Utah State Fair

Jared and I took the three little ones to the fair this morning. I'm such a fair junky it's ridiculous. Growing up our parents took us to the fair to see the tractors, animals, and of course the "commercial" building. We never really ventured over to the rides, (as a parent now, I think I've figured it out.

All those "carnies" pitching their best schpill on WHY we should pick their VERY overpriced-can't-win-for-the-life-of-you game which you keep forkin' over the doe just to prove them wrong! HA! Who's the one laughing now? Them of course!!!

Now I can't afford that $4.00 funnel cake I was SO craving when we first arrived. No, I'm not mad, just really REALLY bitter!)

Sorry, we got off on a tangent there....back to the 'family memories in the making'. Once through the gates, we happened upon a NEW (can you believe it, something NEW at the fair?) show/act/exhibit... whatever you want to call it. "Tigers from India". Actual bengal tigers ALL the way from.... you guessed it, Florida. WHA Wha wha. (FLORIDA? What's with the India?) I'm not going to ask, I'll just assume that they are there for the winter. Ya know, like all the other snow-birds. Right?)

It was cool to see that there are so many different colors of bengals.

And being a sucker for cats (you'll see in the next blog posting) that I wanted to run into that pen to cuddle, hug, ride, and feed those amazing beasts too.

Next, we decided to devulge our pallets into all that....greasy food. Jared had a hamburger, I had SUPER yummy pizza (I really wanted to go get another piece, I was having a continuous argument in my mind about should I? or shouldn't I?) and the kids...corn dogs. (Ok...so you're probably wondering what happened to the funnel cake I was going off about earlier, but to be honest, I have never had one...just used it as an example to make my point. It worked because everyone knows about those funnel cakes.) We did have kettle corn, (Insert Homer-Simpson-seeing a doughnut sound effect here...) ice cream, and fresh lemonade.

I finally made it to the crafts building and the first thing I noticed was three women making lace. (Be sure to double click on the pictures to get a closer look!)

I have never seen it done homemade the way that they were doing it. I was shocked to see how detail oriented it was. I've seen my mom crochet doilies but nothing like this. I HAD to take a few pictures just to show YOU, my blog stalkers, what they were doing. Talented, that's for sure.

This woman was so sweet while I bombarded her with questions.

When asked, "how long does it take you to do this?" She said, "Usually 1 inch per hour." WOW!!! I don't think I will EVER have that much patience. The particular piece she was working on, (I assumed it was a lace collar) she was hoping to have it finished by christmas. I thought that she had plenty of time, but her goal of one "loop" (in the picture above, a loop is one 'scallop') per week was far from being reached. She was still on the same "loop" three weeks later. (Maybe Christmas isn't so far away.) Hats off to these women for continuing an old tradition of hand woven lace.

After walking around for a while longer we were starting to feel the heat and sore feet and decided to call it quits. Good thing, the crowd started to become more congested as we pulled out of the parking lot. All in all, it was an ok visit. Next year, maybe we'll make it over to the animals.

Which is worse?

Ok...Tonight I was playing with the kids in the living room and Mykael decided that she was going to move Dylan's bouncy car to the middle of the floor so she could "chase" him around it. (A game he likes to play.) Well, when she moved it, there was a rather large (and by large....it was about quater size) hairy spider sitting there. I couldn't quite tell what it was but I wasn't going to try to identify that nasty little invader by any means. I was yelling for a shoe! Jaden brought me one of Ashton's and the thought that came to me was, "he couldn't have gotten a BIGGER shoe?" Well I sucked it up and grasped that shoe in rather strategic way (probably holding it like it was a stinky diaper) and requested a tissue to wipe up the remains. (I had to be COMPLETELY prepared. If I had thought about it...I would've had them bring the trash can in to, NEXT TIME!... *random thought- 'I'd probably make a good surgeon. I'd make sure I had all my instruments.) Back to the story... I wacked at that thing hard enough to only have to do it once and the 'butt part'... (sorry, not a scientist...don't know what the official name for that is, and quite frankly don't care!) ...SCATTERED! Being a mother myself, I knew what that meant. "GET ME THE VACCUM NOW!!!!!! I had the kids scrambling SO fast. Luckily, the"spiderlings" (Yes, that's official....looked it up) couldn't get too far because it was on the carpet and their little legs probably couldn't reach from one fiber of carpet to the next, but I definitely made sure that every one of those offspring joined the rest of the dust in my house. Locked up tight in the Vacuum. (At least that's what I keep telling myself. Can they crawl back through the hose and out? Please say no!)

After some thought, during my 'calm down' phase... I wondered to myself, 'What's worse? Spiders or cockroaches?' I've dealt with those dirty bugs too but wonder if I had to choose to live with one species what would it be? Right now...I'm leaning more toward La Cucaracha. That Spider mama and her babies was really creepy. I was considering posting a picture of this spider (btw... it was a wolf spider) and even found a picture of one carrying babies but thought 'No way, I don't want to look at that nasty thing everytime I log into my blog because it will just continually make me examine each little step I take and plus that image is forever engraved in my mind. So instead, for our viewing pleasure we will look at this, (more so, that I can have good dreams):

Cute, isn't it?

