County Fair, Part 1

This weekend past was the county fair. I couldn't limit myself to just a few pics so I'm doing this in two posts, one today and one tomorrow.

First up: animals, exhibits, crafts, and Fair Food. The lead pic? a demonstration of the Bernoulli effect, in the Intel booth.

Next, sheep. We also saw chickens, ducks, goats (regular and pygmy), cows and miniature horses.

Three: Playing with an endless pump: four buckets connected by pumps and rain gutter. Great fun.

Four: When it comes to Fair Food we're not in the same league as Certain Persons but Daughter finally got her Dippin Dots; Son had a Sour Apple Italian Ice. Not pictured are the fried apple slices with whipped cream that I had (verdict: don't bother).

Five: Watching the cattle judging.

(It was also hot, noisy, dusty, crowded and really really expensive --- but let's try not to remember that part ....)

Zoo Trip

It's been a rather long time since we've been to the zoo! It went reasonably well this time. There are two "extras" that you have to pay for, the train ride and the dinosaur walk, and we usually let the kids choose one. They opted for the dino walk, which is kinda fun. Some of the rubber animatronic dinos spit at you as you walk past; and there's a mist machine at one point which is nice on a hotter day. One of those pics shows Daughter handing a bill to a vulture, who snatches it and drops it in the donation box.

Dance Recital

A few images from the recent dance recital. Both kids were in both performances! One picture shows the two performers risking twisted ankles between shows. In another, notice Daughter being camera-shy after performing for several hundred people.

the innocent eye

As we were walking from the car toward (this week's) summer camp, Daughter stops abruptly, looking down, and says "Cool! Water droplets on spider web." I thought this was a very nice observation and I celebrate her moment of wonder.

What's going on here? My first fumbling attempts to introduce Role Playing Games. On the morning this was taken, Daughter finished up a math worksheet and then said "Could we get some new board games? I'm tired of the ones we have." So I sent her for some Littlest Pet Shop toys to be adventurers, grabbed some dice, and sketched out the entrance to a dungeon. The best I could find quickly for monsters was some puffballs. We didn't have much time before school but we got through a couple rooms and a hallway. And we overcame two Rats, two Dustbunnies and one Big Orange Troll! And recovered three jewels from the dungeon.

Guest Photographer

Daughter talked me into letting her take the (older) digital camera to school with her for a recent field trip to a local farm. She didn't have to talk too hard, I'm quite excited about this development.

Bookishness

Being a bookish sort myself I was sort of hoping that my kids would like books too. They do, of course, but not enough to actually cut into time set aside for basketball, dancing and (ew) computer games. Here we see Daughter has picked up The History of the United States, published around 1920, which I keep on a bookshelf more-or-less decoratively. I grabbed the camera, she grabbed my glasses ....