crawdad feed

We had the pleasure of being invited to a crawdad feed this weekend. These little guys were wiggling around trying to pinch the kids that were wanting to play with them. Until, they were tossed into a pot with boiling water. These little guys were cooked up Cajun style and they were spicy!

"Poor me! My tail and claws have been eaten by The Rooster."

The Rooster seems to have a unique style in his crayfish eating.

Hummm. It looks like Chick #2 has the same type of style. I wonder where he learned that?

Here are chick #2 and #3 looking at the fest. They did not partake of the sucking of crayfish but they would gladly break the tail off for the hungry guests.

Making a sailor blush

Chick #4 could make a sailor blush. He could cause a Grandmother to faint and a Pastor to be taken back. This seems to happen when the little guy it playing with his trucks. Have guessed? He can not say a "tr" sound yet and it comes out as a "f". Opps! I was trying to work on him saying truck today but he just got louder and louder and never really got the correct sound out. Hopefully he will grow and find the "tr" sound soon. For the moment maybe I should hide the trucks. :o)

A New Thing

I have been looking for a good way to get my workouts in while The Rooster is not at home. Many times he will have meetings or other things going on. I also wanted to find a way to workout in the mornings. This means that I need to stay close to the little chicks, I can be interrupted, and it is fairly easy. We are now in the hot days of summer and running is not easily done. I love to run in cooler weather but once it is above 85 degrees I really lose the drive to keep going. We have a near by park and I thought that I could run up through the hill in the park while the kids play. But I did not like making one of the older have to stay right by chick#4 the whole time. Then the idea of jumping rope came to me. I can even do it the morning when it is still cool out and the kids can roam and play in our back yard. I have two weeks of jumping under my belt now and I can jump for about 35 min. The first day it took all of the strength in my legs to jump for 20 minutes. It was so hard to even do 20 jumps in row without messing up. Now I am a much better rope jumper. Chick #1 is even starting to work on her jumping skills a little more. She can jump through her crossed arms! I claim that my arms are to short for that trick. I can alternate feet and do single foot jumps plus a double jump where I swing the rope around twice. Exercising is really important to me because it helps me sleep so much better. If I do not get a workout in I can be certain that I will be up at 2 in the morning and not able to fall back to sleep until about 5 AM. For the last two weeks I have been sleeping through the whole night again. It just amazes me how exercise can affect your whole body.

Animals

I thought that it would be a lot of fun to take neat pictures of different kinds of animals at our fair. My whole goal was to get a really close up picture of a pigs snout. I just think they are funny and I just laugh looking at their funny noses. The pigs did not want to work with me. As you can see, this guy thought he had a good side that needed to be photographed. He sure would pose this way but would not give me a good snout shot.

The sheep also thought he had a good side. Maybe he is a girl but she sure did not get her ear rings matching. I tried to take a close up picture of a goat but the little guys just wanted to eat my camera. I guess they do not like the close up shots.

Here are cow eye lashes. She would not turn her head and was a little scared of my camera being so close to her face. I really wanted to get a close up picture of the gal next to her but she was shy and kept putting her face down. People started to look at me a little strange because I was holding my camera so close to these animals. It is so fun to try to get really good shots of the animals God created for us.

What did it win?

That cute little frog picture that I put up yesterday won Best In Class. You know what the funny thing is about it? I did not even know that it had won during the fair. Every time that I had look at the photos at the fair I had only noticed the blue ribbon. I never really gave it my full attention because I was always busy keeping track of the little chicks. Someone came up and congratulated me on winning such a good award in the photo division and I had brushed it off. "Oh", I said, "I only got a blue, I did not win any purples." It turned out that the purple ribbon was hanging so low I probably thought it was for the picture under it. When I brought all of our stuff home I finally saw the ribbon and was a little excited. I thought that the picture was really good and I guess a few other people thought so too.

Guessing

Who wants to guess what this picture won at the county fair? I will post the answer tomorrow. To those that may know the answer please do not say anything.

As luck would have it

My third child is really something else. You never know what she is going to do, where she is going to be, or what she is going to say. She disappears often and I am always checking up on her and looking out for this little girl. She is independent and can do many things with out any help. These gifts often get her in trouble too. While we were at the fair this past week I had noticed that she had gone missing. We were in the open class building where the air conditioning was so we were in no hurry to leave. The whole family was walking through, munching on candy and stopping to visit with friends we know. I was doing a head count of the little chicks and sure enough Chick #3 was AWOL. I quickly found her and she had acquired a balloon and had some teenage boys smiling at her. Chick #3 always needs to stay close under my wing. After the fair, I had the kids help with the fair grounds clean up. It was a hot day and they whined but it is good for them to learn about helping out in their community. Plus after you collect a bag of trash you can put your name in a box for a bike drawing. Chick #3 did not understand what we were talking about and she was worried that she would have to draw a picture of a bike. I explained to her what would be happening and she was a little relived. The little chicks did their part and put their names in for the bikes. The kids and I were a very hot and we did not want to stick around until the drew the names for the bikes. We headed home and all of the chicks had high hopes of winning a bike. After we were home I started do things in the kitchen and the phone rang. The Rooster answered the phone and the person asked for Chick #3. He handed her the phone and she got a huge smile on her face. Yep! She had won a bike. And not only that but the bike is green and purple, her absolute most favorite colors. Also there is a butterfly on it, her favorite insect. Now she just has to learn to ride a two wheeler so she can go out crusin' to the end of the block.

Our last fair day

Our last day at the fair involved the chicks riding fair rides. It was really, I mean really sweltering hot. I believe that the heat index was around 115 degrees. I packed plenty of water and made sure everyone was drinking enough.


Chick #3 on the merry-go-round. She mostly stayed on the little kid rides but did end up over on the bumper cars with chick #1 and #2.

