The Running of The Llamas

The Running of the Llamas is a fun celebration that was held in Hammond, Wisconsin.  This was the 20th, and final year, of the event. During the event, which packs the town with people far and wide, heats of four llamas race down the street for about two blocks to the finish line.  Some llamas are great runners and others are not all that interested.  A llama that isn't interested in doing something just doesn't do it.  If you are holding on to a lead of such a llama, you may not even get over the starting line.  Spark brings Marceline because she makes it her goal to be the leader of whatever group of llamas she is in.  This means that she naturally wants to be in the front of the pack and that her personality makes her a strong competitor in a race.  The last two years Spark and  Marceline won their heats, but came in third over all.  Since this was the last year, Spark ran sprints in the backyard for a good portion of the summer to get ready for a win.

Before the race there is a parade with the llamas, local royalty, and others community groups.

This year Spark's training paid off, he and Marceline came in first place.

For her effort she was awarded with a large basket of vegetables.

The prize smelled so go we could hardly get her back to the trailer to go home.  Bet she wishes she had run faster those other years now that she has "tasted" success.

At home, Spark cut up all her winnings to share with the entire barnyard.

Minnesota State Fair

State fair was a little different for us this year.  Dancer started school and wasn't able to bring a project this year, but she still wanted to be able to go to the the fair. To make this work we had to work around her class schedule and Spark needed to attend the encampment (where the county buses the kids to the fair and they stay in the 4-H Hilton on the fair grounds). He went down the day before us and we dropped him off for the bus. I don't know if he was more excited or I was more nervous.  The next day we picked Dancer up from school and headed down, which was an adventure all on it's own.  It took us almost as long to find a parking spot as it did to drive there.

Spark did great, he earned a blue ribbon for his pelargonium. The judge said she wasn't impressed with his plant, but she was impressed with his in-depth knowledge of it. 

Our county also had a team in the "Chef for a Day" competition.  The kids get an hour of instruction and then they have half and hour to prepare a salad with meat for the judges.  It is similar to the t.v. show "Chopped."

I took the two pictures above and then had my phone in my purse. The only other picture I snapped the whole day was of Paul Bunyan made out of recycled goods. We will just have to remember the rest in our minds like in the good old days. 

We Visited A Zoo

 Last week we took a day trip up north for our last big hurrah of the summer before Dancer started school this week.  Truth be told it was one of our only hurrahs of the summer, seems no one has the same days available anymore. We went to a zoo/wildlife/petting zoo place.

Dancer and I posed sweetly on the bear's lap for a picture.  

And then realized, what are we doing, we're sitting on a bear's lap!

Dancer ain't afraid of no bear!

Dad is so hard core he flossed the bear's teeth. 

My picture with Spark.  I guess this is all you get with a 15 year old.

 I did get a picture of both the kids and Paul Bunyan.

On to the petting zoo.  This camel knows where the treats come from and he wanted Dancer to feed him.

Dancer with Mother Goose

The parakeet house was one of the coolest things I have ever seen.  It is a large, screened building with about 75 parakeets in it. All the birds fly from one side of the building to the other in a big swoop.  If you stood with your arms out a bunch of them would land on arm.

They also loved my shoes for some reason.  I don't have any food on them so not sure what the attraction was.  I had to shake them off to get them to leave because they were starting to creep me out.

Not sure why there was a table in there, but as soon as Spark sat down the table filled up with birds.

The cutest thing we saw there was a mom kangaroo giving her little joey a bath in her pouch.

We finished the day off with a Chinese buffet and now we are back to the grind.

4-H Favorite Food Show Potato Salad

Favorite food show is a project where you highlight one of your favorite foods by constucting a theme (Spark's was obviously 4th of July) and complete a menu around it and then present it to a judge. This year Spark chose Potato Salad.  You can never go wrong with homemade potato salad and this year it won him a blue ribbon.  I can actually brag about our potato salad recipe because when there is a potluck, often times we will get requests for our dish to be potato salad. It's not a family secret so here is the potato salad recipe.

Spark's potato salad was a little harder to make this year than usual because our stove died and we haven't gotten around to getting a new one. To boil the eggs and potatoes he had to haul out the camping stove so he had a little extra twist to tell about his dish. The rest of his meal was a burger, baked beans, chips, sweet iced tea and, if you can see the little flag on the top of napkin, mini Resees Peanut Butter Cups arranged as a flag.

To complete his theme he wore a USA t-shirt.

Besides making the food the kids also need to know what nutrients are in the the meal, how much it costs and anything else the judge can think up.

Complete Randomness

Nikki incognito

Dad making crochet humor.  I thought my little elephant needed a mom so I am in the process making her one.

Frog in glass by Spark

Mac and cheese doesn't have food coloring anymore!!!  It is has been about 10 years since has been welcome in our house, but it's in now! Seems like a novelty to us.

When Fluffles isn't sleeping he's trying to figure out how to get some Temptations cat treats.

Out to lunch

Dancer, the queen of selfies.

Yeah, that's a goat/llama water bucket.  They think the buckets are either a bathroom or a footbath.

The thank you gift we made for Spark's speech co-op leaders.

Double decker sleeping spot.

Car washing.

The want ads at the feed mill.

Bert after a bath.

Goat kids and geocaching

We are ahead of schedule this year and already have our 4-H goats for the fair.

It was a couple hour trip to get them so we took the opportunity to find a few geocaches on the way back.  I can not recommend geocaching with goats in the car.

I love the sites we see that we would otherwise just drive right by though if we didn't geocache.

Homemade vs. Store Bought OREOs

Our homeschool co-op is all boys and they like to eat so we do a lot of cooking when we get together.  The mom's don't complain either ;)

  

We were talking and realized that you never hear about people making homemade OREOs.  So the boys tried their hand at it.  The recipe they made was from the web site momables.

They cut them out with a shot glass (or a two table spoon sampler as Spark calls it) which was the perfect size.

The verdict?  If you have a hankering for OREOs, then buy the real thing.  The homemade are delicious, but they aren't OREOs, they taste more like the chocolate waffle cookies I made as a kid.

Redoing Furniture

Spark and I found this rocking chair for just $20!

We bought some Country White paint and started painting.  This picture is really white, not blue.  It reminded of the blue and black or white or gold dress.

Lots of coats later, every time the sun shined on it we could see parts that weren't adequately covered, we have this beautiful chair.  

We also found an end table that Spark painted a moss green.  We brought this to Grandmas new home and didn't get an end result picture but we were very happy with how it turned out.  It is amazing what a little paint can do.

Wooden Bowl and Pottery

Spark started to go to a local art studio on Thursday nights.  For $5 they can go for three hours and all the materials are provided.  He made this wooden bowl on the lathe one of the first nights.  He has also done some pottery, sculpting, painting, drawing and glass work.  There is a teacher in each room and the kids just wander from room to room trying whatever projects they want.

  

4-H Knowledge Bowl Pratice Cake

After the Minecraft cake Spark was on a baking spree.  We had our first llama knowledge bowl practice at our house and he made another layer cake with a llama on top to spur on the llama learning.