A Pretty Fair Day

Last week, I was looking for something to do and we decided to go to the County Fair with some neighbors of ours. It was the first time my oldest two boys had been to a State or County Fair. When we lived in L.A., we had to go clear across downtown to get to the fair and it was just not worth it to spend hours stuck in traffic to get there. Not even worth if for a triple bacon corn dog.

Anyway. Trogdor did go to the UT State Fair when I took him for a quick trip last September. He had a good time then, but now knows so many more animal words that it was fun to see him looking at the animals this time.

The kids were mesmerized by the cow wash.

They had a butterfly house at the fair too!

And of course, they had carnival rides. At first glance, it seemed pretty reasonable - $1 per ticket. But then each ride required 3-4 tickets! What a racket! Anyway. My friend, MT, and I pooled our resources to get the slightly better deal of 30 tickets for $20 so the kids could at least ride two rides.

CED with Wisdom T (they were in the same Kindergarten class together last year and best friends). The car ride was so popular that CED and Wisdom went on it twice. :)

We wandered around a bit and came across something that captures the heart and soul of Why-Oh-Uh: A Corn Box. Not a sandbox, but a box filled with dried corn kernels!! How AWESOME is that???!!! It was also easier to get out of the kids clothes. Not as easy to make into sand castles though.

Trogdor started outside of the Corn Box and didn't really know what to make of it all.

Then he climbed into the Corn Box all on his own. How fun is that?

 n x 1.6 km (for n>1) taking some corn showers. Unfortunately, some kernels might have gotten in some uncomfortable places because of the showers.

The kids decided they wanted to pose by every single tractor wheel. It was fun but I will spare you all the iterations.

Help! The wheel's shrinking!

After our friends left, we ate some dinner and then attended the Family Rodeo. We witnessed some pretty hilarious Mutton Busting and horse riding tricks and races. Then came the Calf Catching Event. They opened it up to all the kids 10 and under in the grandstand area. I asked the boys if they wanted to go try it. n x 1.6 km (for n>1) didn't want to (I think he thought it would be big cows), but CED surprised me and said that he wanted to try it out! Usually he wants n x 1.6 km (for n>1) to go with him so I was proud of him going on his own.

There were about 50 kids all in a line, ready to go. They had them do some stretches and stuff to get ready. It was cute.

Ick! They had them do sit ups! Hope they didn't land in any cow pies.

Then, the object was for the kids to run after the two calves that had little rolls of duct tape stuck to their sides. The kids had to grab the duct tape for a prize.

Running of the bulls... I mean... calves.

Cornered calves

CED valiantly tried to get the tape, but the bigger kids beat him to it. Considering there were 50 kids vs 2 calves, there was a bit of mob action going on. Poor calves. They survived and CED got what he wanted.... Candy. :) And he got a participation ribbon for the Calf Chasing Event. It was a great day.

4th of July Pics

I know I'm a bit late but I thought I'd post my 4th of July Fireworks pictures. I tried the focus blur method like last year and I was pleased with some of the pictures that came out.

The boys loved this the most because they think it looks like a sunflower.

Whale of a Tail

Earlier last month, Mad Scientist's family had a family reunion and we were able to go back East to visit the smallest state in the Union, Rhode Island. (Random fact: It is the 2nd most densely populated state in the Union.)

Anyway. Since Mad Scientist has many siblings and most of them were attending the reunion, we stayed at a 7 bedroom beach house with plenty of room to not feel crowded though there were 25 of us there. We got to go to Newport, RI that has the "summer cottages" of the rich and famous of yesteryear (e.g.Vanderbilt). There was a nice Cliff walk that went behind the mansions and then we went into the Breakers to check it out.

Downton Abbey anyone?

Anyway. There were also excursions to the beach, canoeing, eating doughboys (a.k.a. Utah scones or beignets) and a jaunt over to Plymouth (yes, where the Pilgrims landed) to go on a whale watching cruise. "Cruise" might be a stretch since it was a overcast, windy day and the water was quite choppy. Our older boys and one other adult in our party got seasick from the bumpy boat and didn't keep down their breakfasts. Doh. Before the seasick part, the cousins had fun enjoying the bumps.

