Better Lucky than Good

     I took Madelynn,  Abby, and their friend Cassie to the Evergreen State Fair on Saturday.  We couldn't leave until after 4:00 p.m. when I closed the Beez Neez.  By the time I went home and picked up the kids, drove to Monroe, parked the car, and walked in from the parking lot, it was 4:55 p.m. when we finally walked through the gates.  The girls wanted to run right away to the Beany Baby booth under the grandstands so they could enter a drawing for  a free beany baby.  They filled out their entry tickets and stuffed them into the box within a minute of the drawing.  One minute later Abby was walking away with her new beanie baby.

     Next on the agenda we shared two elephant ears, one cinnamon and sugar and one with raspberry jam, while we listened to a zydeco band.  Then we walked over to the petting farm where the girls promptly ditched me to spend the next hour or so holding chickens and bunnies. The person in charge of the petting farm is a good friend so I have connections to get them in as helpers.

      While the girls were occupied with cute farm animals, I stopped by the honey and beeswax exhibit to check on my observation hive.  It wasn't looking good as the dead bees had collected at the bottom and were blocking the entrance to the feeder.  We had to take it over to the bee tent at the outside bee booth and do some maintenance, namely removing the top, pulling up the glass sides, and removing the dead bees. I think there were so many dead bees because the weather had been cool and the display hall has the doors open to the outside until 10:00 p.m. every night.  I think they must have gotten chilled as there were also a lot of dead pupae.

     Now that the observation hive was in better shape, I went back to the petting farm to check on the girls.  They were just getting ready to close down and were putting the animals away.  I got to watch Madelynn trying to catch a pig to move him back to his pen. It was pretty funny but unfortunate that I didn't have a camera handy.

     After the petting farm closed we went through the dinosaur exhibit (cheesy and overpriced), looked at some 4H exhibits and all had fair scones with raspberry jam.  I think the two things they enjoyed the most were the petting farm and the 4H exhibits, both of which were free.  The kids took great delight in finding things which had been made by someone their own age.