County Fair

Yesterday was the opening day of our county fair, and Josh's BattleBots group had a competition scheduled to take place at the fair.

Josh had to be there early, but the rest of us didn't go til just before 4:00. The competition was set to start at 5:00. It started sprinkling when we got there and then started pouring. Thankfully the competition was under a huge tent, so the kids and I bought some supper from the fair vendors and then sat under the tent and ate while waiting for the competition to start.

F wearing Josh's protective glasses before the competition

Josh's team had two bots entered in the double elimination tournament. The first bot (the green dome one pictured below) lost both rounds. Their second bot lost, then won, then lost. (I have no idea why it says "2008 Contributors" when it's 2009!)


The kids and I watched a few rounds of the tournament and then wandered around the fair. (The rain had stopped by then.)

At one point F and S wanted to ride on the pedal tractors' obstacle course, and E and G wanted to do an interactive display near the tractors. I asked J to tell E and G we'd be by the tractors and to come when they were done. Somehow the message got garbled. I could see E and G here and there, but when I was helping S with his tractor, E and G finished what they were doing and went in the cow barn (right next to where they and we were) because that's where they thought J said we'd be. When S and F were done on the tractors and E and G weren't by us, we looked for them by the display they'd been at, and they weren't there! We walked around a bit near where we'd all been, calling out their names with my heart in my throat. After maybe 5 min (It seemed longer!), we saw each other. G was getting scared, but E said she'd told him that if they couldn't find us they'd just go back to the BattleBots tent. Thank you, God, for keeping them safe and bringing us all back together!

The wienermobile was even at the fair, and the kids got to decorate big hot dogs with magnetic toppings and then get their picture taken in front of the wienermobile.

E and F

G and J

(Day 201 of 365)

By about 8:30 we'd finished looking at the animals, displays, etc. and made our way back to the BattleBots tent in time for the championship round, and we left soon after it was over, getting home a bit after 9:00.

Another long but fun day!