The turning point

of our day was when we left the corn maze. We had such a wonderful time at the corn maze. The kids loved the playground and the animals. It was nearly impossible to drag Lucas away from the obstacle course... he loved climbing up and going over the wall. Every time he started to climb the wall, my mind flickered to that scene in 'An Officer and a Gentlemen' and I wanted to cheer him on. He didn't need any cheering though... he was quite proficient. Eli could have sat in that corn-filled tire for hours. Anytime he can repeatedly throw things without getting in trouble is perfect for him. And Clara was all over the place, she had to try everything and read everything. And the actual maze was so fun. We let the kids determine our path for the first half and they didn't do too bad, but by the last half Lucas was getting tired and we were looking to just find our way out. As tired as the kids were, they didn't want to leave. It was such a great day until that point... which brings me to the title of this post. Once we left, things just skipped from bad to bad to bad. We stopped at two different JC Penney stores looking for a specific item that we never found. We drove around and around looking for a specific restaurant that we never found... meanwhile all this driving and looking took us hours and Clara was getting carsick and we were hungry and tired. We finally stopped at this restaurant that Jason had been wanting to try for a long time, just glad to finally almost be eating. How this place ever passed it's health inspection is beyond us!! Not only was the food subpar, but the worst part was all the gnats flying and landing all over our food... so disgusting! The funny thing was that Clara was fascinated by the gnats... she kept calling them beetles. She fixated on three of them that were on her plate, she even named them. If we hadn't been so tired, hungry and it so cold outside, we would have just taken our food and left. Of course, looking back, we just should have! What I found amazing about the whole experience is that on our way home, Jason and I couldn't seem to get out of this bad mood, even after the wonderful day we had before the horrible turning point - which makes me wonder... how is it that no matter how much good occurs, one little bit of bad can ruin the whole?