Berrien County Youth Fair Week

Y'all may not know this, but MI is all about some fairs! I'm pretty sure if you wanted to, you could find some kind of fair every weekend of the year. It's a little overboard-but fun! Well, our little town has the biggest fair in the state. It had 124,773 visitors this year.  Including our little family! We weren't really sure what all the hype was about, but turns out we enjoyed the entire week. And it is most certainly a week-long affair. Even the library shuts down. Don't expect to get any business done the week of the fair in this place! Anyway, we went every day and did something different every day. I didn't get to capture all the moments, but I did manage to snap a few shots. Some things we did not pictured here are: watch a cow in labor-for two days! Finally when the kids and I went back Thursday morning the cow had had her baby just two hours before! It was so sweet watching mama and baby! We also walked around and saw ALL the livestock-including five year old children showing their baby cows-that was cute. We watched horse riding competitions and rabbit judgings and marveled at swine and fowl and people watched and ate and ate and ate and saw crafts, floral arrangements, baked goods, a circus, and went on rides! Which, incidentally, when we were there on Sunday turning in M's entry they were still setting up the rides and we were discussing what the workers had to do for that. Well, that night little J prayed for the workers to be safe and that he would get to ride the rides! It was so sweet! And he prayed for those things ever day thereafter! Here is M with her entry: it is a fruit cocktail cake. We even changed the recipe and left some stuff out because I thought the judges didn't even taste it-that it just sat there-we sure didn't get to taste it! But I was wrong. The judges tasted it and M got an A ribbon. She was so proud! I can't remember if I ever took a pic of her with the ribbon-might have to follow up on that... 

Here it is on display. We visited it several times during the week!

 Here we are eating funnel cake for the first time. J got real into it:

 These pics are kinda gross! But, it cracked me up that M begged me for a caramel apple to eat while at the circus and that toothless child couldn't eat it! It was pretty funny!

 Aren't I lucky to have such handsome men in my life?

 (By the way, J said he didn't like the circus. He wanted to leave and after we asked several times what part he liked and he kept saying, "nofing, I didn't like it."

Daddy rode the ferris wheel with M because mommy is too much of a wuss: 

 She loved it! J and I are down there somewhere:

more rides:

 Can't see them there, but cool shot, huh?