August 2011 Canada and County Fair

Ana and Coco at the Clallam County Fair!

August was packed to the minute. Sometimes I look back and wonder how survived! As I recounted in the last post, I went to New Orleans to see my dad the first weekend of August. While I was gone, Jonah got a great little phone call. We’d been waiting since FEBRUARY for this guy to call us and say when we could meet him in Vancouver to pick up a car we wanted to buy. Of course, he called Jonah the day I arrived in New Orleans. Nice timing, dude. But Jonah worked something out and we ended up going on Tuesday (I had come home on Monday afternoon). Our friend let us borrow his big truck… we picked up a UHaul car trailer at the USA border and crossed to Vancouver to get the car.

And here it is! It’s a green GWagen (like the red one from the GWagen party on Fathers’ Day) and it is pretty awesome. Except unlike our very small and funny engine fire in the red one, this one had a MAJOR engine fire and is inoperable. (No, these cars are not more prone to engine fires than others… )

Anyway, we didn’t go too far into Vancouver since we were borrowing the truck, but we did find a great little campground along the river in the Vancouver suburbs and we tried to talk with a Canadian accent the whole time we were there.

The whole trip went a lot smoother than we expected… apart from the two hours at the border crossing to do all the paperwork for the car import. Oh Canada!

 

For the next three days after we got back, Jonah went along with his friend Matt to look for bears. Who goes looking for bears?! Exactly. They found some on their trail camera, but none in real life. Whew.

Matt’s brother did get a bear this year though and gave us the claws and pelt. We had some good tricks on the kids with those.

 

 

While Jonah was hunting, the kids and I were babysitting my friend’s pregnant dog while she was at a wedding in California. The little dog went into labor on Thursday night and only birthed one puppy! Oops! There were supposed to be six. Although the mama was happy to have only the one puppy, I had to take her in for a C-section the next morning after staying up with her ALL night. But, then there were five healthy puppies, and it was all worth it. The kids loved it, of course. We got to keep them at our house until the following Wednesday. Ahhhhhh… so cute!

 

 

August finally brought that fantastic summer weather we’d been hoping for for so long! The kids moved outside into their tent that they made out of every sheet and blanket and piece of fabric we had. They didn’t actually spend the night out there, but they were in it for all the daylight (which is a lot in the summer… the sun’s up until like 10 pm!) of August and September.

 

The day the puppies went back to their home was the day that the Clallam County Fair began! Ana had been looking forward to this for the ENTIRE YEAR. Seriously. She lived, ate, slept, worked, dreamed County Fair all year. And it was nirvana for her.

Basically she and Cocoa went to the fairgrounds on Wednesday night and were there non-stop until Sunday night. I had not signed up for a camping spot on time, so our family volunteered to sleep in the barn with the 14 horses to keep and eye on them and make sure no one went in or out. It was VERY noisy. Horses do not sleep quietly. They also chomp their hay all night and pee SO loudly. Like a water fall. One of the horses also snored. Luckily, I only did one night of barn duty and Jonah did the other three! I would come to the Fairgrounds in the morning and let him go home, then he would come back at night and I would go home. On the days Ana had events to compete in, we would bring the younger kids and let them watch and go to the carnival and watch the magic show. We also tasted just about all the Fair food, except for fried Oreos. Darn.

 

Ana had to spend the time doing barn duty (feeding the horses and scooping poop) and introducing the hundreds of Fair visitors to her friendly horse. THAT was her favorite part. She especially loved that she had the most friendly horse of the bunch that little kids could pet and not be afraid of finger bites. Cocoa was a really good sport about the whole thing. She’s a star.

 

Ana also enjoyed the events, but they were also pretty stressful for her. She did amazingly well, though, considering we made her pay for EVERYTHING herself, including her old mare, all her show clothes and tack, training, and horse transportation.  She competed in showmanship (walking your horse around and showing off the horse’s conformation and your own fancy clothes and gear), Western riding, English riding, grooming (it was a race to see which team could clean up a dirty horse the fastest), judging (the kids tried their hand at judging the 4H leaders while they rode Western), Costume, and Pie Eating (Ana and Cocoa were a team and had to eat as many pies as they could). Ana won lots of ribbons and points and she even won money (I didn’t know this, but you actually get a cash prize for your County Fair ribbons! It worked out to be about $100 for all her ribbons)

 

While Jonah was at home with the younger kids, they had some fun adventures. Here is Elsie the Sheep.

 

 

Costume contest: Cocoa is a meadow and Ana is a bee. The Queen Bee.

 

Needless to say, we were ALL mightily relieved when the fair was over, but it ended up being very fun, very rich learning experience for Ana and the rest of the family. Ana was really in her element being able to tell people all about horses and everything she has learned this year from Cocoa. She also loved running around the Fair with her other 4H friends and just being a kid at a Fair. I’m sure she will joyfully remember it for the rest of her life.

 

 

Finally, aren’t these just gorgeous? Our big chickens laid at least a dozen big delicious eggs every day. We are so grateful for fresh eggs!