The Fair is a Smorgasbord!

Does anyone else remember that song from Charlotte's Web? Or at least I think that's where I learned it…that's a prime example of why I can't remember to take chicken out of the freezer for dinner, by the way. My brain is full of useless lyrics and random information that has no bearing on real life. But I digress.

So. The fair. While it is, indeed, a smorgasbord, we didn't partake of the food this year. Much to my dismay, we didn't time our visit well so I wasn't hungry for any deep fried goodness or even the homemade salt and vinegar french fries. We did, however, make multiple appearances at our county fair and started with opening night. As we whizzed around on the ferris wheel, I wondered if maybe we should've let a few more people ride first to make sure the kinks were out.

The kids' expressions might tell you a little about the speed.

the view from the top - it's a humble little fair but packed with fun!

I was smart enough to pre-purchase our all-you-can-ride passes this year so we wouldn't be shell-shocked at the gate. The kids got our money's worth out of their handstamps, maybe on the giant slide alone which Natalie did at least five times in a row.

Both kids remembered this roller coaster from last year.

Natalie was really excited to ride the bumblebees but Wyatt declined.
I think he'd had enough of the 'going around in circles up and down' by this point.

Ah, the beloved frog hopper that takes them up, up, up and then 'drops'
them from varying heights.

Horribly blurry, but I love that Wyatt's just a flying, wide-armed, green-shirted blob in this.
Nat's right behind him.

They had so much fun! Natalie also took a turn on the bumper cars with me as her driver and Wyatt and Jeff took a couple turns on the hang glider. We rounded out the evening with a stroll through the swine and equine barns. Piglets are cute! I was humbled when a percheron (whose owner was there, tending her horses and telling us about them) stuck her head out over the rail for me to pet her. We had a great night and thought that was a pretty great way to do the fair, but then….

Wyatt came home from school on Wednesday afternoon saying he had art at the fair. And I had already remembered a note coming home saying something about art, the fair, etc., yadi yada, with his name on it. I kind of thought every kid got a note home about art at the fair, quite honestly. I had already done a little research of my own on Wednesday morning questioning other first grade moms if they'd received such a note, so let's just say it was no surprise when Wyatt said his name was called on the announcements and that we'd missed his art debut. As any guilt-ridden mom with a husband working ridiculously late would do, I decided to take the kids back to see Wyatt's art. And no, for those wondering, it was not well-received that I didn't pony up for rides a second time.

W's art is the top left. 

We missed the poultry house the first time, so it was fun to go through
and look at all the chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, quail, guinea hens and pigeons (weird, right?).
The kids were delighted when offered a chance to pet a baby chick.

Last but not least, Wyatt went a third time with his friend Xavier yesterday afternoon. Lucky kid! Natalie was crushed, of course, that her brother was getting to go ride everything without her so I did what any self-respecting mom would do and bribed her. Between that and some back-to-back episodes of My Little Pony, she was good to go in no time. Xavier's mom reported that both kids had a great time; Wyatt convinced Xavier to go on the hang glider (no surprise), they apparently rode some things we missed on our visit and Wyatt was still laughing about the pig races today (his favorite part: pig #1 was named Kevin Bacon). My personal victory is that despite all these trips to the fair, we managed to leave without a fish! Both kids have already asked about the fair situation in Alaska, so I think it's safe to say we'll be looking forward to the state fair next year. I can't wait to see what animals are on display there!

Lately

We've been living the life here lately, engaging in a wide range of activities. Natalie is really into her babies, so they got to go the park one day.

babies were carried

babies did the slide

babies had to see how big their hands are

babies used the swings

babies had to sit in time out for a little bit

on another day, babies were fed in the kitchen

and babies are always given lots of love.

Then there's Wyatt, and his ever-loving engineeringish brain. I was called to his room one day in a voice that suggested something might be wrong ("Mom! You have to come see this!") but this is all I saw when I arrived on the scene:

I was perplexed. When I asked exactly what I was looking at, he explained it to me. There were moving parts, etc. and I'm still not sure what it was BUT I do know that in his brain, it was something. So there's that. Besides, it's inherently cool because it involves a light saber and a tape measure.

