The Adventures of Hila, Kristin, and Rainbow Brite

Yeah, that's right. I said Rainbow Brite. So, after our delicious (and nutritious) breakfast of Coke, oreo truffles, and chocolate chip cookies, Kristin and I went to Applebee's for lunch. We decided to take Rainbow Brite along for the trip, to introduce her to the wonders that await her in Dothan. Needless to say, we drew some attention at Applebee's while we laughed about taking pictures with Rainbow. One guy watched us the whole time and laughed right along with us. But, here is Rainbow Brite eating a french fry:And here she is with both me and Kristin and our food :).Once we were done eating, we decided that it would be great fun to take Rainbow Brite to one of Dothan's most famous landmarks (unless you ask Julie, who, it turns out, had never heard of it before, much less seen it): the GOLDEN PEANUT!!! But we wanted to stop by and take a picture by the Elvis Peanut. Okay, I am thinking you probably need an explanation. Dothan is the peanut capital of the world. Yes, yes, that is Dothan's claim to fame. The peanut. That and, at least at one point, it was a Trivial Pursuit answer, because Dothan has (or at least had) the most fast-food restaurants per capita in the whole United States. But anyway... Back to the peanuts. So, a couple years ago, Dothan wanted to do "Peanuts around Dothan" where different businesses could decorate a peanut and put it out front of their stores. Someone did an Elvis Peanut. So we wanted to find the Elvis Peanut and take a picture there. Alas, it was no longer where it used to be. So, we gave up and went to the Golden Peanut. And here we go...
So Kristin decided she wanted to go inside the Dothan Welcome Center to look around, since she never had. So we did. And lo and behold, what's in the corner??? The Elvis Peanut!! Turns out people kept stealing him, so they had to put him inside the visitors' center. This thing is hilarious. I don't know if the picture will give the detail, but it even has chest hair. Hahahaha!!! Talk about trying to be authentic :).
Now, it cannot be forgotten that this happened while Kristin and I were inside: Kristin had parked very badly outside, because we figured, "who's going to go to the Dothan Visitors' Center on such an overcast day, 3 days before Christmas, at lunch time?" So she just backed into a spot when we were done taking the gold peanut picture, and it wasn't a great parking job. Well, right when we were getting ready to leave, some old guy comes in and says to the lady working there, "First of all, do you know who's car that is out there?" And so Kristin and I 'fess up and say it's ours. You could see the hesitation in his face, but he went ahead anyway and said "Well, you all need to learn how to park." Well, he said, "paughk" which tipped me off that he was from the Northeast. Haha... Anyway, the lady that works there was like, "Well, sir, maybe you have more experience than they do." And he said, "Well, that doesn't matter." Haha... Kristin and I left snickering. Grouchy. And the saddest part is that there were like 5 EMPTY spots, but he just HAD to have the one closest to the door, which is the one Kristin was slightly parked in. Haha!!!

Okay, so after these adventures, it was time for Kristin to return to work. So we went back to the library, but we didn't exactly WORK :). Kristin and I had a few more things to show Rainbow. For one thing, we had to show her the indian outside of the library. On the way there, she (Rainbow Brite) accidentally fell, but was luckily caught by a tree... Okay, so if the truth be known... Kristin threw her in there. But it was funny. And here we are posing with the indian:And because we can't have Rainbow Brite not learning about the vast possibilities of a library, we HAD to take her aboard the bookmobile (which we let her take a spin around the block in):

Needless to say, Kristin and I had a BLAST!!!! People kept telling us we were nuts, but seriously... sometimes you just have to have a little fun :). And we certainly did!

Oh, and this is where we put the bad library patrons at HLML (and the staff of the library are free to define "bad" according to the day and according to their own moods):

So let that be a warning to anyone who might be a wannabe-bad-library patron.