On Tuesday we went to the MN State Fair. I enjoy going to the Fair - only on a weekday. I'm not so fond of crowds that I'll brave a weekend at the fair. We took the Big One as a time for her to spend some quality time with her parents. The Little One went to daycare. While the Little One would have loved the animals and wanted to go on rides, I would not have enjoyed the fair if we had brought her with. So we didn't.
I took one picture, and FINALLY figured out how to get pictures off my phone - which makes me more likely to use it. I loved this sign:
This was in the Poultry barn. We have a definite pattern to our fair-going. We start the day by buying Mini Donuts, then heading over to the All-You-Can-Drink Milk stand (new building this year, and they added Chocolate milk. Yum!)(granted, the prices went up to $1 a glass. When I was the Big One's age, it was a quarter. It was $.75 last year...). Then, since we're right there, we hit the animal barn. The Big One wants to be a vet when she grows up, so we spend some time there. Its important to see the Biggest Hog, the best Beef Cow, and all the sheep. (It was sheep judging day, so they all had their coats on). Then, we went to the Miracle of Birth building, and saw a 15 minute old piglet. We waited a while to see if Mama Pig was done giving birth (after 14), but no eyewitnesses to birth in our group that day.
The Big One got a bit lightheaded in the Birth building (crowds and lack of food), so we fed her and headed to find food for ourselves. (Neither Troy nor I ate healthily at all.) We had a malt for lunch, and watched some of the Butter Scultping. (For those who may not realize, one of the attractions at the fair is the set of busts sculpted out of butter of the Dairy Princesses and Princess Kay of the Milky Way. A new set is made each year out of HUGE slabs of butter... and each Dairy Princess gets to take her sculpture home after the fair. That's a lot of butter!)
We watched the parade, then hit the Pet building, where they show Spaying and Neutering surgeries (again, with a budding Vet in the family, this is an important thing to hit). Then, the Tech building. This is more for amusement, since the "high tech" at the fair is usually more on the "not" side. We then continued down the road to the Fine Art exhibit (always interesting), then the Education building. We got stuck at the Mensa booth - PUZZLES! Had to figure out the puzzles. I ran into problems when my algebra deficiencies showed up. I don't have Math issues - majored in it, in fact. However, I have been known to have issues with simple addition. (2+3=6, 6+5+4=14, that kind of thing). This can make getting the answer to math puzzles a bit tricky...
Stopped by the MN Machine Knitters booth, and was somewhat interested, but the woman working the machine was just not easy to talk to. I watched for a minute or two, but didn't feel any "ask me questions" vibes. She gave a cursory explanation of what she was doing, but no further. There was a fascinated 10 year old watching - she could have explained a bit to her! Even when telling the Big One that my machine at home is about as simple as it can get (USM) she didn't blink. And, I was kind of interested in what I can upgrade my machine to... oh well.
Then looked through the Knitting submitted for judging. Some year I'll do this... After that, we got Choc. chip cookies and left.
Wednesday was the first day of school for the Big One. She started 5th grade this year - last year of elementary school. I'm not sure how I ended up with a 10 year old already...She really enjoyed it, though. Her teacher seems nice (we met her Monday night), and she has friends in class. All are good things. Wednesday night Church Choir started back up. Its nice to be doing choral again - I love singing in the choir. We even had 4 or 5 new members last night - the room is getting full...and there were another 10 or so people who didn't make it last night. The sad news was one of the sopranos passed on on Tuesday. She had been in the hospital since June. A subset of the choir is singing for her funeral tomorrow, I'm taking the morning from work to do so. We weren't close, but I knew her. She'll be missed.
On a less depressing note, this weekend is my husband's and my 11th wedding anniversary. We are sending the kids to their grandparents house for the weekend! Whoo Hoo!. On Saturday we're going to see Sarah McLachlan. On Sunday, we're going to see a Twins game. Monday we'll go get the kids. Grin!
Soon I'll post pictures of what I'm working on. Really. Truly.
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