The whales were very cool though. There was a humpback whale, Echo, and her calf who were very active and putting on quite a show. The calf was doing all sorts of breaches (breach, spinning breach and tail breach) and smacking the water with its fins and tail. The lady who was on the loudspeaker said she had never seen such a display in her years coming out on the boat. It was fun.

Tail breach

Lobtailing

Double breach

Pec Slap

 

So, we had a great time at the reunion. Got to see family. Got to see whales. Got to fly on Southwest Airplanes (that was one of the favorite things of our boys.) It was fun!

BAMCO Zoo

The other day, I was helping a friend out and watching her two kids. Her boy's name is the same as CED's first name. Anyway. They were running around the house and ran up while I was working on stuff in the kitchen. They were yelling that there was a bunny in the basement!!!

Now, we have bunnies in our yard and all over the neighborhood. Our family has a love/hate relationship with the bunnies. Mainly, the boys love the bunnies and will sit and watch them for extended periods of time. I don’t like ("hate" might be a bit too strong a sentiment) the bunnies so much because they eat all my flowers. Even the ones that are supposed to be bunny resistant! Bad bunnies!!!

So, I thought, “How in the world did a bunny get into the basement?” I imagined a terrified bunny running around and hiding out amid all the toys. Come to find out, the boys saw the bunny in the basement window well. It was a baby bunny that had fallen in. Awwww! The boys were mesmerized to see it up close. It was almost like the window exhibit in a zoo. Our window well is quite deep so it couldn’t jump out.

Yes, folks. That is a baby bunny in the window. Don't ask us how much it is!

These are Trogdor's hands holding up play food for the bunny to "eat". I don't know just how long the bunny was down there so it was probably pretty hungry.

I kept thinking about what we should do with the bunny. Maybe catch it and take it to the outer limits of town so it wouldn't eat my flowers? When Mad Scientist called to let me know he was coming home, I told him, "Houston, we have a problem" and that we would have to try and get the thing out of the window when he got home.

So, Mad Scientist geared himself up with some gloves and a bucket and headed down the window well. The bunny scurried everywhere and Mad Scientist finally got him into the bucket and lifted it high enough for the bunny to jump out of the hole. Whew! The bunny was out. And we know that it is still alive to eat my flowers again because we've spotted it several times. Doh.

End of story right? Wrong.

The very next week, the boys run upstairs yelling that we now have frogs in the window! FROGS!!! Four frogs, no less!

"Please let me in!"

 

So, we haven't rescued the frogs yet. I think they are alright. We have a couple of tiny frogs in our rock garden out front. They seem alright thus far. Not sure what we're going to do with them. Any ideas anyone, other than charge admission to the BAMCO zoo?

Derecho Aftermath

We've been pounded by quite a few storms since last Sat and are rather soggy. The weather people say that the thunderstorm system that came through was a Derecho (aka land hurricane. Pronounced "duh-reh-cho", but I like to call it a "duh-ray-co" sort of like Draco, Malfoy). We even had to hide out in the basement on the Monday, June 30th, because the tornado sirens went off and we had a wall of scary looking clouds coming our way. Mad Scientist was watching the storm come in at work. His work is a cement block so he felt pretty safe. He said the clouds were green. Not a good sign. It was so dark from all the clouds and torrential rain.

After the system passed, it was around 8:45pm and the sun was going down. The clouds had thinned enough to let the light through and everything was this weird yellow cast. I got a picture of it. It was reminiscent of how the light would look in Southern California when there were lots of wildfires. It was eeire and almost sepia toned.

No filters or doctoring on the tint of this picture.

I did use a ND filter for this picture on the top portion of the clouds.

It was one of the most bizarre experiences I've had. Amazing sky pictures though.