Workin' it at the fair.

This year we took the kids to the county fair for some good old fashioned fun.
We enjoyed all of the sights and found it to be a very educational experience.
Where else would you see a goat sporting pink spandex sticking her nose .... well, let's not go there.

Or chickens who were apparently allowed to use the hair blow drier in preparation for their big debut:
Or cows who reserve the right to have a personal fan stationed in front of them at all times:

Tru was dyyyinngg to see the horses so we took the kids to the arena for some ropin' and rasslin'. Ok, I have no idea what I'm talking about. I'm just a city kid who secretly wishes she were a cowgirl. We did see a lot of cool horse stuff ... like people roping things and tying up animals... stuff like that. As you can see, the kids were very in to it and their reactions were priceless:

(I'm pretty sure this is her face after the knocked the cow over and tied his feet together. She was feeling his pain)

We took the fair experience to a whole new level this year and entered the Open Class Competition. Betcha didn't know I can now claim to make "Blue Ribbon Cookies." Yep, I'm officially an award-winning chef ... my muffins have been tasted, tried and came home sportin' ribbons :) haha. Actually, this was all inspired after writing a food article on the Open Class Competition (for the Herald). I thought it would be fun (and free!) to participate. I spent all monday baking up my favorite recipes to submit some samples to the fair -- I multi-tasked and froze all the excess so I now have a freezer of muffins just waiting for some crazy morning after the baby is born. I also brought some scrapbook layouts -- not like I even scrapbook anymore -- because I figured they might as well do something other than gather dust :D

I might want to mention here that your entry is judged against itself (as in, my chocolate chip cookies were judged against what a quality chocolate chip cookie should taste like ... they weren't judged against the cookies someone else brought), so every entry gets a ribbon. Every entry also gets a cash prize ($3 for blue ribbons, $2 for red and $1 for white), so we earned $30 bucks at the fair.

Trent didn't come away too badly either. We just found out he won a grill in a drawing he entered .. haha! We'll be picking that baby up on Thursday. Good times at the fair :)