FL part 1: Faster Than a Shed Raisin' in JugFork

We are finding our groove in our new 'hood. I am pretty sure we are the youngest family by about 15-20 years staying for more than a couple of nights. When we first moved in I thought it was going to be neat meeting and chatting with all the senior citizens during the day. But for the first week they really were not that "chatty." The boys and I were out everyday soaking in the sunshine and doing various things throughout the day. Johnny was confined to the bedroom, binge watching every TV series on Prime as he suffered through some kind of terrible respiratory sickness. He ran fever all week and coughed and coughed...and coughed. Johnny is not accustomed to being sick and he sure isn't ok with laying around for long periods of times. SO having to do this for days made him GRUMPY!! The kids and I all made faces and mocked him behind his back when he would come out of his cave. Sorry Johnny...we love you, but we had to survive somehow!

So imagine the day I came into the camper and reported to him that somehow we had water spewing out of the water holding tank cap outside. This is not suppose to happen-those tanks were empty (or so we thought). He was super excited to have to trouble shoot and deal with a problem! (I mean that with much sarcasm.) I walked to the office to see about mobile repairmen that might come out. While in the office, one of the ladies working realized that we were her neighbor and said she was going to call her husband to come over and check it out. On the walk back to the camper, I reached out to the mobile repairman we used in TN and he had told me what the problem was. When I got back to the camper, Lloyd (the neighbor) and Johnny were coming out of the camper. I told Johnny what the guy in TN said and he said that is what he and Lloyd had just concluded (the check valve went bad in the water pump and was allowing water from our city water hookup to fill our tanks and then overflow). According to the internet, it was a quick fix. Of course, Johnny fixed it, because somehow, he just has skills to do almost everything. I have no clue how he learned all this stuff!

Anyway, the news of this little experience of ours traveled fast around the neighborhood. It reminded me of the time when Johnny built the shed behind our house in Jugfork. He went down to Anderson's (the small country store about a mile away) and the couple that ran the store was aware of how many hours he spent building the shed. They couldn't believe he did it so quickly and without help. They had a detailed account of everything--including him setting up shop lights outside when it was dark so he could keep working. Anytime we wanted to know of something in the community, all we had to do was go down there and ask!

On Monday, I decided to work outside and enjoy the sun. It just so happens, this is the day in which all the neighbors decided to get out as well. Everyone wanted to chat. And guess what, most of them already knew who we were and that we had a water pump issue! News around here obviously spreads faster than a shed raising in Jugfork! Turns out, everyone is as friendly as I thought. We have already spent several hours chatting with many of them.

Since Johnny has joined us back in the land of the living, we are ready for exploring and adventure. We went for an 11 mile bike ride yesterday. There is a nice flat paved loop that goes for many miles. But you know when you follow Johnny, it is never the easy path because there isn't much adventure in that! We rode on that path for about 2 miles or so and then the rest was spent on sand/limestone roads. Have you ever pedaled a bike in sand? Jackson has gotten good with the balancing game on the bike. He was riding trying to sync us some music on his speaker he had clipped to his bike. John Gannon was beside me ranting. "He needs at least one hand on the handlebars. MOM...are you not going to say anything? Fine...I am not going to say anything when he crashes, I am just going to look at you and dad" Imagine John's excitement when he saw him riding like this up a hill! Despite his endless ranting about Jackson riding with no hands for long periods of time, he decided he would give it a try on the way back. He was beside me and for about 3 seconds he lifted his hands about 2 inches. He then shrieked and said, "Oh, that felt reckless." :) I am telling you. If you around him for more than a few minutes and don't laugh--he must be sick!

Here are some more pictures from our biking adventure that day:

We turned down a side road that ended in a flooded area so we were going to turn around. Jackson could not understand why in the world we were going to turn around. It made complete sense to John Gannon and I why were weren't going to cross the water. I mean the likelihood we could pedal in wet sand was pretty slim in my brain. John had already stated he didn't want an alligator nibbling his ankle. Jackson kept badgering about wanting to go on across and Johnny finally said, "Go ahead and cross it. If you don't get your feet wet, we will all come. I don't have my Chacos on so I don't want to get my feet wet." Jackson finally decided he wasn't going to go. Thankfully, Johnny didn't have Chacos on...I am sure we would have all been wading through the flood waters and John Gannon would have been lecturing us the whole way about gators!

As we approached the flooded area of the road, on the other side was a huge herd of deer, at least 15 or more. When we turned around, I threw out a good writing/thinking prompt as any good homeschool teacher would! I asked the boys what they would do if that herd of deer grouped together and started running aggressively toward us. John Gannon immediately began a demonstration. "I would ride my bike like a deer. See, don't I look like a deer running? They would be confused and at least think I may be part of their family so I would just run along with them!" He continued to ride like this for a few hundred feet or so.

The boys like for me to take underwater pictures of them. And almost always they are cute little pictures. After I took this one of Jackson, I handed him the camera and told him to take one of me.