county fair

Alex's obsession with trucks has been steadily fed by the construction going on at the end of our street. What could have been a HUGE inconvenience and major source of irritation has instead actually been great. When we're really lucky, they park the spare dump trucks right across from our house. At least 3 times a week I load up the stroller with some # of children - ALWAYS including Alex - and we go and check out the construction guys. Scoop - scoop - dump. Sometimes Alex brings a truck along with him, sometimes one of his truck books. He is equally excited about cement mixers, dump trucks and excavators. One of the excavator operators is AMAZING. He knocks water bottles out of the way with the bucket. He hopped a cone out of his way with a huge sheet of metal. The company should have me write the evaluations for all the workers - I totally know who hustles and who is just there.

The county fair was in town in August, and, because this is Longmont, there was an exhibit of farm equipment. There were signs everywhere saying not to climb on them, but we did sit in the wheels. One of our party could have stayed there all day.



The fair had special activities for kids every morning. The day we went kids could make stick horses and then compete in a 'rodeo.' We skipped the rodeo, but we rode our horses around the entire fair. Going into the exhibit hall, a photographer for the Longmont Times-Call snapped a few photos, and one of them actually ran in the paper. Luckily her outfit sort of actually matched that day! (When I can figure out how to run the new scanner, I'll post the picture.)

One of the cool things about the small town fair is that, well, it's small. The owners of the animals are right there, and are excited to talk about their buddies. A couple of cute little 4H girls were practicing with their goats, and let Katie (Alex was NOT interested) and her friend Grayce walk them and pet them. Did you know you can actually RENT an animal if you want to participate in 4H? I always thought you had to live on your own farm. Who knew?

This quilt reminded me of Donna. (My hand is there for scale - I'm not touching the quilt!) The piecework was amazing, and it reminded me of the quilt show we went to the week after Max was born.