Today the J-E family took a drive out to spend the day in the country. Which is, in reality, only about 20 miles away. The goal? A sheep farm. Because driving 20 miles to see random baby lambs is an awful lot better than making the seven hour trek to see Nana’s lambs. We got the kids hyped up, scouted out a place to have dinner (er, rather, Lovely Friend TOLD us where to have dinner, having taken a similar trek in the fall) and off we went.

The closer we got to “the country” the more M started waxing on about the joys of living “in the country” and the more I started to twitch. “You would hate it out here, really. Everyone knows everything about everyone else, and you freak out if the guy next door tells you it’s a nice day,” I explained to him.

“No, because I don’t CARE if everyone knows everything about me, I only care about having to talk to people, and in the country I won’t ever have to SEE them because we will have so much land!”

“Your commute will suck.”

“My commute sucks now, it will just add fifteen minutes onto the misery.”

“It is too far to Target.”

“And that’s a BAD thing???”

We eventually arrived at our destination, only to discover that the barn tours don’t start until next weekend. Cue tears and hysteria, and then calculated sighs and gestures towards the gift shop trinkets. “Well, if we can’t see the baby lambs, can we pick something out?” And so we walked out of there with two sets of kid chopsticks shaped like farm animals for the kids and a pound of sheep cheese for the grownup(s).

As our initial plan to tour the farm, have and early dinner and head home just in time for bed time had been cruelly destroyed by the decision on the part of the lovely farmer that April 12th was actually the beginning of spring, we quickly regrouped and decided to head to the dinner locale anyway for some appetizers to quiet the restless children.

After pulling up to the stone barn converted into award winning brewpub, M sighed again and announced to the ceiling that he had no idea why I had issues with the country because “Look! A brew pub!” Once in the pub C continued to play the part of a sullen teenager at the tender age of six and announced that it was “boring.” A refused to sit down because of some imaginary issue with the chair, and I broke my “no alcohol in the afternoon because I will be asleep long before the children” rule and ordered a rather lovely light beer in hopes it would mellow both my country-induced twitching and urge to throttle both kids.

We wolfed down some rather yummy nachos, forced two unwilling children to visit the bathrooms before the return journey back, and headed off to view some of the lovely old farms along our way. Except we rather quickly yet unintentionally found ourselves back on the same strip-mall infested highway that runs by our own home. Somewhat cheered by the fact that there was indeed easy access to Target, I began saying things like “Well, the country wouldn’t be SO bad, I mean we COULD have a lovely house and room for a garden.” Meanwhile M stared at the GPS and announced “We ARE rather far out, aren’t we? I’ve never been out this far. I don’t think this would be a great commute after all. No wonder the guys who live out here all take helicopters. Wait, could I get a helicopter?”

Since we were already on the strip mall-infested highway that runs by our house, and we actually had no idea where to find the lovely farm houses, we decided to head home. And thus ended our day in the country. Total elapsed time, two hours, 42 minutes.