Three days have gone by *swoosh!* just like that. Let's see what I can remember.

I spent most of the day on Saturday on the phone. We did school in the morning, but after that I was on the phone trying to make sure I had current phone numbers and addresses for pretty much everybody in the Region. I need to put together the Regional Planning Guide for this year and there were soooooo many mistakes in the one I did last year (!) we thought it best to check and double check everything before we get too far. I'm sure there will still be plenty of mistakes somehow. It seems the harder I try the worse things get! Ha! Anyway...

At about 2:40 James came in and reminded me we had an appointment at 2:00. Oopsie! I called the lady and apologized, then the kids and I hopped in the car and headed to her house. She gives horse riding lessons and we wanted to go check it out. It seems sooooo crazy to me to have to pay somebody to teach my kids to ride a horse. Kids should just HAVE horses--or at least know several people who do--and have the opportunity to learn to ride just like they learn to ride bikes. Can you imagine paying somebody to teach your kid to ride a bike?! How dumb is that?! Well, I almost get the same feeling about paying for horse lessons! But there's just no way we could ever own horses--if for no other reason, we travel way too much. So if they're ever going to have the opportunity to experience the joy of riding it appears we're going to have to pay somebody for their time and horse rental! ~sigh~ Sad. So sad. Anyway, the lady and the horse seem very nice and the price is quite reasonable (she's actually letting Kate & Joe go together for the price of one), so we're going to give it a shot. Next Wednesday will be our first day. :-)

Hhmmm. Can't remember anything else about Saturday. You lucky dogs. ;-)

We had good church services yesterday. It was the first Sunday in AGES when I wasn't on to do anything--no song service, no VLB service, no Sunday School, no WMB service--so I was able to just sit back and enjoy it all. It was GREAT!!! For some reason though I was sooooooo tired after church yesterday morning. We came home and James said he'd take care of the kids' lunch, so I went to the bedroom and CRASHED. I was out cold for two hours! Wow, it was great!!! I haven't had a chance to get in a really good Sunday nap in quite a while. When I woke up James had baked brownies and a peach cobbler to take to church! WHOA!!! What a guy!!!

We had a good CPMA service last night, then enjoyed James' goodies and visited for a while afterwards. It was so nice! We've got such good people here and I always enjoy visiting with them. The fellowship time is so good for all of us, especially right now. It's good to be able to laugh and just enjoy one another's company.

This morning we got the kids up and headed for a "field trip" to the State Fair in Albuquerque!!! We wanted to go on a weekday morning when it wouldn't be totally swamped. It was a good decision. When the lady at the gate saw the kids she asked if we were with a school. I said, "Well, kind of. We home school!" She had me sign up on the "school" paper and we all got in for free as a true-blue "field trip"! Saved us $30, I do believe. Wa-Hoo! Gotta love that!

We had checked out the schedule the night before and were really looking forward to Michelle's Magic Poodles, a show where the lady was supposed to have a bunch of well trained dogs and other animals that would perform amazing tricks. The show was just starting as we arrived, so we rushed to get to it. OH, MY GOODNESS. It was sooooo embarrassing! It was a lady with four little white poodles in pink bandanas, a few stools and a hoola hoop. The dogs weren't exactly show worthy, particularly Emilio. "Emilio, come back here. Emilio, it's your turn. Emilio!!! Emilio, get back on the stage, Emilio!!!" Ha! It wasn't total chaos, but it wasn't exactly what we were expecting. The tricks that they did perform were so meager that only the simplest of audiences would be impressed. (That's Katie--she loves just about anything! Ha!) I told James we could make big bucks with Hershey Dog. All we've gotta do is tie a ribbon around his neck, pitch him through a hoola hoop a few times and scream at him a lot--we've got a show! We've been calling him our Magic Poodle ever since we got home. I have a feeling we'll probably start calling him "Emilio" every time he doesn't listen to us now! Ha!

Sadly, the poodles were far better than the show that followed. It was some shameless man who played a guitar and acted like a complete moron. Really, it was terrible. I understand getting on the kids' level and doing things that they'll enjoy and be amused by, but when a grown man wears mismatched shoes and socks and acts truly obnoxious--doing things that I would spank my kids for doing--there is a real problem. And there is so much crude humor nowadays (I don't consider it humor at all) and so very little dignity! Silly is one thing. Rude, crude, and obnoxious is quite another. As you might have guessed, we didn't last through the next show.

We left during the second song and went to tour the sheep barn. That was probably the highlight of the day. They took you "from shearing to sweaters" and had people doing every step along the way--shearing the sheep, spinning the wool, dying it, crocheting and weaving... It was really neat!

