Biting the Bullet, Or, These are Terrible Snapshots

I have yet to hear the first red-winged blackbird, but fresh maple syrup lines the counter,  flies clamor for spots in the sun, and both entryways are slick with mud. And just now, the girls rushed to the window to watch a dozen industrious robins settle into our front yard.*

This weekend winter returns, so I guess today's the day to post pictures from last July, right?  I loaded snapshots from the last six seven months a while back, and I have no excuse for not slapping them on here (except for all the excuses that I DO have). I'll begin with the worst of the bunch-- phone pictures.

I must be slipping because I forgot to bring my camera to both the county fair and state fair last year. My phone's camera takes terrible-quality photos, and I am a terrible-quality phone photographer because I squint so much in sunlight I can't even see the screen, so here you go-- lousy phone pictures from the county fair last July and the state fair last August.


*And I finished the whole post and thought I saved it, only to discover later that the entire thing was deleted, which nearly made me decide that returning to blogging was a bad idea.
But I persevered and re-wrote the silly thing....for the children's sake.

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It did not bode well that Aidan fell asleep on my lap not even five minutes after we arrived at the county fair.

He even beat this cross-eyed baldy to Slumberland.

My empathy nearly overwhelmed me when we watched this act.  The opening performer delivered his monologue to us-- and only us-- because the midway was threadbare, and even the few people walking past weren't stopping. I thought the show would reflect the county fair itself, and that I'd sit through it with vague nostalgia and bored futility.

I was pleasantly surprised that he was a class act! He did several stunts that belonged under the big top instead of a dusty corner of a rural county fair.

When his wife Lyric performed, we learned that she is one of the famed Wallendas. Her mom, who is normally part of their act, was in the back tent with her toddler grandson and was still recuperating from her pyramid fall the year before.

      

I took the Terrible Snapshots above for my daughter Annika, whose longing to be on a similar contraption doing similar stunts was causing her actual physical pain.

Thanks to Debbie's urging, Annika now has this memory to cling to. Hopefully it will last her until she hits the age of 18 and runs off to Florida one night to hunt the Wallendas down and beg to do menial labor in exchange for trapeze training.

I'm not even kidding.

Seeing them perform was a highlight of our day, although it caused mixed emotions, as the only reason that they're at the county fair is because circus performers the world over are scrambling to find their place now that the big tops are becoming a relic of a past age.

Onward, ho!

Of course we used some exhibition winnings for rides.

Aidan rallied for a ride on a tractor trailer. The man running it kindly waved Cadence, Zeke, AND Luci aboard to ride for free, but Aidan still enjoyed it more than all of them put together. 

The following picture is the reason that this county fair was one of my favorites ever. Yup. It's me and the seven oldest children in a row, playing a MIDWAY GAME.






This was a Big Deal, as we've never played a midway game before. In fact, I pride myself on my stony-faced stride past all of the workers barking at us to stop and play, stop and play, stop and play. But as I stood next to this game waiting for the girls to finish a ride, the older guy running the game struck up a conversation with me-- amplified by his microphone-- about the number of children I had. I pulled out all the retorts I have stuffed in my pocket for just such occasions, and we had a loud and pleasant conversation until the girls exited the ride.

Then he said, "All right. Tell you what. Everybody sit down." before proceeding to give us all a free game, followed by stuffed animals for not just the winner but every last one of us.  As we exchanged thanks and pleasantries before walking away, I learned that he's one of 14 children, which made me wonder about the twists that led to his life as an aging itinerant worker running a carnival game at county fairs and handing out stuffed animals for free.


Then we were off to the horse barns for the yearly stairstep picture. I was laughing so hard when I took this picture, because by this time Aidan was gone. He fell asleep leaning against the barn, and were it not for the kindly hands propping him up, he would have slumped to the ground.






So...terrible phone pictures, but they're better than missing the stairstep picture. And look at those stuffed doughnuts, would you?!

Before we left, even though we'd had a picnic lunch, we stopped to get a few elephant ears, because our spare elephant ear bellies were still empty.

Someone (who knows?) took pictures of the babies with my phone.

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On to the state fair! Don't get confused. Skylark and I are wearing the same outfits that we wore to the county fair, but we did wear other clothes for the intervening days.

First stop was Turtle Mound. Even though my phone camera couldn't zoom in, I took a picture of this girl and her mama dancing because the daughter is her, all grown up! Eleven years ago, Millie used to be in awe of this little girl now grown.

Cadence enjoyed it as she enjoys all things, with a side of thumb.

Skylark, Ol' Baldy, enjoyed it with her usual grin.

Then it was off to the wool and fiber arts tent, where we deposited Millie for an hour to knit Cadence's socks and chat with older ladies about all things wool. I took one Terrible Snapshot which I intended to delete until I realized it contained Mildred connecting with Tina for the first time. (Tina has since become a friend and benefactor to Millie, and is one of the sweetest people I've met.)

Train display!

A bright yellow, fancy ducky dress to drool over!

Quilts and fiber arts galore for Mama to drool over!

A Terrible Snapshot of tatting that I took for Candida to see! (Candida is a skilled tatter herself, you see.)

An elephant for Annika to drool over!  Ah, but if only it were greeeeeen, she says.

More Terrible Phone Snapshots of Things You Don't Care About!

One small part of this last year's sand sculpture!

My children resting in a tractor tire! (The tractor was the biggest I've ever seen, and they climbed into the cab, too.

Feeding the giraffe!  We went to the state fair soon after going to Knoebel's, so we decided not to use our county fair winnings on rides. Instead, they spent quarters to feed the giraffe, bought salt water taffy, and had a few dollars to tuck away, too.  (Good choice.)

Terrible Phone Snapshots of the butter sculpture, because I must.

And, to top it off, my children wearing moustaches.

And with that exciting climax, I'll see you another day!  I have posts that have been completed for quite a while now, and I'll try to remember to publish a couple of them a day instead of drowning the two of the faithful you who still visit here with a snapshot-monsoon after a long drought.