Fantastical Pre-Fair Flitterings

It's official, I am half the Kat I used to be. (At least energy wise)

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Why do I say that, well, for weeks now I have been flittering about like a hummingbird on Adderall just living my jam packed homestead life.

However, the past few days have been a bit of a level up of sorts.

To start with, this past Saturday I had a boxing match gathering here on the farm in honor of my hub's birthday, an event that I affectionately referred to as Birthday Beatdown BBQ. One of my game buds had never taken a punch to the face, and his close bud, a power lifter of gargantuan proportions offered to help him remedy that lack of face hit-age.

I offered my yard as I have a sandpit where our pool used to be that I thought would be an excellent boxing ring, and the rest was fun friend gathering history. No one was permanently maimed or harmed, but there was a respectable amount of mocking

I spent two days prepping, baking, and cooking all manner of comestibles for that event, and as anyone who feeds and hosts gatherings know, you are a bit worn after feeding and entertaining a few dozen people. Well, I got to do it again for over forty people on the following Monday.

My husband is a 4-H shooting sports leader (shotgun, rifle, pistol, and archery), and he runs a youth shooting sports league at our local rifle and pistol range. Last week he dropped a little thing on me,

"I told everyone to show up Monday for an end of the season thing, it won't be much."

"Insert maniacal laughing woman here."

Much turned out to be well over forty people, including lots of babies and toddlers. We had two huge tables full of food, and oh yes, on that same day I had to take my son to the DMV to license and register his car, that's right, after six years sitting in my barnyard, the Hoop-dee is back on the road. My faithful little blue Ford Escort is roaming the highway again!

But back to the 4-H BBQ, After eating, there was a shooting competition on our range. It was parents vs. the kids. Most of the kids are nationally ranked competitive shooters, so I quite literally could smell the confidence (and the Dr. Squatch soap!).

The adults were to go first, and my hubs had two of the kids run out and put ten clay pigeons on the shooting berm. Well, they actually put eleven out there and then all of us mocked them endlessly, which was fun. Then hubs allowed the adults back on the shooting line and gave them a minute to shoot as many of the targets as possible. It was pretty slow going until on of the dads, a Marine EOD combat veteran propped his AR style twenty-two against the range cover post and annihilated all the targets in about ten seconds.

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Well, the kids weren't having that.

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When my hubs switched out the parents from the line and brought the kids up, I swear you could smell competitive in the air. There was an anticipatory silence that had me giggling right off the bat.

GO he shouted, and let me tell ya, the mag dump began.

Most of the kids had AR style twenty-twos, and I don't know exactly how many rounds were fired off in that minute, but what I do know is that all that was left of the clay targets was fine dust. It was hilarious!

The next morning I was up bright and early and in town yet again, as my daughter had to drop off her FFA SAE project at the fairgrounds to be judged. This is FFA's first year at our state fair, and my daughter is the first kid to ever enter a plant project. She helped with the lavender harvest this summer and entered a crate of lavender-based products grown, harvested, and made right on our farm: essential oil, hydrosol, whipped body butter, culinary lavender buds, and dried bundles. It was a pretty project that smelled lovely, and everyone we ran into oohed and ahhed over it, so I am hoping good things regarding her winning something from her hard work!

We also ran around town buying last minute fair stuff, supplies for the travel trailer since we are going to live in it at the fairgrounds all of next week, four new pairs of pants for the girl to show in, blackened fettuccine alfredo for mental strengthening. Oh wait...

Which led to yesterday. While I was in town, the hubs flushed out the travel trailer's water and sewer systems, hooked it up to our big ol diesel beast, and was all ready to roll, for yesterday morning we hopped in the truck and towed the trailer down to the fairgrounds. The fair is ten days long this year, so we had to get the trailer down before the fair officially starts this Friday.

And then, after we got home, I got an email from 4-H that we needed to bring all our heavy cattle equipment in that day and today. Ugh, I would have taken it with the trailer, as the fairgrounds is about a forty-five minute drive from our house. Which of course meant we had to take my daughter's grooming stanchion in the following day.

And I already had a full schedule lined up for today! Our son is getting contacts and had to go to his fitting appointment this morning, which I have to say was pretty hilarious to watch because he's used to being awesome at everything and contacts are a bit of work the first time you put them in and take them out. It also is school fees and registration day, so adding a grooming chute stanchion to the to dos was no biggie...right?

So this morning, for day three hundred in a row, I sent the hubs and daughter off to the fairgrounds with her 8 foot aluminum grooming chute strapped to our big pickup, all while the boy and I went to the eye doc just down the street from the fairgrounds. We all met up at the eye doctor as my daughter's new glasses had came in, and then we caravanned to the high school to pick up the kids Chromebooks, pay for their school fees, and get their school pics taken.

And that my friends, is only an abbreviated edition of what I have been up to the last few days, which is why my posting schedule is a bit off. I've got lots of posts to craft and plop on here for ya'll, but until the 28th of this month I might be a little sporadic in my posting because it's FAIR SEASON!

And not only that, it's my very last fair. Our daughter is going to be fitting and showing her very last steer as she will be heading off to college next year, so I don't feel bad about taking a bit of time off from my normal posting routine in the slightest, I want to enjoy and remember everything about this amazing, chaotic, and spectacular time!

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And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's very well-behaved and never quite been scathed iPhone.

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