4th Place Ribbon

We do love visiting the animals at the fair - but there is one other area that we always go to first - the household exhibits...you know, the place where the art and food entries are displayed. The first time I took the kids into this building a couple years ago I think it was to escape the heat and the blazing sun :)

We wandered around a bit, oohing and ahhing at all of the delicious food entries and inspecting the art entries in kids' category. Little did we know that one of our friends had entered a drawing that they did of our fish tank. When we discovered that picture and recognized both the subject and the artist - the kids got so excited! Ever since then, we have always made sure to spend some time in the household exhibits building.

This year we took the plunge and entered one of ds7's photographs in the fair. Our first stop after the entry gate was to the household exhibits building. We examined every photograph on the long wall of the building, searching for his picture. When we didn't see it there we started looking at the photographs displayed on columns in the middle of the building. When we finally found it - we were pleasantly surprised. Actually, ds7 was quite excited (and I was excited for him).

When I suggested that he enter his photo, it was mainly because I thought he would enjoy seeing his entry displayed at the fair - I never expected that he would actually win a ribbon (although, it is a very cool photograph). But this what we saw when we found his picture - it had a pink ribbon attached to it (fourth place)...

At the fair

Our one guaranteed field trip of the year is our county fair.

My kids are young enough that they get in free, and this year my oldest entered a photo in the fair, so I got in free too :) - all we had to pay for was parking...

All three kids love to wander down the stalls of each barn and visit with the farm animals. This year I gave ds7 the camera. I knew I could count on him to take tons of pictures and I have to admit, I love his perspective :)

My favorite spot is always the birthing tent - we love checking out the new babies that were born at the fair. This year we got to visit with a mama pig with had just given birth to a bunch of baby piglets :)

This mama was there too, we didn't see a calf with her so I assume she was there because she was ready to give birth.

Next stop was the petting zoo area - we didn't really pet the animals but we did get to see a variety of animals that are not normally "shown" at the fair - the kids loved this little peeps in the incubator...

They thought this ox was pretty cool too, while it was lying down. They backed up pretty quick when it stood up while they were standing right beside its pen!

This alpaca was very friendly - it even posed for our picture :)

We also got to visit a bit with this emu.

But my seven-year old claims that the screech owl was definitely the best animal he got to see that day...

A local explore

A few weeks ago, I loaded the kids in the van and drove about five minutes down the road, parked in the town parking lot, took a short walk down a dead-end road and this is where we ended up...

The pictures really don't do this path justice - but I was a bit preoccupied with keeping the almost 3-year old away from the edge of the creek :)

If we had continued to follow the path, we would have ended up at our town's beautiful new library - but we headed back the other way...

Back to the memorial park. I drive by it at least two times a week while running errands around town - two times a week for over seven years and I have never taken the time to explore it!

So, on this day, we took the time...

Jumping In

This is the boy who has always run AWAY from the waves at the beach, the child who preferred to lounge on the side of the pool and was never the least bit interested in entering the water.

We decided not to push him. Surely, someday he would be ready to "jump in" on his own.

Sure enough, two years ago he discovered the joy of jumping in the ocean waves. Before long we had a hard time getting him OUT of the water.

And this summer he asked to take swimming lessons - and he discovered the excitement of jumping off the deep end!

Birds of summer

We experienced a first yesterday...I was sitting at the kitchen table when ds7 excitedly announced that there was a hummingbird right outside our sliding glass doors (and we do not have a hummingbird feeder). The hummingbird hovered outside our door just long enough for us to catch a glimpse of it but not long enough for us to catch a picture...

But we were able to get pictures of other birds that visited our yard this summer.

We had the privilege of hosting two different bird families this summer...

I spent a bit of time perched on the kids swingset in order to get this picture of one of the houseguests in our birdhouse (I believe that this is a house wren).

ds7 got this awesome picture of a robin gathering food...

And ds7 was also able to get a picture of this american goldfinch when it visited our yard.