No Bad Mushrooms, I Promise!

I'd like to thank my friends for checking up on me yesterday, and apologize to my new readers for totally confusing you!!  The Magic Kingdom is NOT Disneyland ... it's what I affectionately call my local Elks Lodge on Tuesday nights when I cashier their Bingo games.  Really, I wasn't smoking anything, nor did I ingest some strange bad mushrooms resulting in hallucinations, although if you have ever been to an Elks Bingo game here, that might not be a bad idea!!

The people I work with, the King, the King's Regent, the Castle Lawyer and the crew of moneychangers were all exceedingly happy to see me return and take charge of the infernal machine ... the new cash register!!  Our players, the peasants, drop quite a bit of money playing Bingo every week, including their grocery money.  For most, it is the only time they get out of the house for a little fun.

The good news is that the majority of money is returned to the peasants in the way of Bingo Payouts, with any remaining going to the Elks Childrens Fund, or other local charities.  Being Cinderella, my Prince Charming has NOT come to take me away and I have lost a lot of shoes along the way.

My persona didn't end at the door when the clock hit Ten.  Cinderella came home to Kissack Castle (my house, named by my friends for it's castle-like appearance) to spend an entire day on her hands and knees scrubbing floors.  Hardwood floors are lovely, but boy they can be a LOT of work.   The problem was every time I walked by a window, it showed just how dirty the floors were.  Cinderella needed to get to work!!  You can sure see the difference in before and after!

On my knees with my trusty pail of water and towels, I washed the entire floor, removing mountains of Jessie hair and Cooper ball slobber.  If you've ever thrown a ball for a dog, you know what I'm talking about.  Once clean and dry, I headed to the starting point again with my bottle of Bona and twelve old washcloths.  I've tried using their fancy mop things, but it just seems to spread the dirt around, not pick it up.

Several hours later, I was half done as the picture above shows.  It's beautiful, but at what cost??  My knees will never be clean again, having rocks and pieces of dirt embedded forever.  By the time I finally completed the entire house, everything hurt from my toes to the top of my head where I hit that coffee table!!  Cinderella didn't get paid enough.  No wonder she jumped at the first Prince that came along!!

The Prince Charming in my storybook is an Elks friend that lives a few miles away.  He and his family go through a lot of expense every year to open the best Pumpkin Patch in the west.  They grow most all of the pumpkins, have a great barn where you can have events like birthday parties and weddings, along with a petting zoo, a Castle stage where you can play Juliet (or Cinderella), a hay ride through the corn fields (no scary monsters here), a corn maze and the Hunter Farms Mining Company where you get a bag of pay dirt, which you work in their sluice box to find gemstones, crystals and artifacts.

The piece de resistance however, is the time travel tractor-train ride through the corn field to discover an Old West town, an Indian Village, a mining community (with gold mine and waterfall) and best of all ..... you go back to the days of dinosaurs!  Life-size REAL looking dinosaurs, some sitting on eggs, some caring for babies ... I'm telling you it's just amazing the creatures that are hand made in China and shipped in containers to this back yard, all for the kids enjoyment.  

There is a small fee for the train ride and the mining company and of course you DO have to pay for any pumpkins you take home, but their prices are very reasonable.  Honestly, this is not a money making endeavor ... they just like to see smiles on the kids faces.

There are flowers gardens all around, a race track full of tricycles for kids to ride, a HUGE stack of hay for kids to play on, not to mention old farm equipment around every corner.  If you want a great experience for your kids or grandkids and are in Central California, check out Hunter Family Farms Pumpkin Patch.  I'm going over for pictures this week, once I heal up from all the floor work!!