Month: September 2011

I had been hearing commercials for the Utah State Fair, and thought that it would be fun to go, but looking at the calendar our Saturday’s were quite full and was thinking maybe to just drop the idea, and plan ahead for it next year. But then I found out that there are Scout things to pass of by going to the fair, so I decided we just HAD to work it into the schedule for this year. 🙂 We decided to go today because Monday is early out day for the kids at school, and so we could leave early in the afternoon and meet Kyle at work to go up to the fair to spend the late afternoon/evening there, and because the fair was having a special where ALL kids get in free and adults get in for the kids price! Score! $14 for the whole family to get in!

We decided to head over to the wildlife building first (I forget what it’s actually called), since cub scouts are supposed to be able to fish in a pond out back and that fulfills some of the scouting electives. We walked around inside and looked at the various kinds of fish, and the kids got to try to pick up some antlers, and touch some animal furs. It was very nice that it was a very hands on building, considering most places like that are very ‘look but don’t touch’ and that just doesn’t work well for small kids.

After walking all around the building checking everything else, we discovered that the fishing pond was out back and we couldn’t just walk out the back door to get there, we had to walk all the way around the building. So we went out to the fishing pond and the sign said that the last fishing session of the night started in just a few minutes. Kyle went to talk to one of the guys behind the fence that seemed to work there and they said that they had already passed out cards to the people that would be participating in the next (and last) session of the day. We were rather bummed that we missed that but figured it was better to find out then than to stand in line forever before finding out. So we decided to go do something else.

We walked through the 4H building and we got to see all kinds of things that had been made by kids. Ethan and Jeremy were instantly drawn to the lego creations that were on display. My personal favorite was this candy dispenser:

Kyle has talked about making that type of candy dispenser before and Ethan has been wanting Kyle to help him make one. This one I think is just plain cool and creative. And you twist the nose and a candy slides out of the mouth.

We headed to the livestock barns, and got to check out a whole bunch of goats first. The kids really liked that the goats were nice enough to let them pet them:

After the goats we went to the poultry barn and saw a whole bunch of chickens. I think my favorites are the ones with the poofy heads:

Someday when I have lots of land with my orchard and garden and horses, I’m going to have some chickens with poofy head feathers. 😛

We also saw all the bunnies on display, many of them were for sale as well. I miss having a rabbit. Someday we’ll get another one. And there was also the building with bees and all kinds of produce on display. There were even a few giant pumpkins, which EVERYBODY was trying to get a picture of their kids on or I think I would have got a picture of my kids on them. Also in that building there were some houses made of sticks that looked like slightly larger popsicle sticks. But they were really cool houses, not just a simple frame, cube shaped house. And then there were other things made of horseshoes. It was pretty cool.

Next we went and saw some dairy cows and decided we had better head over to the little hands on activity that they had there for little kids. “Little hands on the farm” they called it. The kids got to pretend they were farmers and they got to pretend to plant and harvest and take things to the ‘farmers market’. Here’s Dinah scooping her corn:

And then driving a little pink tractor:

Here’s Chloe with her basket of goodies:

The kids got to pick a fruit off a tree in the “orchard” and they got to milk a fake cow and put a milk carton in their basket. They got to plant a seed, and then harvest a vegetable from the garden, and they got to collect an egg from the chicken coop, and they got to brush a fake sheep and collect some wool. Mind you all of this was fake but the kids really liked it. I just wish it wasn’t so crowded. EVERYBODY was just shoved through the course and everybody was in everybody else’s way. I just wish that people would have gone through it more like they were in line, instead of everybody running us over and separating me from the rest of my family…..At the end the kids got to turn in all their plastic produce and were paid with some pretend money, then they got to turn in their money for a treat at the very end. Chloe picked an apple. The rest of my munchkins picked a container of frosted flakes. :/ But they really liked it.

As we came out of the last barn the kids saw a giant slide and begged to slide down it, so we bought some tickets and Kyle took them up to the top and slid down with them while I stayed at the bottom with Lydia:

After the slide we walked around and looked at the other rides and games. By this time it was starting to be rather late, so we started to work our way back to the entrance. We kept our eyes open trying to find the deep fried snickers, but we never found them. We passed the building where they have home arts displayed and I really wanted to go check that out. There were some beautiful quilts on display that made me wish I knew how to actually sew, and there were lots of home canned goods that had been judged. Maybe next year I can enter some of my own canned goods. 🙂 Just maybe. It was a really late night, and we had a really good time. We finished the night off with getting a big bag of kettle corn to share and then we headed over to McDonalds to get the kids some nuggets for dinner, so they wouldn’t be going to bed only having had popcorn for dinner.

