White Pine County Fair 2012

This weekend is the White Pine County Fair. As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, I love county fairs! We drove into town Friday night to go to the big Cattlewoman's BBQ. Several hundred people went, and we had to wait in a long line, but it was worth it. The food was delicious! The kids were getting a little tired (meaning whiny) so we had to leave before the band got going. Maybe some other year we can hear the band!

The next morning Desert Girl woke up so early. Arghh! This was a morning we could sleep in a little. We did a couple errands and then headed to the fairgrounds. We were in time to see the cousins show their animals.

Megan had a nice-looking lamb.

She had to work hard at getting the lamb to mind her.

Kayli had a lamb too. She also had some eye-catching pink cowgirl boots!

The judge had them all line up in a row.

My husband watched intently while Desert Girl just enjoyed climbing.

When the judge touched Megan's and Kayli's lambs, they jumped! They ended up getting blue ribbons. Nice job, young ladies!

We went and visited Melanie's lamb. She was busy with last-minute grooming. Then we went over to see the pigs. They were so fascinating that I didn't even get any photos!

Then we went in search of the cousins and found Alyshia preparing her steer. She and her steer have had quite the battle of wills. Her first steer cleared the fence when he jumped away from her, so she had to use her alternate steer. The alternate steer apparently didn't have quite as good jumping skills, but it didn't want to be around anyone. During the last few weeks when it was supposed to be finishing, putting on that last weight, instead it lost weight. That still won't keep it from going to fair and getting sold.

I'm not sure who dislikes this more--Alyshia or the steer!

She led her steer into the show arena without any problems.

Smile, Alyshia!

Caleb's steer had had some of the same problems, but still made it in the heavyweight class.

Caleb has gotten so much taller and stronger this last year! It's fun to see photos of Caleb at Desert Boy's age, as there is a strong resemblance.

While we were watching, Desert Girl found her new friend from the night before, little Kate. They had fun in the grass and then climbed the fence.

That was enough time to be fast friends, hold hands, and go for a walk!

We headed over to the exhibit building. Both Desert Boy and I had entered some projects.

I entered five photos, all of them in the photo above (although one is displayed sideways!). Can you spot any?

I was so excited to get a Reserve Grand Champion for my portrait of Desert Girl!!

Desert Boy found that he had received a blue ribbon for one of his pictures, a train and the Big Dipper.

He also got a blue ribbon for his artistic flower arrangement, and another for his jewelry entry of California floater shells from a nearby reservoir (I still have a bunch of photos to post from that excursion!).

Those girls were just so adorable!

Next it was time to wander about the booths. One of the mining booths had this sandbox with some simulated mining structures. The kids absolutely loved it!

Desert Boy did an art project involving a hammer at the Eastern Nevada Landscape Coalition's booth. That was another winner!

Ely's Hometown Band played some wonderful tunes.

We really enjoyed watching the puppeteer and clown make balloon creations for the kids.

Then it was time for some games. The first was the water balloon toss. Desert Boy paired up, and I figured he was going to get drenched because he hasn't had much practice throwing and catching.

Looking at this photo, I now understand why he has some problems catching--closing your eyes doesn't make it easier!

The next game was a watermelon eating contest. I'm not sure if Desert Girl was unhappy about being in a light drizzle or being woken up from a nap or something else. When the starter said, "On your mark," she started eating. We told her to wait, and she burst into tears and didn't eat any more. She did get to take her watermelon with her and eventually ate some of it. It was really good watermelon. I tried it.

Desert Boy went to the table with the next age group.

He did an admirable job munching away at his watermelon.

While I was nibbling at Desert Girl's, they announced that the last category was age 13 through adult. A sudden flash of inspiration hit me. I was an adult (well, technically, maybe not mentally!), and I could enter. I still had room for more watermelon, and it was REALLY good watermelon. Plus I have all these terrific memories of blueberry pie eating contests and watermelon seed spitting contests from when I was a youngster and my parents took me to the fair. I tried to round up a few more people to enter, and found one willing young friend.

The rain was pouring by now, but I had a rain jacket and decided to go for it.

We had two picnic tables of people competing. We had to keep our hands behind our backs and eat as much as we could.

The starter said go, and as we bit into the sweet melon, the rain continued to pour. About half way through, the guy next to me got up and went over toward the watermelon cutter. I wondered what he was doing. The next thing I saw was a man giving him the Heimlich. Yikes! I wondered if I should get up and help, but the person assisting him was doing just fine, so I kept on trying to get down to the rind. And then our minute was up, and I was surprised how well I had done. In fact, I had done so well that I was declared the silver medal winner! And my young friend was the gold medal winner!

Here I am with my medal! Yippee!

I'm still waiting for those endorsements to roll in. I'm sure my phone will be ringing any minute now.

Zipline

 A little while ago, we went to the house of some friends and the kids were thrilled to try out their zipline. Desert Boy was the perfect size for it.

Uncle Tom graciously started him.

 All smiles! The first time he went whizzing into the tree at the end. After that, he figured out how to avoid a painful collision. Lots of people watched him, including...

