s house. He’s just arrived home from his honeymoon :) I left the food at their house too! (win for me!) Their fridge was a little sparse so there were no complaints.
I headed home, unloaded my truck and Lemon went straight to bed..at 7:42pm. Yes, this little, old lady was quite exhausted :) No shame..none.
XoXo!
One Blissfully Exhausted Happy Lemon!
Adventures with Kat 