We took the family to our very first scout expo this morning. We had no idea what to expect aside from we’d been told that there would be things there for the boys to pass off in their books. Honestly Ethan has quite a bit finished in his book so I wasn’t sure if there would be anything left for him to do at the expo that we would actually get to sign off in his book, but we went anyway!

The morning started out with getting into the car to go to the expo and we saw a red, white and blue hot air balloon in the air really close to our neighborhood. Then as we were watching it we saw another one. The kids were SO excited and declared that this was the best day ever and we hadn’t even done anything yet! But they watched the hot air balloons while we were on our way to the expo and I even got a picture of the cute one on it’s way back down to the ground:

So we got to the grounds where they were holding the expo and parked and got out and just started wandering around. Ethan saw a raingutter regatta set up, and the kids decided to go over there and practice racing some pre-made boats:

After all the kids had a turn blowing the boats to the end and back we moved on and they got to climb a rock wall:

Dinah, being my fearless child, went higher up the wall than any of my other kiddos:

Jeremy got all hooked up and went to the wall and then totally chickened out. And he was so quick to decide that it was too scary that I didn’t get a picture of him with the wall at all. Chloe also got to try it out. They got her all hooked up and she went to the wall climbed up a couple of rocks and freaked out. Then Kyle just picked her up and put her higher up on the wall and she really freaked out! Throughout the day Ethan ran off several times to get in line for another try at climbing the rock wall so I think he really liked it.

Then we moved on to the bottle rockets booth. I only let the three older kids do this one. Mostly because the people that ran the booth had provided all the supplies for the kids to make their own bottle rockets and I didn’t want our family using up all their supplies. So the older three made rockets and then the man helped them launch them. That was pretty cool!

There were also some huskies that pull sleds there to look at, and a booth on electricity. The kids got to spend some time jumping in a bounce house, which they really enjoyed. There was an art booth where the scouts could earn the art belt loop and work on some of the art electives in their books. They also got to play bean bag toss at one of the booths. There was a bubble booth, where the kids got to dip various items in a soapy solution and make bubbles of various sizes. There was also a knot booth where a lady showed the kids how to tie a few different knots. There was a booth where the scouts could work on the requirements for earning the wildlife conservation belt loop, and Ethan actually finished that one. They also had a pinewood derby track set up and a  few pinewood derby cars there that the kids could tape weights to and send rolling down the track. Our boys were entertained by that for quite a while, it was rather hard to get them to move on to the next booth. There were also a few horses so the kids could go for a short ride. They couldn’t actually do the requirements for earning the horseback riding belt loop though because one of those requirements is to ride for 20 minutes and that would have just taken too long for all the people that wanted a ride to spend that much time with the few horses that were there.

Dinah was THRILLED to get to ride the horse. And I was actually surprised that Chloe rode without freaking out!

So we had a good time. I did get to sign off a couple things in Ethan’s book and he did earn the one belt loop. Then we finished the day off by going into town to take the kids to see Cars2 and the discount movie theater. I was very impressed with how well the older three sat still to watch the movie. The younger kiddos sat still for awhile, but then it was just constant bouncing around and I was getting really frustrated. In the end it was a good day and the kids had a great time, and it was really nice to get to spend the day with the family just having fun. 🙂

The very first spring after we moved into our house, we planted several fruit trees. Over the years we have added fruit trees and we’ve also had to replace at least a couple dead fruit trees every year. But we do still have one fruit tree that we planted that very first spring, and this year it finally bore some fruit!

There were six peaches on the tree earlier this summer when I looked, but our gusty winds out here in Eagle Mountain blew three of them off while they were still very small and very green. Harvesting three peaches does seem rather pathetic, BUT it’s way better than zero peaches again. I’m SO excited to see it finally bearing fruit, and it gives me hope that next year there will be more. There are also some plums on the tree in the front yard, so we’ll just wait and see how many make it until they ripen. 🙂