I must dedicate some time and space to the phenomonen that is "Mule Day'.

Found online by Mr Evans on  a webpage which collates fun local Nashville events, Mule day was added to our calendars. With the decision made that Saturday jobs could wait until  the afternoon, we left Emma sleeping in and made our way to the countryside.

The following images pay tribute to the slice of America we encountered.

Home made icecream churned by an old John Deere engine.

Making friends with Bailey the rescue dog

It echo'd in the cowhide and the cowboy themed welcome wreaths.
It squealed through the children as we abandoned the food rules to eat, corn dogs, 'danger dogs' and slurp on shaved ice. 

We learnt interesting facts such as you cannot make  a mule with a mule. It is strictly the rendevous of horse and donkey that will result in this stubborn, strong, long eared creature. I narrowly managed to avoid a full birds and bees discussion. I'm just not ready for that one yet!. I felt a little like my father must have when  talking with my brother all those years before and I realised how such a garbled story about a daddy dog, with a present for the mummy dog must have formed and fallen from his lips.

We saw horses bejazzled. WIth glitter painted hooves, coloured manes and croqueted ear peices, complete with a matching barbie cowgirl on top.
We bought beef jerky and corndogs, then sent the kids jumping on fairground rides, which possibly was not the best order but we seemed to get away with it. We watched mule pulling and tasted jambayala. It was with weary feet we headed for home. E lamented that she hadn't been able to actually ride a mule or on a wagon and magically at that moment two wagons came down the road. They were headed our direction but were not in public service.

G looks uncertainly at the fox skin hanging over the rail.

I called to the lady in  the back as we walked alongside and she agreed it would be ok for the children to jump on until the end of the road. The driver didn’t' get the memo through and had no intention of stopping so I picked up the pace and swung the kids up onto the wagon seat. Little eyes lit up as they rode along and a little further up, as the wagon rounded the corner we reached in to pluck our children back cowboy style from the moving wagon and head towards home.

And that folks, was mule day.