Food, Scuba Diving, Friends and Fun

Now the hotel has a continental breakfast but we decided not to eat there. Instead we decided to go back across the river to Paducah and eat at Cracker Barrel.

They gave Abug a kids menu. She ate the Crayons and Karen and I tried to color on it some. Do you see a theme here. ha!

After we ate we wandered through the store. I saw this sign and totally started laughing. This is definitely a sign for me. ha! I also found a Mr. & Mrs. Santa Clause Salt and Pepper shaker for $.99 a piece. I bought them. I’ll have to tell you that story some time.

So we forgot to take pictures of breakfast. We were all soooo hungry and it was alllll soooooooo goooooood. I stole this picture of pancakes off their website, because hello, I’m not sure I’ve ever had Cracker Barrel Pancakes but Oh. My. Goodness. are they awesome?!?! Abug & Karen had Pancakes. Hello Yum!

Hubby got one of the plates that had potatoes, eggs, sausage, biscuits, etc. I went for the Hashbrown Casserole, Fried Apples & Biscuits. YUM! It was sooooo good we all forgot that I didn’t take pictures. Seriously. I love Cracker Barrel and breakfast. There is a reason I’m chunky. ha!

So we took a picture similar to this last year, except add Tbug and we were all in pink. So we thought we’d keep a sort of tradition picture of those of us who were there :).

Friday was an extremely awesome day to dive. Not many divers were there and visibility was good. Karen, Jared, Hubby and I all got geared up and went down to hang out on the 15′ platform for a bit and then go for a shallower dive. My camera only goes to 33′ so we had to stay above that. Eventually we wound up on the other side of the cove and came up. I ditched the camera, got a hood, swam both directions on the surface across the cove, walked up and down the hill twice and went back for a dive. I was exhausted by the end of the day.

Hubby took the bubble gun down with him and they played the whole dive with it.

Don’t worry, this is a total statue 🙂

Abug was non-stop until she tired herself out. Then she crashed for about an hour or so nap and then she was back up and running.

Eventually I had to switch tanks to get more air. The elastic was around my 1st stage reg which hooks to the tank and I couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t come off the tank. dur da dur, here’s your sign :).

I never took a camera back down under water the whole weekend. I know there are some pictures that others took underwater, but I just didn’t take mine back down. I kind of wished I had but whatever :).

After a day of diving we went back to the hotel, quickly showered and went to dinner. Karen decided she wanted Italian and a bunch of us decided that sounded good. We went back across the river to Paducah in search of Italian on Broadway.

Turns out it would have been a 3 hour wait, so we decided, next year + we’ll make reservations!

Then searched out the Olive Garden and went there. (Picture taken Sunday morning.)

I wish I could say our experience was awesome… but it wasn’t terrible, it just wasn’t great. We should have known something would be weird when we got there to get a table.

There was no wait and they told us it would be a few minutes while they got a table set up for our party of 9 + a high chair. Then they gave us a buzzer. She then buzzed us twice and told us to follow once when we were supposed to. Oh dear!

Finally it was time to seat us. Our server didn’t really have a sense of humor and sadly with our group, you definitely need that. Who knows, maybe she’d had a busy/bad day. I’ve been a server (and cook and dish washer and hostess)… some days are better than others…. Then she didn’t keep our drinks filled. Ugh! Pretty much with our group, keep our drinks filled and don’t make us wait for a check and bam, we’re happy. And joking with us doesn’t hurt either. ha!

So we ordered. Abug loves the Chicken & Gnocchi soup so I got a bowl of that to share with (mainly give) her. Food was up to par!!

Hubby loves their Zuppa Toscana.

I did their new promotional deal, buy a meal, take a meal. I went with the Smoked Mozzarella Chicken thinking Baby girl would like it. She wanted no part of it, but she did eat a lot of soup and bread sticks. This was Ziti pasta with Smoked Mozzarella and grilled chicken, mushrooms & red peppers. YUM! For my to go meal I got Fettuccine Alfredo.

Then we went back to the hotel, went and sat in the hot tub so Squirrel girl could get in the water. She couldn’t get in the water at the quarry so I promised her that she could get in the pool/hot tub at the hotel. Then it was time for bed. I’m not sure I remember my head hitting the pillow. I was exhausted.