Eli

Now that school has been in "session" for a few weeks now, Eli and I have been able to develop a "routine". We walk the kids to school, come home, and Eli picks a movie. The one that usually makes the cut is, "The Spear Carp Project". Now some of you may not have heard of that show before, but in our house...it's a HUGE hit. It's about a guy that goes 'fishing'. Eli L O V E S fish and we were given this amazing film to preview from the producer, himself... Coleman/Uncle Coley.
Here are a few more examples of Eli's obsession with fish:

*He brings me a piece of paper and pen so I can draw him a fish. He then takes that sketched fish and puts it in a pan. (Guess we're going to have fish for dinner!)

*He goes hysterical, and I mean hysterical, whenever we go to Cabela's to see the fish tank. He makes sure EVERYONE gets to see THAT fish.

*He has broken ALL of our fishing poles because he climbed up to where they are kept in the garage and tried to go fishing in our front yard. I have had to make him a "non-destructible" pole (I thought) in which he found a way to break it!

*He has a stuffed animal fish named "Bish the fish".

*And then there's this picture!...


Eli, Bish the fish, and the in-destructible pole.

I told Ashton to put his shoes on so he could go play outside. He couldn't find them and finally decided, "Mom, I'm just going to wear my feet."

So, Jaden came home from school today and when Jared asked him how his day was, he said that it wasn't too good. Jared inquired some more and Jade said that during recess there were some boys that started reciting mama fat jokes and adding the "daddy's" too. Jaden took great offense to that because he felt that Jared, me, Bonnie, and Randy (Bonnie's BF) were all being insulted. Mykael said that Jaden had his hand in his fist and was ready to start punching. (Sweet little thing, protecting the parents like that!) But thank goodness for that bell!!! I didn't want a phone call from the principal today, or ANY day for that matter! I explained to him that those kind of jokes really don't mean anything and I (for one) was not insulted. So I started to tell him a few more just incase this little occurance continued tomorrow. I told him that if they started up again, he would memorize some more so he could say, after one of the boys told a joke, "Oh! Here's a good one, listen to this.....(You're mama...)" That way, turning a possible aggressive situation into a more "guy friendly conversation." That is why I'm on the internet now, I'm "researching"!

Mandatory Harvesting...

After getting home from the camping trip, we encountered a storm that lasted until about 3pm. today (monday). During which, a lot of my corn, and sunflowers were blown over in the high winds.

It's ok because we needed to harvest them and this was just a slight shove in that direction. I'm happy with the outcome.

Our happy little farmers.

The corn was delici-ous!

Dylan thought so too. He chomped on this little piece until I pried it out of his hands and gave him another to work on.





For those of you who remember all the way back when we planted our garden, that I mentioned how Jared planted 49 melon plants? Well....Here's the one melon we got!!! If the odds are 1/50. Then next year we're going to have to quadruple our plants to get enough for one meal! It was sure a little one, but really sweet.






I'm excited for the sunflower seeds. We'll definitely get a lot. Also...you can only harvest the giant sized sunflowers.



Luckily we had plenty of those too and we'll get a bunch of seeds from them.

Camping

A "quick trip" to vernal to see about a possible job opportunity, turned into a fun camping trip with family and old friends.

The streets throughout vernal were lined with these flower boxes.

My belief is that THIS store was resposible!

A few yards from our camp site, there was an observation deck and this was the view!

I woke up early the next morning and decided to watch the sun rise. VERY well worth it!

Flaming Gorge Dam. View from the road.

View from the water.

I didn't realize just how big the gorge is until we were on the boat and became tiny specs on a huge body of water.

We REALLY enjoyed the boat ride. Thanks Richard!!

He started out fussy, but after a while, really started to like the boat.

There were these eagle nests EVERYWHERE along the cliffs. I amazed on how big they are. And no, we didn't see any of the inhabitants.

We came upon this boat and thought. "That sucks!"

Richard was telling us that this is the biggest attraction among the younger "kids". It's about a 30+ft drop. The guys go to show off, and the girls sit there till they build up enough courage to swing. We sat there for about 10 min. This was the only guy that did it.

Jaden found a little friend and while it was running all over him, I was telling him to hold still and stop screaming so I could take a picture. It eventually made it's way up to the top of his head.

Two sun beaten men, Dad and Richard enjoying some lunch and reminicsing. I'd forgotten what a crack-up Richard is.

More breathtaking views from the boat.

We stopped at a small sandy beach area for lunch and let the kids out to play in the water.


As much as this water looks so amazing... it was EXTREMELY cold. We would've broken out the skiis, but I think that no one really wanted to be in the water more than what was neccessary. Thanks to Camille, I "ventured" in further than what my body was screaming at me to avoid. BRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I think mom's smile is really her teeth chattering.

Trolling.

One more day and we think Jaden would've made it all the way through. Everyone there could vouch for that. He worked on that log the whole time we were there.