This Rooster Rules the Roost!

I just got back from a lovely trip...no, not along the milky way, but it might be close!  It was a ladies only trip to the Red Rooster Retreat on Smith Lake, near Cullman, AL.  What was so great about this trip, you ask?  Oh, well, let me make you a list.

1. You go off for a few days with some of your best girlfriends.
2. You wear pajamas for every one of those days and you aren't even sick.
3. You don't do one single thing you don't want to do, not one!
4. You have all your meals, breakfast, lunch and dinner, prepared for you every single day.
5. The meals are ahhhhmazing!
6. You leave your dirty dishes sitting right on the table when you are through eating and someone else cleans them up!
7. You can scrapbook, sew, quilt, read, sleep, walk, watch television, sit in the hot tub or do absolutely nothing... It's up to you!
8. You do not have to make a single decision about anything other than what you want to do with your time.

The Red Rooster Retreat is the brainchild of Jim and Jennifer Bridges.  They wanted a place on the lake where they could hang out with their grown children, but in order to make it happen it would have to pay for itself.  So....the Red Rooster was born.  It was built in 2005 and opened for business in 2006.  It sleeps up to 23.  The large central room is set up with tables for whatever crafty thing your group has in mind...scrapbooking, sewing, quilting, etc.

Our group usually starts arriving on a Thursday afternoon around 2:00. As soon as we unload all our "stuff", we rush to change into something more comfortable...those comfy jammies that will be our friends for the next several days.  Then we get busy setting up our tables.  For our group it is scrapbooking.  We drag out all our paper, pictures, scissors, tape, glue and get everything organized before we begin.  By the time we leave, the tables look like they have been visited by Edward Scissorhands, but we do try to start out with neat areas!

We work and talk and laugh until that first dinner bell rings.  Part of our discussion revolves around wondering what we will be eating, so when that bell rings, we jump up like we have never before in our lives eaten a meal.  Jennifer, or Aunt Jenny, as she is known by our group, because her niece, Deborah, is one of us, is an extraordinarily talented cook and she is creative, too.  We never know what the meal is going to involve, but we do know it is going to be wonderful! The most decadent part of eating at Aunt Jenny's?  You get up and leave your dirty plate sitting on the table!  I know, it feels almost sinful!  But we do, and then we are back to scrapbooking and talking or sleeping or...well, you get the picture.  We carry on with this until we decide to go to bed and then we get up the next day and start all over again...waiting on those dinner bells like Pavlov's dog.  After each meal, we declare we will never be hungry again, but when those smells start wafting from Aunt Jenny's kitchen we are helpless and our tummies start rumbling again.  Here are some of the yummy plates that came out of that kitchen on this past trip.

Pork tenderloin, butter peas, Brussel's sprouts, potatoes, slaw and roll

Taco soup, grillled cheese sandwich, peanut butter cookie

Meatloaf, macaroni and cheese, salad roasted broccoli and roll

Blueberry French toast, scrambled eggs, blueberry muffin

Hot chicken salad, chips, pickles, orange congealed salad and pumpkin bread

Eggs Benedict, cheese grits and grapefruit

So, the moral of this story is: If you get an opportunity to visit Jenny and Jim at the Red Rooster, pack your bags as fast as you can! Then you, too, can look as happy as this group!

Three Friends and a Fork and this happy group give The Red Rooster Retreat 3 relaxed Yums UP!

Here is the link to the Red Rooster Retreat website: http://www.redroosterretreat.com/