Bumper Stickers...Decoded

Is it just me, or is one of the funnest things to do while riding down the road is checking out bumper stickers?! Lame, I know but simple things amuse me...

Some of them are self-explanatory, some of them are not so self-explanatory and some of them make you laugh, while some of them make you say WTF?!? (don't lie...)

I currently don't have any on my car...Not that I don't want one, I just haven't found the right one yet. I have had them on previous vehicles, but there is something special about my car (it's my fave one EVER) and I'll know the right sticker when I see it. I feel like bumper stickers are pretty much an old school form of social media...from the plain yellow smiley-faces to peace symbols to the Jesus fish, people have been using them on their vehicles for decades to express themselves.

Here is a good little round-up that I have compiled on stickers that you may see a lot, but might not necessarily know exactly what they mean:

These little guys below are actually what spawned this post...For months Chris and I have been trying to figure out what the heck all of the white oval stickers with black numbers meant. Some of our better guesses were: radio stations, diving distances, and temperatures...I won't share the others - yes, they were that pitiful...

They are marathon stickers! The numbers represent the distance(s) the runner has ran. Awesome to know - Many props to folks that have the get up and go to run like that!

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Let me start off with this one by saying that Chris and I are mountain people at heart. I can count on one hand the number of times that we have been to the beach in the past nine years, so you would understand when I didn't know exactly what this one was all about. I could draw my conclusions, but wanted to know from the source exactly what 'Salt Life' entailed...

Basically anything to do with the 'hardcore waterman' surfing/fishing/diving lifestyle. Kay...Got it.

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Speaking of the coast, if you haven't ever been to Myrtle Beach, you probably wouldn't know what these two were up to...

They are shaggers! Get yo mind out of the gutter....Shag dancers. You know, the dance made popular at the beach waaaaay back in the day. Still popular today as a matter of fact...Listen to 920am and you'll see what I mean. Oh, and a VERY similar silouhette just happens to adorn the NMB water tower. As I said, we are mountain people at heart, but we know our beach/shag history too (thanks to Chris' Uncle Dan).

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And this cutie pie!! I have loved these little guys ever since I was a little girl. I'm sure lots of other folks have thought they were cuties too, but do most people REALLY know their history??

The 'Dancing Bear' was a creation of Stanley "Bear" Owsley in the Height-Ashbury heydays. Mr. Owsley was a long-time producer/sound engineer/family member of the Grateful Dead. Being the hairy fellow he was, he gained the nickname "Bear" - combine that with his professional ballet stint in the 50's and voila! the 'Dancing Bear' was born.

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Our next subject is kinda self-explanatory, but I thought it would be cool to actually know what all of the symbols mean/stand for.

Folks that sport these are showing their support of religious freedom, tolerance and understanding. The C is the Islamic crescent moon, the O is a Peace symbol, the E is a combo of the male/female gender symbols, the X is the Star of David for Judaism, the I is the pentagram for Wicca, the S is the Tao symbol for Taoism, and the T is the Cross for Christianity.

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And last, but not least...EVERYONE has seen the stick family decals plastered on the backs of family trucksters across the country. But have you seen these????

I freaking love these...AND they even come with the farm animals!!!

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Any stickers out there that have you scratchin' your head, goin' WTF about?? Got any stickers that you wanna make fun of or rant about?? Please leave me a comment...I'd love to hear some feedback!

The Nest!

So, we have had this hornet's nest in one of our pastures for quite sometime now and everyone at Roads En Farm (two legged and four legged) has managed to steer clear of it's inhabitants ever since we noticed it back in the spring. Seriously, the thing was bigger around than a basketball, so we have all made conscientious efforts to steer clear of THE NEST. Over the past few weeks, we started to notice that there wasn't any activity going on around THE NEST AT ALL. Sunday almost simultaneously (we are that much alike, its scary) Chris and I decided that it would be a great idea for us to take it down and donate it to Hudson's school.


Needless to say, Chris and I had a stunning moment in redneck engineering. I'm going to go ahead and apologize right now because I don't have any pictures of our glorious "nest gettin down rigup". I was able to sneak in a pic of THE NEST before removal, but that was it. So here it is...