 ...Desert Girl! I hope I'm not considered a bad parent for allowing my two year old to go on the zipline! She does great on the monkey bars at the playground and I've seen her hold on to a bar for over a minute, so I knew she was strong enough. The question was did she want to?

I asked her if she wanted to go.

She most certainly did.

 Well, maybe she has some reservations.

 And then she's off, with a long way down to the grass below.

 She went on about ten times and never fell once. I think she will be a strong cowgirl! (She chose her outfit.)

She especially liked it when her cousin caught her at the end. Whoo hoo!

I just hope that my kids don't get ideas about building ziplines off our roof. I can just imagine how much fun that would be.

First Day of Kindergarten

 Desert Boy started kindergarten today. The night before we went to the school so the kids could pick out their desks, play, and eat cookies. The parents learned important stuff like dress code and that the kids would get homework four days a week. The parents couldn't help smiling as the kids bounced around, obviously so happy to be going to school.

 Although from this photo, it looks like the boys might have a hard time sitting still at their desks!

We don't have many kids out here, so grades K-2 are in a one-room schoolhouse with one teacher and one aide. There are about 15 kids in the three grades.

I had to take a photo of los tres amigos in front of the school. I love how they are holding hands. (Do you see one extra hand in the photo? Any guesses who that belongs to?)

 This morning we did the first-day-of-school photo. Desert Girl insisted that she be in it too.

 At the bus stop we tried to get the kids to line up, but they didn't want to look in the same spot at the same time.

 Cute little Izaak. He's got a few years to go!

 When the bus pulled up and opened the doors, Desert Boy dashed to it.

 All the kids were so excited to go. They didn't look back.

 I think Henry wanted to go to.

At the end of the day, Desert Boy still had lots of energy. He had a quick meltdown when I told him he couldn't have a playdate with one of his friends that afternoon. But he soon recovered, and we went home and got the homework out of the way and played lots. After dinner he made his lunch so he's all ready to go in the morning.

I asked lots of questions about his day.
Favorite part of it? Lying down during story time.
What song did they sing? One about bears.
What did they do in P.E.? Puzzles. (I'm not sure if that's what they really did, but that's what he told me.)
Did they do math? Yep, but he couldn't remember what.
What letters did they write? A through G.
What stories did the teacher read to them? Actually, I forget his answer!

He said the school was warm, he ate most his lunch but not all of it, and overall, "School was great!"

Here's hoping for many more great school days!

A Smoky Afternoon

 I was enjoying a little quiet time in the afternoon when the pager went off announcing a fire just a few miles away. I'm part of the Volunteer Fire Department, so after scurrying a bit to find my Nomex pants, fire boots, and fire pack, I made it to the station and jumped on the second truck to head up the hill. We could see the smoke in the distance, so it was easy to see where we needed to go.

 The fire was caused by a lightning strike (several people saw the exact one), and burning in sagebrush-scrub.

 We went to work on one side of the fire, trying to cool off the flames and keep the fire relatively small.

 Wind was not our friend, as it kept shifting. Soon we saw that we needed to move to another part of the fire.

 As the wind pushed the fire a new direction, it had more fuel to consume, and the flames shot up. We kept hoping that the extra engines on the way would get there soon, as it was more than our two engines and water tender could handle.

 The conditions got pretty smoky in places. A little of that smoke is good, but a lot is not so much fun.

 Law enforcement had the road blocked off, which made it much easier to work. Above, the first BLM engine and our water tender are checking in.

 We really like this old truck, but it has a bad habit of dying in inconvenient spots. We had to work a little to keep the fire from burning up the truck.

 We wanted to keep the fire from crossing the road, and we were successful in that, although the fire kept spreading on the south side of the road.

 The south side of the fire, which was the quietest when we got there, jumped to life and showed a big flame front that wasn't so easy to get to.

 I had to leave after a couple hours and go get the kids. This is what the smoke looked like from down in the valley.

 After some much needed snacks and ibuprofen, we went back up to the fire to see how my husband was doing. We saw that plenty of help had arrived, including two helicopters equipped with buckets. They had no problem getting to the back side off the fire.

 The kids had fun checking things out from the back of the van.

 More water drops.

 It is fascinating watching a helicopter at work.

 Meanwhile, the kids were busy making a meteor crater.

 Then they decided they were digging for gold. It kept them very happy.

 The Volunteer Fire Department tender was kept busy refilling the fire trucks. I had to go to a talk that evening, so we left my husband with the tender. He was supposed to watch the kids while I worked, but he couldn't get away. He finally left quite a bit after dark, and said that there were still some engines out there. Every time the wind shifted (which was often), more embers would burn and they had more smokes to put out.

We're crossing our fingers that too much cheatgrass doesn't grow on this site, but based on the elevation, it's pretty likely that cheatgrass will soon dominate. That's one of the toughest things about fires in sagebrush--at one time they were really beneficial, but now cheatgrass makes a spot even more prone to fire. The fire size was estimated at about 50 acres.

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