County Fair time

I thought good things were to come when I saw the size of the fairgrounds earlier in the summer due to the go-Kart club having races there. I was right...at least mostly. WAY better than the county fairs in Kansas.. not *quite* as good as the Monroe County Fair...but then again.. that was labled "Michigans finest county fair".. and thats a hard bill to follow.

I leafed through the schedule of events: Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (hmm... I like some of their stuff...but do I want to pay 25 dollars that I don't really have to see them...)Jr Bull riding/ Donkey Polo (this has my interest.. I like rodeos.. and donkey polo HAS to be good.. right?) Free concert: Johnny Lee (Hey.. I like him... or at least used to! and its FREE!) There were some other events, such as the Demo Derby, but most either didn't interest me much, or I didn't think Sierra would enjoy them.

Sierra and I walked to the fairgrounds to see the animals, and check things out on the night of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band concert. She enjoyed seeing the lady walking around on stilts who juggled, and was mesmerized by the bunjee jumping ride (ack!!). She loved the animals...at least until one of the goats scared her by popping his head over his gate. :) It was kinda funny, but she wanted no part of the goats after that the rest of the way, and was skiddish about them the rest of the week as well. The bad part was, there were some 4 day old goats just down from the one that scared her, and she wasn't interested in them anymore either. One of the 4-H kids let her pet a cow... she wasn't sure about that either.

We settled down in a nice grassy spot just outside the grandstands and listened to the concert for free. It was a good concert, from what I could tell. Sierra was more interested in the mechanical bull behind us. If I would have had a spare 5 dollars I probably would have seen if he would have let us ride it, since he was letting 2 and 3 year olds ride a really gentle ride. I enjoyed watching the older boys (20ish) think they were tough and get tossed off like a rag doll hahaha.. sadly I wanted to try my luck too. Maybe next year, huh.. lol.
We stayed long enough to hear "Fishing in the Dark" my favorite song of theirs. It was getting dark after that, and it's a fair walk, so I wanted to get home.. before the mountain lions come out.. yanno.

The next day we went at lunchtime with Randal, since there was an office pool to see who could eat the most fair food. I wanted so many different things, but was suffering severely from morning sickness. I settled for my first Indian Taco.. mmmmm.. The elephant ear was a huge treat as well, since no one in Kansas knew what one was. I paid for the grease.. but it was worth it! Sierra and I parted ways after lunch with Randal and saw the animals again. We headed back after that, since it was hot, and I was tired, and knew teh grease wouldn't settle for long.

The junior bull rodeo and the donkey polo wasn't quite what I expected. Randal had to cover it for the paper. I enjoyed the rodeo...mostly. It was a little scary when the one boy got stomped, and I realized for the first time I'd be scared to death if my kids wanted to rodeo it. Funny how parenthood changes your outlook on some sports, huh. The donkey polo...well, it wasn't what I expected.. and in fact, I ended up hating it. I watched a guy break a broom on a donkey, and quickly found myself wanting to break a broom over him. The animal lover in me is starting to be much more alive these days.

The free Johnny Lee concert was pretty cool. ...except for the thunderstorm that blew in. Johnny was pretty funny... although I found some of his jokes to be offcolor...and in bad taste. Guess thats to be expected.. but I don't have to like it. Sierra was dancing as much as she could at her age, and seemed to love it. After the concert I took her up to get her pic with him... she decided to get stranger danger for the very first time, and screamed bloody murder when I handed her to him. ...so, the three of us had our pic taken. Not such a bad deal I guess. Johnny also gave me a discount on his signed pic since I'm a loser and only had 3 dollars with me. I appreciated it greatly, since I wanted Sierra to have a momento of the occassion. It's signed to her. Some day she's gonna look at it and go "whoooooooo????" lol.

We went to teh fair every day for lunch. I had some of the best food, and some of hte worst lol. It was fun though. I had a week pass to get in the fair that cost me 10 dollars, versus the 5 a day.. I think I got my moneys worth :)
We also watched a bit of this one other sport as well. I can't think of the name of it now.. it's rather weird though. Two people on horses, a bunch of cows with numbers.. the riders have certain numbers they have to get.. those are teh only cows they can put on the other side of the line. The team that does it in the fastest time win. Probably won't watch it again, unless Randal has to cover it again.

