Hammond's Candies

I can't believe how busy the past few days have been.  I feel like I've hardly had time to breathe, let alone write a blog post.  On Wednesday we were headed up to the amusement park before it closed for the winter because we had some free tickets to go and this was the only day we could go.  Lily was so excited to go, and so was Chloe, but when we got there they were closed!  They were only open on the weekends in October, which was not what their website said when I had checked it.  The website said they were open through October 12th, so I was very unhappy.  Not as unhappy though as my kids, who proceeded to have a meltdown.  Understandable but still not desirable.  Matt and I had to strap the kids in the car and close the car doors so we could talk outside about what to do and be able to hear ourselves and think!  We were thinking about going to the Aquarium but it would have been $50 in entrance fees alone and we weren't planning on spending that kind of money that day.  After thinking of a few other options, children's museum, etc we decided to take a tour of a candy factory that wasn't far from where we were called Hammond's candies.  As we were driving over there Matt goes "I hope we aren't teaching the kids that to deal with disappointment they should eat some chocolate."  That really struck a chord with me.  We didn't originally intend to pair disappointment with candy, and we even tried to do several other things but everything is just so blasted expensive, and the tour was free.  It made me wonder how much of our emotional eating is learned behavior, passed down from our parents or modeled by society, and how much of our emotional eating is our own issues.  I want to instill good eating behaviors in my kids and teach them proper ways to deal with stress, and other emotional issues that come up through life.

We did end up having a good time on the tour, and the kids loved picking out a chocolate and seeing the hard candies being made. but it didn't quite cover the disaster that happened at the amusement park.  Matt and I had a good time because there was a really enthusiastic employer and we are both like "that has to be the skinniest person to ever work at a candy factory.  He was pretty funny though because he just comes up to Matt and says "you look like someone who likes carrot cake.  Am I right?  Here try some of this carrot cake fudge."  He was super skinny and had a rat tail, I guess you had to be there to fully appreciate it.  But while I was looking around the candy store with the kids he just comes up to me (before he was talking to Matt) and pulls a chocolate off the shelf and says "I have something you will like" and it's a chocolate bar called "Pigs and Taters" and it has bacon and potato chips in the chocolate.  I'm thinking: "Gross!"  and I'm just starring dumbfounded at this guy and he says "I can do you one better" and hands me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich flavored chocolate and I'm thinking "weird" and then he says "follow me, I have something right up your alley"  and takes me over to another chocolate stand hands me a candy bar that says "raspberry crackle candy".  It's got pop rocks in it!  I just burst out laughing because the whole thing is so rediculous, and he is going off about how his future inlaws love that candy and it's a best seller.  Anyway, it was hilarious and Matt and I laughed about the whole thing for a good long while afterwards.  For the reccord, I ended up not eating any candy,  I'm still going strong on my resolution to not eat any more desserts and candy and I feel better.  I've been sick this past week so it's really hard to tell exactly how it is affecting me.  Anyway, after the tour the kids got some free hard candy which they both enjoyed.  I'm thinking we should have given Chloe the sucker since the candy stick was rather messy.

After the candy factory we ate lunch at a park, the kids didn't eat anything and just played on the playground.  It was a really old playground and we found the craziest swing there.  I've never seen anything like it before. 

By the time we left Chloe was falling asleep in that swing and she didn't last long in the car for the drive home.  I tried to teach Lily that although we get disappointed sometimes we can find something good about the situation, so she has been saying "the water park was closed but we got to go to the candy factory".