Going to the Fair

A couple weekends ago we went to the Clay County Agricultural Fair. And in my own words, "the fun is a fair place to be!" Well, I was giving the children the "talk" before we went in about safety and staying close and I meant to say, "the fair is a fun place to be!" Charles just enjoys laughing at me. :)

I had been years ago with my family and had really wanted to take the children, it was a beautiful day and we had a wonderful time.

Here Caleb is trying out the vintage fire truck at the front entrance.



Taking his sister for a drive...Charis was saying, "this black seat is hot on my legs!"


Can you guess who these people are? This was when I went to the fair with my family and we sat on the old fire truck! Go Daddy, love those glasses. ;) And he is holding Margaret, we went 11 years ago...wow.

Yikes! Me and Robert. :) A - look how old that jumper is!

Mercy was hanging out in the stroller while C & C rode the fire truck, she's like, "We're having a great time!"
Trying out some big equipment.


Charles with his sweet little girl.

Who are these guys at the petting zoo?!



Poultry then...

and poultry now!

The children were fascinated and enjoyed seeing the ones that had laid eggs.

Cows...

...wow, BIG cows, I mean bulls.

Donkeys!
Goats!
There were lots of rabbits but I didn't get a picture of them.

After looking at all the livestock we went to the exhibition halls. We recently have been studying the honey bee and C & C really enjoy the Moody Science DVD on the subject. A man had a booth with sample hives, the spinner contraption for getting the honey out of the frames, and other pictures and accessories. It was really neat!


They had all kinds of plants and flowers there for judging, this orchid was pretty.


Fun quilts.
A very detailed wood carving.

I just had to take a picture of this cake since I had just bought the pan on clearance at Wal-Mart! Caleb has been asking for months to be able to ride a horse so we splurged and let C & C do the pony ride. Caleb has a cute smirky face on, he really enjoyed himself and wanted to ride each one!
Charis had fun she just didn't want Charles to let go of her hand. :)


Mercy said, "Forget the ponies, I'm gonna grab me a cat nap!"

For the Cwane boys! We took this picture especially for you. :)

I was there too...

We were in little boy heaven!

Oh, I almost forgot the pigs. As you can tell by the snout, these guys were big. ;)

This guy was drinking out of his spicket, it was neat.

A shot of Mommy with the kiddoes...

and Daddy with the kiddoes.

Sweet sisters.

They have other booths that people are advertising things and they had a Gideon Bible booth. When we walked past Charis realized what they were and yelled out, "BIBLES!!!" They were orange which is C & C's favorite color and the gentleman running the booth gave them each one. As you can see from the pic, it is very treasured, she didn't want to let go of it!

We had a wonderful morning and I enjoyed all the pictures so that's why I had a hard time trying to pick and ended up posting most of them. :)

Plus the fact that I *finally* figured out that you can post 5 pics at a time . Yes, previously I have been putting 1 pic at a time on each post. And yes, I am an idiot but there is hope! ;)

For Miss Ruth Ann...

...since you were sick and not at church.

Recognize this?

Hope you are feeling better soon!

Charles' Birthday Cake

I must preface this post by saying that it is all Susan's fault, gotta find someone to place the blame on, right? ;) So Susan had this link to sign up for free birthday ice cream from Cold Stone Creamery, okay, so I shouldn't have signed up for it cause it got me to look at their site. And for those of you who know me you know I love to re-create desserts from pictures I see. It is such fun. So I showed Charles the page of their signature cakes and he picked one he wanted me to try for his birthday. I made it for fellowship dinner and it's a good thing I did because it turned out enormous!

Here is the one he picked, it's called Peanut ButterPlayground™. It is layers of chocolate cake with chocolate ice cream (I did chocolate peanut butter ice cream) with crushed peanut butter cups covered in chocolate ganache.


Here is our finished product ~ I used 8" cake pans and well, it turned out to be about 7"or 8" high! Oops. ;)

A better shot of the inside layers...

For those of you who are wondering, yes, it did taste gooooood. I know those of you who had some have already attested to that.

And for those of you who I know are wondering, yes, I did make it almost completely organic, say 90%?! I used regular Nestle chocolate chips for my ganache. I can already see the request list for dessert the next time we have our big dinner get together with the O's and such! :)

And a pic of my sweetie who turned *35*, wow! With his beloved mastiff. :) Yes, he was being silly in this pic but the one that he looked good in the dog messed up by moving all over the place. Oh well.

Family Reunion

Just in case you haven't figured it out yet, I am a member of the delinquent bloggers club, and it doesn't look like it will be getting any better, at least in the near future. :)

So, about a month ago we had attended a family reunion, well, let me rephrase that. We went to a social gathering with our blood relations. You might know, the kind where 8 out of 10 coolers were beer? You get the picture.

As we sat there the highlight of the trip ended up being when my grandfather's cousin (who is my dad's age) came up and asked us if we wanted to go see the horses. What fun we had!

Here are two of the beautiful horses, the chestnut one's name is Rusty but I can't remember the bay's name.


They also had a miniature donkey. His name is Otis, isn't he cute? The story behind him is: my dad's cousins, a brother and a sister, live next door to each other and the brother wanted to get something to irritate his sister. So when his friend was trying to give away this annoying donkey he took it. Instead of braying night and day like it used to it only makes noise if something comes near the horses. Which IS a good thing, just humorous as it seems his evil deed backfired!

This guy's name is Tigger, he is a retired world champion jumper.

Caleb and Charis enjoyed getting to feed him.

We took over the leftover veggie tray from lunch. At first he ate everything, the baby carrots, celery, gave us a little bit of a hard time over the broccoli but the funny thing was the grape tomatoes. At first we thought he had dropped it when we were feeding it to him but when we gave it back to him he promptly SPIT IT OUT!!!

After his owner brought out the big carrots, he wouldn't eat anything but those. :)

Such a beautiful piece of property down in Switzerland.

PS Ruth Ann, I figured out how to make it show when I actually posted it, not when I first started formulating the post. Which was 3/29 btw!