Mister cool guy on a ride. He finally decided that this was where we were going to he and did not have one break down at the fair. I thought for sure he would have a melt down but the little guy toughed it out.

The youngest chicks crusin' in the beeping cars. The kids just love to push those buzzing horn buttons.

Bumper cars rule for the older chicks. I can not even say how many times they rode them. Here is Chick #1 with her older cousin.

And of course Chicks #2 and #3 were testing out their driving skills. There was much more crashing then driving going on.

Another day at the fair

One of our good friends were kind enough to let Chick #2 show one of their goats. We had to be at the fair grounds around 12:30 to practice for the upcoming music contest. It was a really hot day and everyone was sweaty. Chick#2 was hoping the 4-H Mom's would let him stay and help with their goats. They said it would be fine for him to stay and Chick #2 was over joyed. He could run around the animal barn all day and wear cowboy boots just like real farm kids.

Here he is in the show ring trying to get Miss Penny to hold her feet just right. He was pretty proud to be in the ring with one of his good friends.

I think that he is holding his lips in to keep for smiling so much. This is, after all, very serious work and an ear to ear smile just would not be acceptable. All of his hard work paid off and he won a purple ribbon. Both of the boys did. For all of his hard work he won $6. Now he has enough to go buy a potato chip cowboy hat.

Chick #3 and #4 were running around and getting very sweaty. Chick #4 does not like being at the fair at all. He has to hold my hand and not run all over and wait and stand. He does not like being hot, He usually ends up crying after only being there for 30 min. This little two year old does not have much patience.

Here is the sweaty little guy again. He was squatted down listening to Chick #3 and her friend talk about where to go. There is dirt under his nails, neck, running down his face and smeared on his leg. But you know what? I would still pick him up and kiss his sweaty little head.

lost blog?

It seems that My Favorite Apron blog has gone missing. I will miss reading about her daily adventures in her rural life. Maybe she will come back some day under a new identity. Will her dairy cow have another baby this spring? How will their beehive do? What interesting things will they knit this winter? I guess I will not know.

We have a champion

Chick #1 seems to have done it again. Last night she won reserve champion for junior level sewing. Her work paid off and she learned how much work it takes to win a trophy. We had a few battles trying to finish up projects and she is learning that her perseverance pays off. She had won her first 4-H trophy earlier this year during the speech contest. In that contest she also learned that only she can do the work and it takes a lot of practice to do well.

Yesterday she made a red velvet cake to auction off during the 4-H cake auction. It took us all afternoon to get the baking done. Hopefully next year she will be able to do all of the steps a little quicker since I will be having more than one baker.
Chick #1 is on the stage during the bidding for her cake. It ended up being sold for $40 and she will get to keep half of the money. The other half goes to the local 4-H council. Some of the children's baked goods went for $100. I believe there were a few family members out in audience will to fork over the money so they could satisfy their sweet tooth. Chick #1 was over joyed with it going for $40. The average price that items were sold for was right around $50. I think some businesses also came and buy things so they could use it as a tax right off.

Here she is strutting her stuff during the fashion show. She really carries her self well and that probably come from taking dance lessons. Next year we will have to have a whole ensemble going on for the modeling. They do not judge on the way you model but on the overall outfit and accessories. Shees! Who would've know that they wanted her to have a matching purse and everything.
Can you tell that she is just a little excited here! I do not think that she could smile much bigger. We were both surprised by her winning reserve champion. Her blue top she is wearing won a blue ribbon but her skirt won a purple and will be going to the state fair. The granola bars that she baked will also be going to state. She wanted to have at least one thing picked for the state fair so she was able to accomplish that goal too.

Here is the little thing when she won her first trophy. I even think that chick #2, standing next to her, was proud of her after the speech contest. This was a bitter sweet night for her because the boy she likes only won a blue ribbon. She was very excited for herself but she felt very bad for her friend. I wonder how it will go with the two aways compete with each other during these contests. Our next big fair adventure will be the music contest on Saturday night. Our group usually does really well. I think the weather will be about 100 degrees that day. Can you say sweating, stinky boys?

100 posts and a celebration

Our nephew opening up one of his gifts. He thought it was funny that I had wrapped it in two layers of paper. And below is the yummy desert that we celebrated with.

This is my 100th post onto my blog! You know what this calls for, a celebration. And what a better way to celebrate than with a birthday. Yesterday was my nephews 14th birthday. He is down here visiting us and his Grandmother and it just so happened that he would be here on his birthday. I can not let a birthday go buy with out baking a cake. But he, being 14 and all, said he did not want any fuss. I know from my own life that when a 14 yr. old says that, they usually do not mean it, they are trying to be cool. I then suggested that I could make brownies and layer them with frosting. What teenage boy could turn that down! His eyes brightened and he said "That sounds really good." I must admit that it tasted really good. We did sing to him while I carried the cake into the dinning room but we did not make him blow out candles. I think that he enjoyed his little celebration.

Fair Time

We have our fair going on this week and almost everything is entered. Chick #1 has high hopes of having something picked to go to the state fair again. Last year was her first year in 4-H and she had 2 items go to the state fair. I think that she has set up a level of achievement to live up to. Tomorrow we will need to enter in their potted plants and I might enter some whole wheat bread. It all depends on how well it turns out. Chick #1 will also be backing a cake for the 4-H cake auction and she will get to keep half of the money it earns. After the cake auction is the 4-H fashion show. I will try to post a few update during the week to let you know how everything is going. Since we are town folk we do not show any animals to show so I do not have that stress. Next year Chick #1 would like to show the Ugly Duckling for the 4-H dog show. He is a few weeks to young this year and still needs some more training. She will have to work with him a lot next spring and summer.