We went to the horse arena to see what was going on, but they were having English style competitions instead of traditional western. Joe didn't appreciate the doofy little Enlish saddles and couldn't understand why everybody was dressed so weird. When he noticed that all of the riders were girls, well, that was the last straw! Ha! So even the horse competitions didn't pan out for us--who would've guessed that?! On our way out, though, there was a girl standing there with her 5 month old palomino foal. He was gorgeous!!! And so soft and friendly. We enjoyed petting him and talking to him for a few minutes before moving on.

We saw some little itty-bitty newborn pygmy goats and some chicks and ducklings and miniature horses--that was all pretty cool. We walked through the building of booths and saw some guy with his bare feet in this nasty pool of green slimy looking stuff. He was "de-toxing." YUCK!!! Said he started with fresh water and the muck is what had come out of his body. GA-ROSS. James wanted to try it, but I wasn't about to sit around and watch. We saw some neat stuff, too, but didn't get suckered into anything. :-)

It was nearing lunch time, so we headed to the food court. Right in the middle of the food booths was a trailer that said, "Mystery Tunnel" on the side of it. We hadn't spent a penny all day and I guess it was just more than we could take and we thought it was time to throw some money away. Ha! $10 got our whole family in and we could stay for as long as we liked. When we walked through the black curtain we could see through the darkness that there was a catwalk of sorts in front of us with rails on either side. You could walk straight through to the back of the trailor and exit through the curtain at that end. But circling around you, continuously moving clockwise, was a black and orange "tunnel," the orange wavy lines illuminated and giving you the sensation that YOU were spinning around and around and around, upside down then right side up again, then upside down... It was so crazy! You KNEW you were standing on a solid, unmoving platform, but there was no way you could walk straight and keep from swaying and crashing into the railing. We tried to stand still and stand on one foot. No matter how hard you try to concentrate on the fact that you're standing STILL, your brain just can't adjust. In fact, I thought James was going to fall OVER the railing one time! Ha! It was great. :-) Katie did fine. Joe didn't enjoy it very much, but managed to deal with it okay. Sam didn't have any fun at all. "I don't like it, Mom. I want OUT." Oh, well. It was fun for James and me anyway! Not sure it was $10 fun, but... at least we got through the admition gate for free, right?!

We found nachos, corn dogs, a chicken leg and a BBQ sandwhich for lunch, along with some really terrific freshly squeezed lemonade. Yum! Of course, we could've eaten at Red Lobster for what we paid for a few corn dogs! ~sigh~ All part of the Fair, I guess. We went to find a table and were excited to see that the dive show going on was a pirate version with dudes actually DRESSED doing the dives. Cool! We watched a few minutes of it, but when the crude humor started there too (just can't get away from it!) we left. Good thing. Before long the pirates had stripped down to traditional diving gear. Eeek!

We finished our lunch and took one last look at the map. We had done everything we'd hoped to do and there was nothing left but to go home! We did take one sweep through the candy tent. They had huge baskets of individually wrapped candy of every shape and kind, old-fashioned stuff as well as new stuff. You could pick out a piece of this or a handful of that. When you left the tent they weighed your loot and charged you accordingly. That was kind of fun. We also grabbed some cotton candy on our way out because it just didn't seem right to go to the Fair and not have cotton candy.

We came home and sent everybody to nap time! ~sigh~ Gotta love that. The kids hate it when I call it nap time. They hate feeling like "little kids" and since they don't actually take naps anymore they prefer the term "quiet time." Oh well, I took a nap anyway!

This afternoon we finally faced reality. We had to go shopping. We'd put it off for several days and have even been bumbling through meals without bread for four or five days now! Enough was enough so we loaded up again and went to Edgewood. We got everything we needed and then some.

We came home and I quickly got to work on the Ladies' Retreat applications that I was supposed to have all formatted, printed up, and in the mail today. Oopsie!!! I TOTALLY forgot about that little project. They'll be in the mail first thing in the morning though!

And that's it. Oh, no it's not! In between quiet time and Edgewood Joe caught a snake! It's been several weeks (since before our Assembly trip, I think) since we've seen any snakes and we really thought they were all gone for the year. But Joe saw another one down in the pond and was able to nab it. He was so proud. It was one of the biggest ones yet, so I told him we should measure it. 22". Not bad for a garter snake! We took it wa-a-a-a-a-a-ay up the hill and released it.

There, I think that's everything. I would post pictures of the Fair, but I didn't get any 'cuz the dumb batteries died again. That means I got to lug around a heavy camera laden purse all day long for absolutely no reason at all. Ooooooh, that makes me mad! That's happened several times lately, so I had James pick up some new rechargeable batteries for me at Wal-Mart tonight. Hopefully it will help!