baseball fever

OVer the summer we went to a large number of American Legion baseball games, which I thought would drive me crazy since I'm not much of a baseball fan, but the boys made it fun to watch. They were awesome at hitting the ball, and had some pretty decent pitchers... including one kid who we will likely see in the major leagues one day. Keep your eye out for Scotty Jameson in a few years. He's in his first year of college now, and before pitching in college, he has a low 90mph fast ball.
In Wyoming, the A and AA program is combined at the state level, and they have to play each other. Our boys won as much as they needed to in order to get to regionals for A ball. We got to do some traveling with the team to Rock Springs, and ultimately a suburb of Salt Lake City, Utah. It was pretty awesome! They took third place, which was one of those heart breaker games that saw the bases loaded, and a final strikeout to end the game with us one point shy of tying things up. I really thought a little different pitching lineup and we'd have won no trouble.. but, thats okay. In its own way, it worked out. Sierra got the flu that day, and was sick the drive home. I felt so bad for her. The next day, I was down for the count, and the following day, Randal and I were both sick.
While in Salt Lake, we went to the zoo, which was smaller than I expected, but still pretty decent. Sierra liked the bears the most. We got her a stuffed Fossa, (from Madagascar), which has turned out to be one of her favorite stuffed animals! We got Trevor a turtle, and he seemed to really love that too. He said he didn't have a turtle before. Randal also took me around downtown so I could see the Mormon temple, and whatnot. His sister requested we find her insurance company and tell them off for her in person ...we never did find them.
We also went out to the salt flats, saw the great salt lake, played in teh desert a lil and ...the craziest thing of all... we were greeted to salt lake by a wildfire!
We almost didn't get to our hotel because the fire was on both sides of the road. About 5 minutes after we got through they shut the expressway. They had it pretty much out that night, which was good, but we missed a lot of the mountain scenery as a result.
The one thing we were told we had to do when in Salt Lake was go to a restaurant called The Red Iguana. IT was THE best mexican food we have ever had the pleasure of eating. I highly reccommend it! IT isn't much to look at from teh outside, and I can see why it made Diners, Drive-ins and Dives on the Food Network. We also saw a few places teh olympics had been held at, including the olympic oval. The baseball stadium was one of the nicest I have ever been in. There were some things about the tournament that needed help, but overall, it was a great experience.
We didn't get to go, but the BAbe Ruth kids made it to regionals as well. They were in Washington. Hopefully that means next year will be another trip to regionals for Legion ball!

playing catch up... again

As you can imagine, life with a young toddler makes writing a lil difficult since I don't really get any breaks from her. I absolutely love her, and don't want to change that, although once she's potty trained, I will enroll her in the daycare at the college to give her that extra boost--social, as well as an extra teaching source.
College has also gotten in the way for me writing also. but, enough with excuses.. and on to trying to play catch up. I will likely for get some stuff, and I know it won't be in order...but at least you will get more info about some stuff we've been doing over the last few months.

I will put them in seperate posts just to make it easier.

WJRA

no, its not a radio station or a tv station.. its the letters for the Wyoming Junior Rodeo Assoc. which was held in Ralston earlier today (which by the time stamp, means yesterday). We got there after it started and left before it was done because of needing to go to Cody to get some groceries and stuff for Sierra. We saw the girls events. I would have prefered the bull riding, but thats okay, it was still fun watching Sierra go nuts with all the horses and dogs in teh area. She really wants a horse lol. She was pointing and squealing, it was cute. She got to pet two cute lil dogs.. a puppy named Reba, and a "sister" from another litter, Cedar. Cedar was super friendly.. which kinda surprised me since she only had one eye. She gave Sierra lots of kisses and didn't mind that she was trying to pet her a lil on the rough side. Reba was just all sorts of cuteness, but didn't stand a chance of getting attention after I said hi to Cedar lol.
At this stage... if Sierra chooses to want to get into rodeo when she's old enough, it could be lots of fun, because, neither Randal or I know much about rodeo, or even taking care of horses lol.

lions, tigers and bears?? No... deer, elk and.... cows..Oh My!

We headed to the geyser basin for our usual Thursday trip. It started out with an erruption of Riverside, which is always a fun one to watch. From there we tried heading to another basin to see if we couldn't catch great fountain for the first time. nope... already gone. *sigh*. So, we decided it had been a while since we lookde for animals in teh Lamar valley...and the geyser basins were gonna be quiet most of the rest of the time we'd be in the park. So off we headed to Lamar. We saw several areas that appeared to be animal jams, but couldn't see anything. One area was definetely a wolf jam.. but people were already double parked, and the biologist was packing up.. which isn't a good sign if you want to see the wolves. Then there was a spot where people were hitting their breaks ahead of us.. I scanned the area.. bear..wait.. no.. charred tree stump...wait.. noo....it's MOVING! It IS a bear! I finally got the chance to get good pics of a black bear! It was eating plants in the field. You could even hear it huff and chomp.. crazyness! That alone made the night completely worth it. We headed out of the park and went to cooke city to get food. Our favorite deli was closed.. we peeked at the bistro next to it, but dinner prices were a bit steep, so we went to teh saloon that is family friendly. They were out of pizza dough and steak sandwhiches which limited you to burgers, chicken sandwhiches or fish taco. I've never been brave enough to try a fish taco, so I went with a burger. It was pretty good, and the price wasn't bad... teh other deli is way better for burgers, but their pizza and steak sandwhich looked amazing!
It was dark when we got done. We headed down the Chief Joseph Scenic Highway to get home.. I spotted a couple deer, thankfully none of them tried jumping out in teh road. As we got farther into teh mountain road, I saw something on the side of the road that freaked me out.. 3 black cows...NOT behind a fence.. right next to the road. It was open grazing land.. ugh! A lil bit farther down the road I saw a brown and white cow a lil farther off the road.. I couldnt wait to get out of open range! Of course when we finally got out of that there was an elk on the side of the road. Thankfully nothing jumped out at us.. but I saw way too much wildlife within 3 feet of the road in teh dark on teh way home!!! A good trip though... no matter how you look at it! (...and the cows really add something to thoughts of having to pee so bad you are willing to go on the side of the road... they definetely make a person think a lot harder on that one lol...not that grizzley country wouldn't anyway lol)

thar' she blows!!!!!!

