Our first experience with canning....
When we went to enter our culinary items on Saturday, we took a sneak peek at our art entries.
We stayed to "enjoy" the fair experience. It was our first time to EVER go to the fair itself. We've always just dropped our entries off and left. I have to say that we are definitely the contest/agricultural type fair-goers. The commercial side of the fair was really not our cup of tea, but it helps to make the fair appeal to a wider audience of people. I could go into all the things I didn't like, but I won't. We ate some greasy fair food and then did what I said I would never let my kids do. Ride something that has been traveling around the country on the back of a truck!
I was not too hot on letting my kids on any of the rides, but JP wanted them to have that experience. They each picked one ride. I watched while Michael was on the merry-go-round (that's my kind of ride). Then, I left JP to help the older ones pick their rides.
We watched as the kids' culinary items were judged and the winners announced. The entries were lower this year, but our kids produced items that were ribbon worthy in any case. 10 out of the 12 things they entered won a ribbon.
They worked really hard this year!
The cupcakes Tera was about to pull her hair out making yesterday. The
cupcakes that had her saying she'll never work with fondant ever again.
The cupcakes that we made her redo parts of because they just weren't
quite there. Those cupcakes won 1st place. One of the judges came up
to us after and said, they didn't even have to discuss it. They took
one look at them and said "1st place!" We pushed her to persevere and do a great job and it paid off.
Throughout this process of entering the fair, we run the gamut of experiences.
We're stressed....
We're tired...
It's hard work...
You deal with winning and losing...
We drive at least 30 minutes one way to a bigger city 3 different times in 2 weeks.
But in the end our kids:
impress us with the things they can do on their own.
learn that life's not always fair.
learn to follow recipes, follow directions and follow through.
learn to win AND lose well.
see their work in a larger community of artists.
For all those reasons, it's worth it!