A couple of weekends ago, we made a family outing to the Congaree National Park. It was pretty cool; a great diversion from our normal routine and a great chance to be in nature. That said, I'm not sure you could pay me enough to go there on a hot, humid day. It's definitely a fall/winter/spring kind of place!

Then there was our annual round of croup; this one took Wyatt out of school for four days - the first two days it was kind of nice to have him around, days three and four were less enjoyable for all of us. In the midst of it, we realized the seal bark was not going down without a fight, so we paid a visit to our doctor for a breathing treatment. Even in this get-up, he was smiling. In that moment, I was reminded that he's  a pretty great kid. He was also given a dose of prednisone in the office and when I asked him if it tasted like grapes he cracked up and said, "No! It tasted like rotten cherries!"

Last weekend, I had the great pleasure of taking a day trip with a couple of friends. It involved lots of shopping (really more looking than shopping, but it's the thrill of the hunt), some good food that we can't get around here and lots of laughing. The kids were thrilled to have an entire day with "just daddy!" They squeezed a lot into their day, including the purchase and assembly of some new rockets. Jeff then had to work on Sunday, but rockets were on Wyatt's mind. He spent a fair amount of time making his own, including a launch system. Again with that brain that's so different than mine. I love it.

rockets all lined up, ready for launch

this is his "launch system" but then post-countdown, he hopped up and tossed
the rocket toward the ceiling.

And lastly, we experienced local culture at its finest by attending the Sumter County fair yesterday. Whoo, boy, that was some people-watching. More importantly, though, it was a Saturday afternoon together.

ferris wheel - much speedier than the ones in Japan!

little drivers

they would've done this on eternal repeat if we'd let them

she couldn't wait to get in the purple car - before the ride started, another little girl
joined her and they spent the whole ride grinning at each other as they 'drove'

this ride was awesome - it flung them around the ovals of the track
and my little thrill-seekers loved it!

Of course no fair is complete without games, so both kids played the 'ping pong toss for fish' game. In all truth, Natalie and I were on a ride when Jeff agreed to let Wyatt try. He says he didn't think Wyatt would win, but as I was spinning around on a bumblebee, I looked down to see that indeed, Wyatt's ping pong ball was in a container. Of course Natalie needed to try, too. She wasn't as lucky skilled, so we cut our losses after one round and told her we'd take her to Petco to buy a fish. Well, you know one thing leads to another so now we're proud owners of a two-gallon tank complete with fake plant, tiki mask and two goldfish. Their names are Orange Flipper (Wyatt's - and he doesn't look as though he's long for this world, as most fair fish aren't) and Natalie's Fish (it's had multiple names so far: Kangaroo, Fish, Natalie and Sarah. I'm not sure what its name was at bedtime).

And now you're kind of caught up - that's life around here!

Maybe it's Just Me

But this little gem from this morning's crime reports made me chuckle:

Four 22-inch chrome wheels, a touchscreen head monitor and a GPS unit, all valued at $2300 were reportedly stolen from a car in the 6700 block of Broad Street at 4:12am Tuesday.A passenger side window was also broken out, and several obscenities directed at "Terry" were scratched into the paint. "Terry" is unknown to the owner of the vehicle.

So let this serve as notice to the thief: you picked the wrong hoopty to steal wheels from, because Terry drives a different one.

The Good, The Bad & The Funny

Good:
1. My kids are loving their respective schools.
2. Natalie is really enjoying gymnastics, but is disappointed they don't do every apparatus every time.
3. Natalie is such a good bike rider now that she rode a couple of miles around the neighborhood this morning while I ran. Pretty soon she'll outpace me, but for now it's perfect.
4. Jeff's back after having been gone for a while. Life is better when he's here.

