It's County Fair Week

Our county fair started today.

Olivia and her hogs
It's earlier than it's ever been and while I no longer have kids in 4-H I would think this early date will effect some of the garden and crop entries.

If you have ever had kids in 4-H you know it is the best and worst of weeks.

Every year when February came every project sounded great. You just knew they could handle all of them and they would learn so much.

The months passed by and suddenly as if you didn't know it was coming it was here, the day to enter the projects.

The kids took flowers, gardening, photography, hogs, electric, rockets baking and cake decorating.

The garden and flowers were never a problem, they were life it was the cake decorating and the rockets that got us every year.

Now had I been a together mother who was about the business of training together children the rocket would have been completed long before the day it had to be entered.

But as you guessed, I was not that mother.

The cakes had to be decorated pretty much the day before.

Enter, total stress and total "Why did we ever do this?" closely followed by "We're not doing this next year!"   But of course we did.

When the kids were small we didn't have  air conditioning and of course the fair was the last of July and it would be in the nineties every time.

Mixers were whirling powdered sugar was flying through the air, someone, most of the time, me would be crying.

While the girls and I were in the kitchen I could look through the cloud of powdered sugar and see Lucas working on his rocket in the living room.

My greatest fear was he would set it off to soon and cake and powdered sugar would be everywhere.

Thankfully that never happened.

Then it was out to load the truck.

We didn't have air in the truck either and only one window went down.

You haven't lived until you have hauled four kids in the front of a pick-up truck on a July day with no air conditioner and only one working window, decorated cakes with melting icing and a rocket you feared would take off at any given moment from all the heat.

Needless to say we were crowded and one time Lucas put his elbow right in Heidi's cake.

Heidi made sure she told the judge what had happened.

She still ended up winning champion on it.

We enjoyed the hogs.

I have fond memories of Olivia out walking her hogs daily.

I loved looking out the window and seeing her bringing them through the yard.

Once before the hogs had learned how to walk with her one took off I was standing at the window when all of a sudden a hog went flying by making that woofing sound like hogs do when they are excited,  then Mark came flying by, he was making a gasping sound like men do when they can't breath. Lastly Olivia ran by, she seemed to be doing fine.

There is just a feel about a livestock barn the night the animals come in and it last all week.

The weigh ins, the pictures, the shows, the cleaning out of pens and grooming the animals.

I could go on and on about the things we love about the fair, the green Kool-Aid at the open house for one thing.

If you haven't done 4-H with your kids, you really should.

Find a strong nerve pill, keep it back until the day before the fair, then take it and you'll have a grand time.

No, but really, if you haven't experienced a week at the county fair you are missing something for sure. It's one of the sweetest family memories you can make.

So, be sure and get the kids signed up next year and I'll see you at the fair!

Comments

  1. Oh gosh Kelly, I remember the county fair and 4H very well. My "meltdown" year was the one I had to make a butter cake from scratch. For some reason they came out horribly. I finally got one to come out decent but my grandmother decided to be "helpful" and iced it before it was cooled. It turned into a glob of goo, I cried. The one that made it to the judging was made the morning of said judging. It was too brown on the outside but I didn't care at that point. I told the judge about all my misadventures, she was sympathetic and gave me a blue ribbon. She was impressed that I had kept trying, unlike someone before me who had given up and submitted a store bought one. She said she called the girl and her mom out on it too. ~Angela

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