Okay, so this is a lil late.... but I'm trying to catch up. Tuesday I was roaming the streets with Sierra in the stroller, running some errands, with the goal of walking at least 3 miles. I walked down to Powell Drug, because I have a 3 dollar coupon for there, and they have an old fashioned soda fountain, and, well... it just sounds good. So I went inside to check it out. There was an elderly woman sitting in teh booth who must own part of the store, and she started chatting ...I have no idea how long I was there, but I know it was over an hour! I never did order anything lol. ...which means at some point I have to go back lol. She was really friendly and adored Sierra. She even offered me a free cup of coffee...something I never expected. I politely declined since I'm not really a fan of coffee. After telling her I had to go about 5 times, I finally escaped...yes, at that point it was an escape!
From there, I went to the college to turn in my non-trad orientation paperwork. I ended up talking to the records and registration specialist for quite a long time as well, because she absolutely adored Sierra as well. I also was amused because Sierra was able to play with a 2 and 3 yr old for a little while their mom registered for classes, and she seemed to really enjoy chasing the boys down. I discovered after the fall semester I will only need about 3 classes to graduate! ...unfortunately unless my parents move out for the winter semester, it's not gonna happen, because I need to be on campus for at least one of them... and Sierra is too young for the day care. Very exciting stuff though!
When I left the school, I looked at the time and realized I couldn't finish my last errand because I was already pushing missing Randal for lunch. We booked it home and found a note on teh computer telling me to push play on teh video on the computer and then flip the index card over. Giantess was errupting.. one of the geysers that only errupts about 2-3 times a year. I had instructions to be ready to go to teh park by 3:30. Normally that wouldn't be an issue, but I didn't have anything to make dinner on the run...you know.. things like bread so I could make our normal peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches. As I was getting Sierras stuff together a HUGE storm blew in... Rain came busting through the screen a good 4 feet into the apt! I quickly shut the windows! I wondered if we were still going, but the radar looked clear once this got past us.
Randal got home around 3, and we were out the door about 3:15. We grabbed quiznos for dinner.. mmmmm... mostly healthy, and super good! We got to teh basin and he took Sierra and went ahead while I putz a bit. ..I mean, its just a geyser....right? ...yeah.. no..
I am the type of person who gets excited by all geysers...even the little 1-2 feet tall ones. Typically I will skip by a HUGE one for a chance to see one I've never seen before... so I was figuring this one wouldn't really make me any more excited than seeing Grand or Riverside for the first time.. even if it is rare. I took a couple wrong turns trying to get to geyser hill...I never realized how many paths you could take on the board walk before that! I got fairly close and Giantess errupted with a series of "minors"...I got goosebumps! It was this amazing feeling. I'm not sure why, other than I guess I realized this was something really impressive.. and these weren't even the big show it put on when it first errupted that morning. Close to 12 hours later and it was still putting on a show that was simply amazing!
From there I saw so many geysers for the first time.. Infant, Lion, pump-- shooting higher than I'd ever saw, Aurum...I'm sure the list goes on. I was in geyser heaven. Giant was acting different than I'd ever saw too, which could have been a minor hot period...it didn't errupt.. that would have just been far too amazing! It's been since the late 1800's since anyone has saw both Giant and Giantess errupt on teh same day... I wasn't that lucky, but you know.. I didn't really feel let down. It was a great day at the basin!

fathers day

we ended up going hiking in the Beartooth Wilderness for fathers day. A liesurely day hike. We cut it shorter than we had planned, because the weather didnt look all that great after about 2 miles in, and because...well... it appears we aren't in quite as good of shape as we thought. Who would have guessed hiking mountains could be so difficult lol. I probably would have made it the whole way, even though my knee was screaming at me to go home, but we didn't want to get caught in an afternoon thunderstorm with Sierra. We played in an open meadow for a bit, where it was shining brightly offering a lil more warmth than the tree covered trail. The only things that ruined the fun was itch weed and bear dung. We didn't see any bears, but I was still nervous.
On the way back down, someone had a full grown black poodle that looked very much like a black bear on the trail lol. At least he was friendly lol. We also found a spot where a moose had crossed the path after we went through, bummer, I'd have loved to have seen him.. well, on the other side of the river anyway.
from there it was adventures at walmart and kmart...weee.. what fun!... not! Made Randal dinner, and played with Sierra the rest of the night.