Bad:
1. Wyatt had a repeat EGD scope last week and still has issues.
2. Wyatt has now been diagnosed with an allergy to both milk and eggs.
3. Milk and eggs are in a LOT of things. Lots of label reading and modified recipes happening over here. Feeling fairly overwhelmed, but the panic of it is decreasing by the day.

Funny:
1. At Natalie's gymnastics last week, the teacher told us all we could (should) leave for the 45 minutes and that if there were any issues, we'd get a call. That's when one mom piped up about her daughter and said, "okay, but just so you know, if she falls at all, she'll hold her breath until she passes out. So either don't let her fall or offer her a band-aid as soon as she does; usually that distracts her enough that she won't pass out." I'm thinking maybe gymnastics isn't the best choice for that three-year old?

2. Our local paper ("The Item", that in itself is a funny name for a newspaper) is thin, to say the least. So thin, in fact, that they don't even produce a Monday paper. No news Mondays, I guess. Anyway, I suspect it's filler, but they print details of every crime report in the county. Today's favorite:  a woman was caught on surveillance video stealing a bottle of bleach and some cleaning supplies. The value was four whole dollars. The best part? She'd filled out a job application at the store immediately prior to her petty larceny. Super smart.

3. My other favorite crime report from recent weeks: a number of items were stolen from a home out in the county and the list read something like this: a handgun, a shotgun, an xbox, a playstation, cash, a television and a bag of chicken nuggets from the freezer. Those must have been some fancy nuggets.

Christmas in July

We had the most interesting encounter at the commissary on Tuesday and my kids are still asking about it. You see, we'd only made it about halfway through our list and had already taken a few "let me remind you about how we behave in public" moments. After one such conversation, I parked the cart out of the traffic-flow, told my little balls of energy to stand with it and absolutely, positively, not move while took five steps away from them to select the finest chicken tenders our commissary offers.

As I was perusing, a gentleman approached me and, in a quiet voice, said, "I know it's a little early, but come December I'm center court in the Sumter mall," as he stroked his white beard and chuckled. I smiled, said, "yeah, I can see how that works for you!" He gave me a jolly laugh then headed toward produce. My kids, who were actually staying with the cart just out of earshot saw the whole thing. So I took advantage of the situation and asked them if they'd seen that man talk to me. It turns out they had. So I did what anyone would and said, "did you realize that was Santa?!" Their little eyes got big and their heads were on swivels looking to see where he'd gone.

Wyatt was first to come to reality and ask why Santa was at the commissary. Again, I did what any mom who really needs some cooperation would do and said, "he's on a secret scouting trip and told me he's watching all the kids here today. Then he told me he'll be back in December. Isn't that amazing?" Natalie was in, whole-hog. Wyatt flat-out asked if he was real. So I just answered his question with a question and said, "didn't he look real?" It helped that we only caught one more glance of him before he disappeared - he was just elusive enough to make it seem like he was spying.

Natalie asked about him again this morning; Wyatt still seems to be slightly unconvinced but is teetering at the age where he will not dare to fully disbelieve, just in case the guy in shorts and a t-shirt really was Santa himself. And who knows? Maybe it was, and he was there to remind me, too.

Oink

We found ourselves in a different part of town the other day and needed to grab one thing for dinner, so we stopped at our local only-in-the-south grocery store, Piggly Wiggly. The kids think that name is hilarious (they're right) and especially like the happy pig on the sign outside. We ventured in and I felt like I'd stepped back in time. The store has decidedly not been modernized in its layout or structure - think big glass windows across the front, a row of registers immediately inside the door, an elevated customer service cage on the far left where the manager can sit to supervise the checkers. We headed for the bread aisle and I discovered that no detail of this retro store had been overlooked, including typed signs hung in front of sale items. It would have been better if they'd been hand-lettered, but the piece of printer paper hanging in front of the sale Goldfish crackers made me smile. The kids had a great time hopping over the different colored floor tiles, just as I remember doing in the old Dillons in Lawrence. Crazy.

