A Day at the Fair

We went to the fair on Saturday and it was absolutely the most perfect weather, nice and sunny with highs in the mid 70's. We got there right after the gates opened at 11:00 and stayed over 10 hours and it still wasn't enough to see all the exhibits. It never is!

 

I don't know if it was a new thing this year or if the fair was just slow to get going that day, but none of the rides opened until noon, a full hour after the gates opened. Our usual plan is to get there as early as possible and let the boys ride as many rides as they can in the first 2 hours before the lines get too long, but this year we found ourselves walking around aimlessly waiting until noon to roll around. Huge waste of time. We did however get our lunch out of the way first thing. Lamb burgers and lamb chili. Yum!

This year Rick got a wristband along with the boys so that he could go on some of the rides with the kids. We started out in the kiddie section which Tyler has pretty much outgrown, but he wanted to get on the rides with his little brother.

You can kind of see on Kyle's face that he isn't too sure about this bumpy ride. Then Tyler convinced him to get on the Happy Swing, which is just two long bench seats (that seat 6 or so kids per side) faced back to back that swings back and forth. Seriously no big deal, but Kyle hated it. For him it was the "unhappy" swing.

The merry go round was a hit and the horses actually went up and down. Somehow the boys always seem to get the horses that stay stationary the whole time. Not nearly as fun of a ride that way.

Kyle also went through a handful of fun houses, but then got hurt coming down a slide and was done with rides for the rest of the day. Tyler went on to ride this roller coaster several times in a row.
 

Rick and Tyler rode the hang glider together.

That's my cheeseball.

We played a few games with our eyes on a giant donut, Pikachu or a minion as a prize, but came away empty handed.

Oh wait, I take that back. Tyler won a tiny red dog or some dumb thing when he played this dart game. We were after the minion, but no.

 

A chocolate dipped ice cream bar with nuts from the huckleberry ice cream stand. Imagine my surprise when it was just vanilla inside. I thought everything was huckleberry, especially since there was only 3 things on the menu and it was called Huckleberry's. Oh well.

The biggest highlight of the fair was that Tyler had a piece of artwork hanging in the elementary art section. It was a self portrait he drew of himself using his 3rd grade yearbook photo as a guide, only he added glasses to his drawing since he wears those now (well most of the time...at school anyway). I think all three of the 4th grade classes at his school did the same art project, but Tyler was 1 of only 4 kids from his class that made it into the fair. So cool!

The ag building with monster sunflowers, zucchini, watermelons and the like.

We almost skipped going into the Modern Living exhibit, but I ran in quickly to look at some of the sewing projects. I noticed that one person had entered 12 different aprons, each one themed for a month of the year. My favorite was this sheer bat apron for October. Love!

Taking a quick break from the crowds and craziness.

The Pioneer Hall had a Sweets exhibit where we learned about the history of different candies and ended up buying some majorly overpriced jelly beans, but hey, look....we're just a bunch of sweethearts.

At 7:00 we headed over to the grand stands to watch the destruction derby. Bleh. The most boring two hours of my life! Next year I'll ditch the boys and go check out the animals or something else.

Mileage Club

As part of the physical education program at Tyler's school, they have mileage club on Mondays and Wednesdays at lunch recess. On Wednesdays it's required that all students run laps during lunch recess and on Mondays it's an optional choice. All the kids have electronic necklaces that they wear during mileage club that keeps track of the laps/miles they run. Parents are allowed to come participate, so Kyle and I came last Wednesday.

This is Tyler's last year at this school and in turn, his last year of mileage club. I think the farthest he's ever gotten is to the 30 mile club, but he's always had his eyes on the 50 mile club and the bright orange t-shirt that comes with reaching that mark. This year he has a plan. As long as he keeps on pace with Mrs. James, who always reaches the 50 mile club every year, he's good to go. The bright orange t-shirt shall be his.

On Wednesday he ran 6 laps (a mile and a half) and reached the 5 mile club. So far so good. He even lapped Kyle and I a few times and walked with us for a little bit.

So proud of this kid!

Here is his necklace from previous years filled with milestone markers. He has to start fresh from zero every year and work his way up. After running the Fitness for Kids Marathon earlier this year, 50 miles doesn't seem completely impossible.

And much to Kyle's delight, after mileage club there was still a few extra minutes of recess to play basketball with his big brother.

What fun! How can we not come back next Wednesday?

August Favorites

A few of my favorite Project Life photos for the month:

 

This was Tyler's next to last day of swim lessons for the summer. I love how happy he looks and knowing that he's genuinely proud of himself. If only I could have frozen time in that moment and prevented his last class from ever happening. If only I would have known he was going to have the most tremendously epic meltdown I've ever witnessed. Now instead of moving on to level 5 swim lessons this fall, I think he may be done for good.

Boys and funny faces: it never gets old.

I love Kyle's "cheese" face. It makes me laugh every single time.

 

In the waiting room of the Children's Village the boys were getting along like a dream, but what's funny to me is knowing that they're recreating a scene from the season finale of Mythbusters where they were testing airplane myths.

