Need painfully honest critique

[Max Taxable]

Here's the first thing you should look at and improve:

http://www.webpagetest.org/result/11...ZQB/1/details/

This is terrible load time, and you also have a 404 not found error for one of your xml files:

Request 80:

URL: http://www.livinginkentucky.com/forums/events.xml
Host: www.livinginkentucky.com
IP: 69.89.31.61
Location: Provo, UT*
Error/Status Code: 404
Start Offset: 6.916 s
Time to First Byte: 301 ms
Content Download: 36 ms
Bytes In (downloaded): 2.8 KB
Bytes Out (uploaded): 0.5 KB

You have 116 requests - that's massive. 70 or 80 is considered slightly on the heavy side.