So we grabbed our rolls and were heading for the checkout when the kids spotted Mr. Piggly Wiggly himself. Natalie immediately started talking to him, Wyatt laughed at her but sure didn't walk away. Thinking that we might not be back in the 1982 Piggly Wiggly anytime soon, I thought we should have some evidence of our visit. Say oink!

I will admit, I was a little disappointed to see that the checkouts were modernized with standard scanners and card swipers, but my heart lifted a little again on our way out when my kids couldn't take their eyes (or hands) off the old-school vending machines. Who knew you could still get one of those little plastic, round-bottomed, lidded containers with some sort of treasure inside for only a quarter? Also available: bouncy balls and plastic rings. Old-school, I tell you! Wyatt & Natalie couldn't quite figure out why I thought it was all picture-worthy; someday they'll realize I'm just really, really easily amsued.

The Land of Ah's

Or the land of hahahahaha's. I mean, I would never expect to see this in Virginia!

Yeah, that's a buffalo's head leaning out of the back of that truck. Let me assure you, if this passes right by your driver's side window while you're cruising down the interstate, it's fairly alarming. The fur was blowing in the breeze.

Once I gathered my wits enough to get my camera, I realized there was more to the story.

Right. Buffalo head in the back, fiberglass buffalo riding behind. Makes perfect sense. I was in line behind the guy at the toll booth and remarked about it to the toll collector. She told me it looked as though the pelt was riding shotgun. I guess you just never know what you're going to see on any given day, do you?

Rump roast, anyone?

Embracing Reality

1. Two posts in one day - impressed much?

2. I'm adjusting to small-town living: after book club tonight (which ended before I could be sure my littles were in bed), I decided to spend some quiet time at the Leavenworth library. I went to read magazines and was glad to find a nice assortment. I arrived at eight, and at a quarter after they made the first in a series of PA's detailing the timeline of their evening shutdown procedures: no new cards after 8:30, no new searches in the Kansas Room past 8:45, no check-outs past 8:50. Then they proceeded to make the same announcement every 15 minutes. No problem, I wasn't planning to take anything with me. So at 8:50 when   they made their last PA about check-outs being complete, I finished the article I was reading and returned the magazines to the shelves. It was 8:55 as I strolled past the front desk and 8:55:05 as I rounded the corner and had the front doors in sight. And then they turned out all the lights! Yep, I'm a party girl - I shut down the library here tonight. Small town fun!

We Didn't Make the Kids Get in the Car Today

We'd like our kids to understand that America is huge, diverse, complex and just flat-out fascinating and one of the best ways to do that is to explore. I read this book as a kid and while I don't remember details of it, I do recall enjoying it. And then a couple of weeks ago, I read this in our Sunday paper and my sister sent me this within a few days of that. It just so happened that Jeff took a couple days of leave this week and well, I bet you know where we went yesterday.

View Larger Map

Let me just say, it was an adventure of the best kind (translation: none of it went exactly as intended but we lived to tell the tale). We planned for it by packing a picnic, but got out of town later than we wanted to, hit traffic, endured many rounds of "how much further?" from the four-year-old among us and then finally - finally - arrived at the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge on Assateague. By about 12:30, we were on the beach (near the letter 'e' of Toms Cove on the map above), spreading out our blanket among the hundreds of other people who thought it was a great way to spend their Friday. I think I've mentioned that we're pretty spoiled by Jeff's parents' beach but I generally subscribe to the theory that any beach is a good beach. I mean, when you grow up in Kansas, you try not to be too picky about beaches. Unfortunately, when we weaved our way through the crowd to take the kids to the water, we discovered a six-foot drop-off between us and the waves. This does not a good beach make!