Poor Carmelita. Here she thought we were having bonus story time and picked out her seat front and center, but really I was just emptying Kyle's book bag from the library.

 

Pillow forts are always fun.

Again with my cheeseball in the back seat.

 

Working on making the tallest segment of stacker pegs ever.

The August babies in the nest.

 

Sweet innocent Kyle showing me his "owie finger", the one he somehow injured at the beach last month. His nail is a little bruised, but otherwise it's fine.

End of Summer

With school starting this week, I wanted to make sure the boys had fun the last few days of summer vacation.

 

We went to the park:

 

And we went to the pool one last time before it closed for the season:

The local Rotary club funded the construction of a new playground in the park adjacent to the pool, which the boys have enjoyed playing on this summer on days we visit the pool.

All was going well until I came down with a monster cold and spent the remaining days in bed. So the tail end of summer fizzled out, but we gave it a good try.

On Monday the school had an open house for the kids to come in a day early and drop off their school supplies, meet their teacher and so on. Tyler has Mrs. James again this year. The same teacher he had for 2nd grade (who now teaches 4th), and the one who took him in last year to help him finish out his 3rd grade year.

Tuesday was the first day of school.

Tyler is a 4th grader now and it's his last year of elementary school. Next year he'll be heading off to the middle school for 5th and 6th grade. Crazy!

Bunches of Berries

Last weekend we went to pick blueberries at West Valley U-Pick, a farm just a few miles down the road from our house. Summer is quickly coming to a close and I wanted to make sure we got out there before it was too late in the season and all the good berries were gone. We went after dinner when it had cooled down a bit so it was much more tolerable out in the field.

 

Kyle goes through phases with his favorite fruits, but generally he doesn't care to eat plain blueberries all that much....unless, apparently, he's picking them himself and then he can't stop eating them.

We worked hard for about 90 minutes and then at 8:00 (closing time) we brought our buckets over to the scale and ended up with just over 5 pounds of berries. I've already made blueberry crumb cake for Rick to take to work and now I'm trying to decide whether to make blueberry muffins, or a peach/blueberry cobbler or blueberry crumb bars. I guess I'll have to make all three!

Happy Birthday!

My birthday this year was just like any other Monday with Rick at work and me at home with the boys. I kept to my usual Monday routine and ran 3 miles on the treadmill and then went to the store to do the weekly grocery shopping, but it was the surprises throughout the day that made it special.

 

My first surprise of the day was a flower delivery.

Then I went to Starbucks to get my free birthday drink, which was a venti tripe shot soy latte. I don't usually get the extra shot or soy milk, but if they're paying for the upgrade...what the heck! And since I placed my order at 1:59, I was able to turn around at 2:00 and use my receipt for the afternoon $2 grande cold drink special and I got the boys a strawberry n crème Frappuccino to share. Treats for everyone!

Once Rick came home from work I was able to open some presents.

I got a subscription to Birchbox, which sends you beauty samples in the mail on a monthly basis. This is a peek inside my first box and I've already tried the eyeliner and the nail polish.

 

I also got a new necklace that was a near perfect match for the nail color. It was all meant to be.

A new salad bowl and spoon set.

A speaker for the kitchen that syncs with my cell phone so I can listen to Pandora or whatever else.

Also some new workout gloves, a gift certificate to the hair salon and candy.

For dinner we went to Creekside West and I ordered the Salmon dinner and a glass of wine.

Back at the house we cut into the ice cream cake for dessert. Strawberry cheesecake ice cream with chocolate cake. Mmmm, and with all that sugar the boys were bouncing off the walls until nearly 11:00 at night.

Waldo Finale/Prize Drawing

Last night was the grand finale and prize drawing for the Find Waldo Local event hosted by Inklings bookshop. We were so excited about it this year that we found Waldo at all 26 locations in the first two weeks of July and then I spent a few extra days putting together some costumes for us to wear to the party.

 

I found some inexpensive red and white striped shirts at Walmart and Old Navy for us to wear and then I made some stretchy knit hats to match our shirts. I think they came out really nice and we even got several compliments at the party. Poor Rick was dressed in his normal clothes since I never was able to find him a shirt and I ran out of fabric for hats. I did have a brainstorm for next year though: It would be so perfect to dress him as Odlaw. I just need to find a good yellow and black striped tee and make him a yellow and black hat.

Raffle ticket numbers were called for small door prizes and names were drawn out of a bucket for the bigger prizes. We didn't win the grand prize, but at least the boys did win something.

They won a runner-up prize for coming in 2nd place on the W-word game where you had 30 seconds to come up with as many W-words as you could. We worked as a team with everyone shouting out words and I wrote them all down. In the end we had 14 words, which was good enough for 2nd place and a bag of freshly baked cookies from the bakery at Johnson Orchards.

We also got to eat some cute Waldo themed cupcakes.

And in the end I took Tyler into the bookshop to buy two more Waldo books to add to his collection at home. Guess how he spent the rest of his night...searching for Waldo!