You can't tell from this picture, but the nest was actually a good 15-20 feet in the air.


Just in case anyone ever wants to get down a large hornet's nest, I have compiled a few *need to know* tidbits for future references:

Materials Needed
* 1 Pickup Truck
* 1 Really Tall Ladder
* 1 Handsaw
* 1 Handy-Dandy Husband
* 1 Handy-Dandy Wife


Directions
* Have Handy-Dandy Wife help Handy-Dandy Husband gather necessary materials
* Have Handy-Dandy Husband drive and align bed of truck under desired removal spot
* Have Handy-Dandy Husband set up the really tall ladder and stand on it with saw. If the ladder doesn't work for all of the job, the top of the truck cab works well also.
* Have Handy-Dandy Wife be ready for whatever Handy-Dandy Husband needs and await anxiously until removal of nest is complete. **Note to Handy-Dandy Wives...Don't try to take pics for your blog while Handy-Dandy Husband is on ladder sawing down nest/limbs. He needs your utmost attention while doing something so crazy, i mean tedious.**

Anyhoo, the nest made it out of the tree safely and was hornet-free MUCH to our delight (hornet and wasp colonies die out every year, thank goodness). After spending two nights in our Dutch Barn, it made it to school yesterday morning...You would not believe some of the looks that Hudson and I got from other kids while walking in with it. LOL. Probably not as entertaining as the looks we would have gotten while getting the nest out of the tree though....

Fastforward...

Okay, so one post and then not another one for nearly two months...Slack, I know but oh what has happened in the past two months!

First of all, apologies for not following up on the 2011 Silk Hope Old-Fashioned Farmers Day...In a nutshell, the show was great and the weekend was great all up until Sunday morning loading the equipment up. To save myself of replaying the horrific scenes over and over again in my head, I'll just be blunt...Chris flipped over a tractor and it SHOOK me up. The only other thing I'm gonna say is he didn't roll the tractor over, it flipped over...END...over....END. Fastforward ahead one month and Chris is fine, the tractor has already been fixed, and the poor people who witnessed my Faulkner fit first-handedly are fine as well. Mess with this gal's best friend/hubby/lil boy's daddy and ur gonna hear it. Needless to say, since Silk Hope was going to be my next post, I said skrew it...There's no way I can write about this or anything else right now. Nuff said. Anyhooo, here are a few pics of the show...the good memories for me (ha).

Wagon Train Replica
aka Food Cart from back in tha day

Our babies at the show. The lil guy in the middle was the poor thing that did the somersault with Chris...

Blacksmithing! Always super cool to watch!!

Spinning with a loom...wow...I was totally amazed. As many times as I have been to Silk Hope every year, I never got a chance to see this special lady in action. What a talent!

It's night night time! Beds from way back when were pretty hard core...Rope for the frame where the mattress goes, and a mattress stuffed with hay, leaves, etc anything that could be found for filler. Gives a tangible meaning to the phrase "Sleep tight and don't let the bedbugs bite!"

   

Look at this handsome boy just waiting patiently for his turn working...

After watching the cotton press, saws, and several other machine/tools I pondered the fact on what the heck an OSHA rep would have said about farm working conditions around the turn of the centry...So many open moving parts, blades, belts, etc - I wondered how many limbs got yanked off while folks were just tryin to do their jobs.

I just love this pic...It literally looks like I stepped through the farmin-time portal to snap this. Somehow, I managed to NOT include all of the bystanders around because seriously the place was crowded.

          

Moving on...since then we have been running in overdrive with school, the farm, tae kwon do, and football. At one point, Hudson was going to two tkd classes a week AND we had three nights a week of football. Its all good, but it's also enough to run you ragged. 

Just look at that lil Warrior....So worth the time and sweat!

#56...The farthest blue jersey to the right

There are only two more football games left for this season and they are next week, so hopefully we will have some much needed breathing time before basketball gears up!

Now that we are all caught up, this weekend is already shaping up to be a busy one...So many fun things to look forward to though! Fall festival at church, my niece's 3rd birthday party (at the park of course!), and plenty of chill time with the fam in this LOVELY fall weather.

Have a great weekend!