A Whole New World

Well, my Thanksgiving weekend is quickly coming to an end. The kids are down for bed after a long weekend of playing hard with cousins and staying up way past their bed time. I imagine this will come back to bite me come Monday morning when I wake them up for school.

My mom, sister, and I were doing a puzzle this afternoon. After spending a couple of hours bending over looking at it, my neck and back began to give me a little grief. I needed a change of scenery. So after checking my email and checking on my cybersisters, I sat here eating way too much spinach dip and trying to decide if I should blog tonight. I had half decided that if someone in my family suggested a topic, I would see if I could post about it. So, Dad made a suggestion and I thought I could pull something out of it.

It can be difficult to find a family activity that suits all the necessary requirements. First of all, it needs to be entertaining....to at least a fair majority of the people. Second....it needs to stay within a fairly reasonable budget. That can be so difficult. Anything for 11 people ends up being a little bit costly. We discussed going to the Boise Zoo....in close to freezing temperatures. We discussed bowling....but that can easily add up the dollars. Also time allotments and possible lane availability quickly shot that one down. We also considered going to the Bee Movie....but decided that was kind of an anti-social thing to do. The winning solution....a trip to Cabela's!!

Okay....that was a whole new experience for me. Wow. Let me just say that again....Wow. Every outdoor item, or items even remotely related to the outdoors can be found under the roof of this one store. I have no idea how much square foot that falls under...but wow. If I had thought about it too much, I would have been a little creeped out about all the stuffed animals. I had a laugh over their sign saying something about the display honoring the Nature world...and those who honor it will be less likely to abuse it. Okay.

For me, who at this time of the year, loves any article of clothing related to warmth...I was in heaven. I think I left a trail of drool all around the Women's Clothing section. Too bad my husband isn't made of money....I'd have spent a fortune. Right now, I am a little stuck on fleece items....but I saw a lot of other articles of clothing that I could have easily been persuaded to personally test out their warmth factor.

We also enjoyed a little detour into the "General Store." Here is where they hand out a little taste of fudge to anyone who asks. Yum. That was so hard to decide upon. I was a little disappointed that I didn't make it to the camping area...I love to see all the "new" ideas in the Camping World. I didn't even bother with the Hunting department...I couldn't see it anyways through all the camoflauge.

The highlight of the trip was the aquarium. Wow. They had some huge rainbow trout in their tanks. I can't even begin to describe how mongo the catfish were. Oh my. I did feel a little sorry for these big ol' fish being held captive for the rest of their days in these relatively tiny tanks. I guess tiny, in this case, is all relative. They were fairly large tanks...but not for this big ol' fish.

While, we were there it was feeding time for the trout tank. Talk about a feeding frenzy. We heard the announcement over the intercom that feeding was going to begin. So we slowly meandered over there. We could tell things were getting a little heated as we could see them throwing in some fish pellets. They were just going crazy. The real fun began when they started throwing in the worms. I kind of felt sorry for the littler fish because the big ones were clearly displaying the manner in which they became so big. Those worms would no sooner hit the water than.....POW....the were snarked up by these carnivorous fish. I totally feel like my childhood fear of fish nibbling on my toes was totally justified. I can guarantee that those fish would not last a second in the Wild on Fishing Derby day.

So, as I watched those poor worms hit their demise, I thought that the Feeding Frenzy Fun had tripped the Light Fantastic. Oh no....not even close. To my surprise, they began tossing Nemo to the ravenous seagulls. No...it wasn't actually Nemo....but they were these poor helpless goldfish. I don't think that I have ever seen goldfish swim as fast as those babies did. To no avail......just as soon as they hit the water. SNARK!! They were goners. Every once in a while, we would watch as a few of the goldfish managed to survive for a short amount of time. They were amazingly smart, at times, in finding hiding places where they could survive for a while longer. How they did that, I will never know. It wasn't like they had spent their lifetime preparing themselves for the ultimate game of Survivor. Did their handlers give them a "dry run" in their Tank o' Doom? I'll never forget this one fish who was a mite smaller than the giants of the tank. Right there in front of us we watched as he tried to swallow this poor goldfish that was just about as round as his poor mouth. He just about lost his lunch to the Big Daddy Pirate trout of the tank.

So...we had an adventure today at the whole new world of Cabela's. Quite a bit of fun for all us...from the kids all the way up to the grandparents. Much to my husbands delight, it was a cheap adventure. I didn't buy a thing.

Can you hear is sigh of relief from there???