Another Fun Week at the Fair...

The Pennington County Fair has come and gone again and even though we didn't enter the animals this year, we still had a great time with the rides, food, and exhibits. The boys got their cartoon caricatures drawn together this year and they looked as funny as ever. The caricature artist took Daniel's front Chiclet teeth and exaggerated the gap in them to captured Aaron's famous smile very nicely. I'll have to take a picture of the final result and post it on here, as it's far too big to scan.

Trinity put up a food booth this year thanks to Jeff Liden who cooks at the local American Legion in town. They sold barbecue sandwiches with chips, pop, ice cream, and 1919 Rootbeer floats. We were repeat customers all three nights we went to the fair. I think the booth made over $1,000 a day, so it was a good fundraiser for the church.

The music was great this year, as we watched the Trinity Trio, which now is more like the "Trinity Strings," as the pastor's wife, Julia, is now playing her lute or mandolin and singing with the group. I couldn't talk them into playing "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," though... We had quite a contingent of Trinity folks there for moral support.

I got the boys unlimited ride passes this year and they made good use of them this time around, though for the most part stayed off the "scary" rides. Aaron did go on the Himalaya ride, which in my day was called the Matterhorn and I think had white knuckles the whole time. He may have gone a second time, but refused to go any further, as he thought he had to hold on too hard to stay in the seat. The Goldsberry's grandchildren were here from Florida a couple of nights there at the fair, so the boys also got to ride with them and other friends. The Drevlows had several exhibits this year in the old arena with Brett making a life-size sculpture out of nothing but baseball cards and the other kids submitting drawing/artwork.

Guy Drevlow won several contests with his and his wife's horses and had some fun apparently with the kids who walked through the livestock barn. He attached a small handheld radio to the underside of one of the horse's manes and then stood around the corner with another radio and waited for a young child to approach the horse and then would whisper to the boy or girl as though the horse were talking to them. One of the boys went running to his mother saying, "The horse wants to come home with me, Mom!!" One of the families from Trinity made up almost half of one of the livestock barn displays with several goats, pigs, and sheep (the Kilen family).

The fair wound down with fireworks on Saturday night (see pictures). I tried the new "fireworks" feature on the camera and the few posted here really turned out nice.

The boys' baseball season will soon come to a close with tournament week approaching. Aaron's Twins team split their last two games Thursday night (we were there at the ballpark until 9 p.m.) with the Yankees and Dodgers respectively winning the latter and they're now #1 ranked going into the playoffs. Daniel's Reds team narrowly lost their last game against the Cubs. This next week is the end of the season party called the "Summer Hummer" in the Oakland Park at the edge of town with a picnic, carnival games, and dunk tank with lots of prizes for the kids and awards. That should be a fun couple of hours of fun this week. We've enjoyed very nice weather this past week or two with lots of sun, less rain, and some pleasant late afternoon breezes to keep cool at the ballpark. It was 81 degrees yesterday and it felt great. Finally got the lawns mowed, as I know it's gonna rain again tonight or tomorrow and then I'd really be hurting with grass up to my knees. Speaking of things growing like weeds, I harvested my back yard rhubarb plants for the second time this season and donated it to Daniel's friend's mom again who this time delivered us the most delicious dessert made from the rhubarb, kind of a "rhubarb mirangue" (sp?) pie with graham cracker crust and mirangue topping. It was the first new variation of rhubarb recipe I've had since the 1970s. My neighbor still can't figure out how our rhubarb grows like crazy in the shade of a large tree in the back yard. They have rhurbarb in their yard with more than enough sun yet it remains anemic in growth. I gotta get motivated next spring and clear out the back pea patch and plant some veggies, as I think I have some rich soil back there.

Aaron continues to diligently move toward his goal of 10,000 basketball shots by the time school starts up again in a month or so and I've gotten some good exercise shooting baskets with both the boys. The other night the boys had their friend Blake stay over and we all played HORSE the four of us and wouldn't you know it... Daniel won!

That's about all we've been up to since the last post. Hopefully everyone else out there is having a great mid summer. Feel free to send us pictures of your own adventures (Jeff and Katrina???).

Summer Marches On...

