County Fair 2009

County Fair is a big thing in our family. Emily has been in 4-H for 7 years now and Gunnar was a Cloverbud this year. I was in 4-H for a little while when I was a kid but hated it. And here I am as an adult and up to my nose in it. We live in town so the kids don't do the big animals. Emily has chickens, pigeons, rabbits, and occasionally ducks or geese.

Gunnar had rabbits. Next year he is planning on getting a chicken or two.

Both kids are involved in cooking and at fair time my kitchen looks like a tornado has hit. (especially with both kids cooking this year!) It seems that we suddenly need to try new recipes for fair instead of the good old tried and true recipes. Which sometimes means disaster. I have learned the hard way to never ever forget the recipe or the magnificent cookies that would have gotten a purple ribbon get knocked down to a blue. One of the most devastating moments of my life. There's em smiling at the judge while she hears this and I'm thinking,"It's my fault cause I told her we didn't need one when she asked me!" I cried off and on all that day. She didn't. Now we make extras of the recipe and triple check. Oh, the lessons we learn when we make mistakes. This year our lesson was to read the fair book more closely on matting photographs. We barely avoided another ribbon catastrophe thanks to some friends who told us that her photos were mounted wrong before we got to the judge. Luckily, I'm paranoid so I brought mounting supplies with us and was able to pull the photos off the board and remount them. Whew!

Emily also does Fashion Revue where all she has to do is shop for clothes and model them. Which is easy for her since it seems like shopping is all we do. And for some strange reason she loves to get in front of people hence all the acting, dancing, and singing activities. She's really good at it too. (must be recessive genes)

All in all Fair 2009 went really well. Once the hustle and bustle of the shows and judging are over it is always nice to sit back, relax and enjoy the family and friends that are involved in the same things.