Jeff scrambled down with Wyatt while I stood, kind of wide-eyed, with Natalie at the precipice. I had no more handed Natalie down to Jeff and scrambled down myself when a wave appeared, knocking Wyatt down, freeing his precious red bucket from his grasp and stunning us all. He immediately freaked out about his bucket; I immediately had that "this is really poor parenting" feeling and Jeff, well, thank God Jeff stayed calm. Wyatt was righted, a fellow beach-goer retrieved his bucket and we were on our way. We discovered the beach widened a little further down (and the sand cliff became less dramatic) so we let the kids go to town. Natalie headed for the water at high speed - no fear of waves for her - and Wyatt loved the freedom of running with wild abandon. Glad we could execute one-on-one defense, Jeff and I just followed our little charges wherever they went. Unfortunately for us, they both kept going back into the freezing cold Atlantic water then ran out to cover themselves in sand. It was easily ten degrees cooler yesterday than it had been (it was about 85), but the wind coming off the frigid water cooled it at least another ten degrees. I had goosebumps the entire time we were playing!

We played until both kids were uncontrollably shivering then headed back to our blanket to finish eating and hang out.

That went well until we ran out of food. So then Natalie pointed out all the seagulls in the surrounding area, took a little extra interest in the camera

and joined her brother who was laying on Daddy "to warm up." Jeff is much more patient with these things than I am!

After that, we realized we were all cold and decided to pack it in. 

***My PSA for you: Just because a park's website says it has showers, you should not expect them to work. You should be well prepared and pack baby powder in your beach bag. Thank God I'd read that baby powder is the beach volleyball players' solution to sticky sand - with a good dousing of powder, we were all sand-free and changed into new clothes. No kidding, it was powder magic and will never leave my beach bag again! PSA complete.***

Of course we kind of hoped to see some wild ponies while we were there but had already resigned ourselves to not be that fortunate. Imagine my delight when we saw cars stopped and people looking into the clearing. I had Jeff turn around, hopped out with my camera and...

Jeff: "Is that a wild pony?"

Me: "Yeah, it must be, right?"

Jeff: "Is that wild pony wearing a saddle?"

Me: "No...right? I don't think so..."

Jeff: "That pony is totally wearing a saddle. And that man is going to ride it."

Me: (deflated) "Yep, that's a saddle. I guess it's not wild?"

Jeff: (laughing) "Nope. Not wild."

So we turned around (again) and headed out, only to see another group of cars stopped and people looking. Could it be? Yep!

Real wild ponies, just hanging out waiting for me to take their pictures. Natalie had already fallen asleep, so Wyatt and I hopped out to take it all in. I think the wild ponies of his imagination were much more interesting than these. Oh well. We made it up to him with another beach town classic:

Ice cream! Wyatt chose Marsh Mud - "for serious chocolate lovers only" - and I think it's safe to say he thoroughly enjoyed it. Natalie wasn't interested in ice cream (whose kid is she, by the way?) and Jeff and I marveled at how large the small scoops were, right before we licked our bowls clean.

happy family on a sugar high

ladies self-portrait

I'd love to tell you that the rest of the day was smooth sailing but that would be a lie. The happy smiles in the pictures up there? Yeah, that was before we realized we weren't going to be home by dinner time, that no children planned to nap (silly us, thinking Natalie would go back to sleep after the ice cream stop - apparently a seven minute snooze was all she needed!), or that we'd hit a seven mile back-up in the tunnel. Add to that a stomach full of ice cream, coffee and McDonald's and I bet you know how glad we were to see our house. I was so glad that I would even buy it again, despite the previous post.

Other things of note about the Eastern Shore: agriculture. Lots and lots of agriculture, including corn, an unidentified low-growing crop and huge tomato farms. I'd never seen a tomato farm but boy, now I have. Also - poultry. There was at least one Perdue factory and one Tyson factory and we saw countless chicken trucks on the drive. I was particularly bothered by the vultures circling the Tyson plant. One vulture? That could maybe be a coincidence but flocks of vultures circling above and around the plant on our drive there and five hours later on our drive home? Not a coincidence. Also, unusual town names that make me mildly curious about the history of the region: Temperanceville, Modest Town, Assawoman, Horsey, Machipongo, Nassawadox and Pungoteague, to name a few.

Ah, America, you intrigue me; unfortunately, I think we've done our exploring for the quarter. Don't know where we'll venture next, but you can be sure I'll restock the snacks before we go!