Hard to imagine how far we've gotten through summer already. We are well into another season of Park and Rec baseball and it won't be long until it's time to head back to school. We've been busy as usual with everything from baseball as above to movies, lots of visits from Aaron's friends (Daniel's best friend has been out of town for a couple weeks), and activities around town. Last week we all went over to Jim and Olive's house to set up their grandchildren's video game console on their old tv set (so old it doesn't have RCA plugs of its own). Their grandkids are up here visiting from Miami for most of July. We set up the console, but didn't spend much time playing on it, as we were invited to swim at the Franklin pool. It was a very fun learning experience for the boys. They have forgotten most of the lessons they learned at the Y, but they were pretty quick studies when I brought them both in the shallow end for some "lessons from Dad." Aaron was rather cautious about the whole affair given his past experience in Lake Sammamish and to start out, I was holding him most of the time as he got in and out of the pool, but by the end of the evening, he not only got in and out of the pool by himself, but also agreed to walk away from the edge of the pool with water up to his chest about 15 feet out from the edge to give me a hug. He was so proud of his accomplishment and couldn't get enough of it. He even started his own "exercise walking," realizing the resistance of walking through the water was indeed physical exercise. Daniel was rather cute, as he clung to me like Velcro when I brought him into the pool. I just about pried his fingertips off my back to get him back on the deck, but he too got rather comfortable by the end of the night and walked back and forth holding onto the pool edge and then walked out to me a couple of times leaving the edge about 5 feet behind.

We played there at the pool with Jim and Olive's grandkids and a friend of Aaron's until 9:45 last Friday night and it brought back memories of all those hundreds of late evening practices we had for AAU back in the day. Speaking of memories, the showers had the exact same showerheads on them they did in about 1977. They took the record board down, though, in the pool area so not much remains of that era now. I'm excited for the boys to learn to swim, though, as they have a webbed rope that hangs into the deep end from the ceiling and they can climb that if they want for exercise. Aaron is also doing well with his "10,000 Shot Club" for school basketball. He has the summer to shoot 10,000 baskets and we continue to plod toward that target (I won't jinx it here, though, by saying how many he's got so far). We usually head to the back garage and shoot for a half hour to an hour and between 150 to 250 baskets, though the other night he set a record by shooting 312. He really is a good shooter, hitting six in a row with nothing but net. It takes a lot of discipline, as it requires extended attention and concentration, but if he can reach the goal, he'll really benefit once basketball season starts up again.

On the home front, we did end up losing both of our guinea pigs in the span of about two weeks since my last writing here. Rodney passed of what clearly appeared to be a respiratory ailment despite my best efforts to save him and then "Lucky" wasn't so lucky... Lucky was a lot tougher, though, and gave whatever the infection was a run for its money. We just haven't had much luck with the guinea pigs and although we did replace Rodney with a new guinea, I don't think we'll be doing any more after that one. I think Aaron wants to get a rabbit that stays small when its full grown to keep the newest guinea pig company.

The Pennington County Fair is back again this week and thanks to work, I missed the first few days of it. Daniel is walking there tonight with his buddy and Aaron and I will be meeting up with them later on. The new Harry Potter movie is out this week too, so we're juggling our different priorities as of course they want to do everything all at once. They aren't entering their animals this year, though, given the nightmare last year turned into with the loss of Funny Bunny and Snowball. I think we'll just visit the new building with the rabbits and see what Sandy's up to.

We've also gotten our share of sun having traveled to the lake to spend the day at a family friend's cabin and did some fishing (didn't catch anything) and worked on our suntans. Other than that and the above, I've done some song leading at Trinity a couple times so far this summer and I'm supposed to lead again with Carol this coming Sunday and the boys have had about a half dozen baseball games apiece. Half the season has unfortunately been rained out, which is just the opposite of last summer with the drought we had. We've had no less than a dozen thunderstorms this summer and more on the horizon. It was funny yesterday, though. The boys had three games at the college yesterday and I was really feeling guilty as I had to finish some work and couldn't watch their first two games. I dropped them off at the ballpark and came back to finish the work and about an hour later, I got up to walk into the kitchen and looking out the back door I saw water cascading over the window in the door and sure enough we were in the middle of another downpour. There was no thunder, so I didn't have a clue until I saw the downpour upon getting up. Of course it clicked right away in my head, "Uh oh! The boys are probably standing around on a muddy ball field!" I hopped in the Blazer and ran out there as quick as I could to find them wet, but nonetheless all smiles. Aaron advised me that it started raining actually in the very first inning and they called the game off in the fourth (saved by the bell, as they were losing against the Yankees). So I didn't have to feel too guilty after all, as they didn't finish their first two games and didn't play the third game at all. I've done pretty good so far, though, not missing a single game since the season started, though the weather has probably helped on at least one other occasion. The season runs through July and then I think tournament week is the beginning of August followed by the "Summer Hummer" end of the season event, which was at the city park last year just before school starts.

I know there's a lot more I don't even remember at the moment, but I wanted to get what I could on here while I have the moment before I go and get even more busy. Did I mention how nice central air conditioning can be? I have a feeling I'm starting to ramble, so I better sign off for now and head to the fair with Aaron. Until next time... :)