We Went to the County Fair

I think the title to this posting is the first line of some poem or song but I don't know any other lyrics but we did go to the county fair yesterday and it was fun. We forgot the camera but maybe you can reach back into your own memory bank and picture a small town fair. But our fair had a bit of uniqueness because instead of being held in a plain gravel or blacktopped setting it was held in Rhinelander's Pioneer Park which is set in a stand of huge pines with a curving path through the pines. The carnival midway was on the softball diamond and the tennis courts were turned into an exhibition hall by huge tents. The county and fair planners did an excellent job of mapping out the park and making room for everything fair goers could wish for but not making it too large to navigate comfortably. Bing and I took the three local grandchildren, Courtney, 11, Alexa, 7, and Eli, 5. The fair is free and that made it especially nice to realize that the whole county could have access to it - there were things to see and do at all turns that didn't require admission and provided fun and education. As all kids do, ours liked the rides the best and the minature donuts came in second but hugging Smokey the Bear, watching a horse trainer put his beautiful Morgan mare through her tricks, seeing the Rhinelander Dance team perform, making paper at a Paper Mill booth, watching medeival reenactors joust, visiting an Indian village, and seeing all the blue ribbon 4H projects and pets kept them and us busy and excited. The kids could have lasted many more hours than we did but we squeezed in quite a lot and even had a trolley ride back to the parking lot a few blocks away. Long live the county fairs!

Pictures from the Last Posting

This blog site seems a little finicky about adding pictures so here are the two more pictures I talked about in the last posting. I hope!

Visits are Happy Times

Bernie and Kayla and Jamie came to visit on Thursday evening . They stayed til Sunday afternoon. They pack a lot of activities into their visits and probably need a rest when they get back home. They had to get back home to Green Bay to pick up Jamie's football gear for the season that starts this week. Jamie loves football and has played Pop Warner football for pretty many years now. He's a sixth grader now so next year it will probably be junior high football.........One of the accompanying pgotos shows Kayla and Jamie working on some wood crafts while they were here. Bing's brother, Paul, gave us a large carton of hobby kits from his employer, Lowe's. The kits are complete with the cut wood pieces, nails and instructions to make various projects. Kayla's building a castle after completing a steamroller and Jamie made an excellent goal post and small football to thumbkick through the goal post........On Saturday, we had a swm/cake get together for Courtney's eleventh birthday. The lake has been so inviting this summer. It's consistently around eighty degrees and the weather has been matching it. We could play in it for hours. We had a synchronized swim contest - Alexa and I versus Kayla, Courtney and Courtney's friend, Abby. Jamie was the judge. Sure, their team dazzled with gymnastic leaps and flips and swandives but our artistic rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star swayed the judge to give us the gold. Besides, he didn't want his sister to win!...........The other pictures show the water play and the birthday girl's joy.