Coming, Coming, GONE!

 

Whew! This past week has been a whirlwind! A whirlwind of fun, craziness, late nights, early mornings, losing our minds, and well, just everything that comes with being really busy! 🙂

But, as much madness goes into 4-H, it’s worth it! 🙂

This is what our week looked like.

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

Friday: 6:00 p.m.  and it’s goat check in time. The fair business has officially started.

From now on  until we bring the animals home, we have to have animal chores done at the fair by 8:00 morning and night.

Saturday: Bring chicken to the fair and check them in.

Sunday: Do animal chores, go home, leave for reunion, come home, leave to go take care of animals.   While we were gone at the reunion, llamas came in. So now all of our animals are at the fair. Eat at the potluck in the  llama tent. 🙂

Monday: 4:00 p.m. and the goat show has started. It doesn’t end till  around 10:30. We’re home at 11:30.

Tuesday: Up bright and early, the llama show starts at 9:00 a.m. We have to get there extra early so we can get our other animals done, our llamas brushed out, and ourselves ready for showmanship. The show went pretty much all day, but it was fun! 🙂 Oh, and the chickens were being judged at the same time as the llamas, and some how, we managed between llama classes to be at both. 🙂 Pizza party at the llama tent.

Wednesday: Picture day!  10:00 we go up to the wall to have our pictures taken for the paper. At 2:00, the llama tent is having a hands on demonstration on handpicking, carding, and spinning wool. (That was neat!) After several hours of that did animal chores, ate supper, and then it was movie night at the llama tent. We watched “The Emperor’s New Grove” very appropriate since it has a llama in it. 🙂

Thursday: Is free ride day! And sadly all the animals go home. 🙁 (except for the ones going through the auction the next day.)

Friday: Auction day! Poultry are 2nd in the line up to be auctioned off. There were a little over 200 kids in the poultry project, so you can imagine that took awhile. 🙂 Several hours later we go through with our goat’s milk product buckets. Then we have to finish our record books (basically the finishing up of 4-H paperwork) We leave for home.

Saturday: Daddy bought 50 chickens off of the poultry barn, so guess what today is: Chicken butchering day! 🙂 3 hours of work=50 chickens cooling off in the freezer. 🙂

In the evening we go to a relatives wedding.

Sunday: Yay! We get to go to church!  Come home and CRASH!!!!!!!

Monday and forever on: R&R 🙂

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

This is just the outline of each day, plenty went on between the lines! 🙂 We practically lived at the fair this past week.

The title “Coming, Coming, GONE!” means, we spent days, weeks, and a couple months preparing for the fair, it was coming, coming, getting closer, and a bit busier. Then is was here and like a bolt of lightening…it was GONE!

As some of you may know from previous years’ posts, there is a little Dairy Bar at our fair that sells milkshakes, and our family loves them! We see how many we can eat each year, and with 11 people in one family, it’s not hard to rack up a big number. 🙂

Small is $1 and large $2.

So,

A. The price is perfect.

B. The amount you get is great–not too much, not too little.

C. It’s within a couple hundred feet of the llama tent (where we mostly hang out), so it’s not too far away.

D. It’s hot outside and  ice cream is cold. ( 🙂 )

You can see that the convenience is great!! This year’s total amounted to 122 milkshakes! Yum Yum!

 

Here comes the pictures. Hang on to your pony tails, there’s lots to cover, so there’s lots of pictures! 🙂

 

Anna milking her goat in the milking contest. Us four girls (Anna, Bekah, Charissa and I),  did it and we never win, but that’s okay, we do it just for the fun of it. 🙂

 

This is at our family reunion…

 

Anna and Rebekah with this adoralble little girl, we’re related to  her somehow! (I’m not good at at that genealogy  stuff and terms. 😛 )

 

Goat show! Of us, Anna is out in the ring.

 

Susannah and Charissa on the bleachers watching the show.

 

Anna and Bekah in the show ring…if you look close, you can see Bekah’s number is in two pieces. That’s because if you stand to close to the goats, they’ll tear your number off of you and try to eat it. 😉

 

And here comes pictures of the best part of the fair (at least, in my opinion! 🙂 ) Llama show, Bekah on the obstacle course with her llama, Fannie.

 

All the kids that were in llama this year, we had a big group of 17. I like all of our matching shirts. 🙂

 

Charissa with Lucy in public relations class.

 

Me, with Annie, also in PR class.

 

In PR class, you work with different things that you would encounter if you were out in public. At schools, hospitals, nursing homes, etc. This is a mirror that you had to look in with your llama.

 

Rebekah holding a sibling to one of the kids in llama during the show. She’s about a year old and pretty cute! 🙂

 

 

Charissa getting champion for PR.  I love the smile on her face. 🙂

 

Getting ready for costume class! It’s lots of fun! 🙂

 

This is me with Annie, we were clowns. 🙂

 

Rebekah with Fannie, her llama is a banana split and she is the ice cream server. 🙂

 

Farmgirl Charissa with her “cow” Lucy. 🙂

 

The llama tent sets on sand, every year the boys love playing in it and get quite dirty. This year was even dirtier since it hasn’t rained in awhile so it was really dusty.

 

 

Some photos of Jessica and Charissa carding the llama wool. We were able to work with wool that had came off of my llama Annie, and bring some home. That was special since this is my last year in 4-H and with Annie. 🙂

 

 

Susannah’s “Pro-Life” bracelet that she bought at the merchant’s tent.

 

 

 

Some pictures of the llamas…I LOVE llamas! 🙂

 

 

🙂 hee hee!

 

Charissa and Lucy.

 

Rebekah and Fannie.

 

Annie and me. And just so you know who Mike is, he’s running for governor–I got the sticker from the merchant’s tent. 🙂

 

Susannah and I, notice the gold pin on her collar. They’re little hands that are the actual size of a baby in the womb at 11 weeks old. 🙂

Okay, a funny “Mike” story.  Susannah was walking to the ice cream stand and she was wondering why everyone was smiling at her. She checked her dress, felt her face, trying to figure out what was wrong. After coming back she asked Leah if something was on her, anything strange about her. Leah said “you have that” and pointed to her “mike” sticker. 🙂  To which Susannah burst out laughing! 🙂

 

Charissa getting her milk bucket ready Friday morning.

 

Jars of goat’s milk, and homemade strawberry drinkable yogurt.

 

 

All four of our buckets.

 

Selling our meat chickens on auction day.

 

 

 

And our milk buckets…

 

This one’s funny. 🙂

 

Long auctions make tired boys. 🙂

 

Three of us with our buckets.

 

Our 120th milkshake.

 

And now for some of the projects we took.

Isaiah’s picture that he got grand champion on…it’s pretty cute!

 

Rebekah’s purple sweater she crocheted.

 

Anna’s crochet hand warmers (they’re beside the yellow mittens.) Charissa’s yellow mittens, and my white knitted doily.

 

Our sewing projects, and some fun to go with it! 🙂

 

 

 

Wearing a coat outside in near 90 degree weather can get hot! 🙂

 

Now it’s time to put fair stuff away, have some R&R time and let 4-H escape our minds until next year rolls around. 🙂

 

In the mean time, watch out! Bekah has a chip on her shoulder!

 

 

 

-Cassia 🙂

Subscribe to get our blog posts in your inbox!