Enterprise Corn Fest

We went to the annual Enterprise Corn Fest yesterday and had a really good time. We love corn on the cob, especially home grow corn, so we bought 5 dozen ears. OK, not all of it was for us, we were getting some for family too. We also bought some tomatoes because our garden kind of flopped this year. They were also selling peaches for a pretty good deal so we got some for peaches and cream. Mmmmmm!! We love home grown food, it is so much better than store bought produce. We were so bummed when our garden didn't grow this year.

While at the Corn Fest, we went to all of the exhibits and booths. We even took Emily to the petting zoo. She loved all of the animals and wanted to feel and pull their hair.

Petting the sheep...
..and the goat...

...and the baby goat...

... the mama goat...

...holding the baby goats...

...and the little goat. Emily liked this goat's horns. She just wanted to pull on them, but the goat didn't really like that and tried to walk away. Too bad it was tied up and couldn't get away.

We couldn't pet the pigs but we took a picture with them anyway. Pigs must have strong jaws because these pigs ate whole corn cobs!!

We also looked at all of the awesome cars at the car show. This was my favorite, the 2010 Camero. Very nice!!

This was Russell's favorite, the 1966 Mustang. It was really nice too.

All in all, we had a great time at the Corn Fest.

Emily's Rocking Chair

Emily's first birthday is coming up next month. I cannot believe she is almost a year old. The time just seems to fly by. Russell has been busy making Emily a few presents for her birthday and yesterday he finished this beautiful rocking chair.

Russell's dad found a similar rocking chair at the DI so he bought it to use as a pattern to make more. Russell traced the pattern, cut it out, sanded like crazy, and then stained it. We wanted to decorated it with something that would be timeless not a cartoon character. We decided to look for a flower but we couldn't find anything we liked that would be big enough. Finally, after searching forever, we found this cute butterfly and it was perfect and it matched the lettering on her name. Russell finished the rocking chair by varnishing it and then put it together. I haven't decided if I need to make a little cushion for it or not. I think the rocking chair turned out really good. Good job Dear!!!

Well, one birthday project down, many more to go. It will be a busy month. I'll keep you posted.

Washington County Fair and the Cute Baby Contest

The Washington County Fair was definitely "Dino-Mite" for us this year. We had a lot of fun seeing all of the exhibits. Our nieces, Jacee, Cassie and Chelsie, entered pillow cases, and pajama pants that they had made into the fair. They all won blue ribbons and qualified to go the the State Fair. Cassie even won a Reserve Sweepstakes award on her pajama pants. Good job girls; you were awesome! Looks like we need to take a trip up to the State Fair.

Russell and I decided to enter Emily into the Cute Baby Contest at the Fair because everyone knows she is the cutest baby around. When we registered her on Wednesday (Aug 12) we were given shirt and a time to come back on Friday for the preliminary judging.

Friday morning we dressed Emily up in her Baby Contest shirt, did her hair as cute as possible and headed back out to the Fair. Isn't she the cutest baby you've ever seen!!

Here we are waiting for the preliminary judging to start. The babies were put into a groups of based on their age and the city princesses played with them and rated them on their eyes, smile, and overall personality in order to select the top 48 finalists to go on to the Saturday competition. Six boys and six girls were selected from each age group to go on. Emily was in the 10-18 month old girls group.

During the judging, I could not get Emily to do any of her tricks such as "Pat-a-Cake", "ta-da", chicken noises, motorcycle noises, or anything. The only thing she would do is show her baby teeth by making "the mean face". Then she wanted to get down and crawl so I let her and she crawled over to one of the judges chairs and started beating on it and laughing. Then when the judge came back to sit on her chair, Emily got mad and made "the mean face" at her again. After the judging was over, I wasn't sure if Emily was going to go on the Saturday competition or not.
I kind of didn't think she was going to because there were some cute babies in her group.

After the judging, we went and looked at the bears with Lacie and Tyrel. Tyrel had just got done being judged too. The bears were cool. Tyrel kept roaring at them.

At about 3:00 that afternoon, I got a call from the Baby Contest committee and they told me Emily had made it in the top 48 finalists! I was way excited; I called everyone and told them to be at the fair at noon the next day to see Emily in the competition.

Here we are ready to go to the contest Saturday morning. Emily is waving to tell us she is ready. She taught herself how to do the princess wave (elbow, elbow, wrist, wrist). Every time I sing "Beautiful baby, beautiful baby. Emily is our beautiful baby!" she does the princess wave and has a huge smile on her face. She is so funny.

"Contestant #42, Emily Farnsworth!" Here we are on stage at the contest looking as cute as ever.

Emily wanted to jump and dance while she was on stage. She was really excited to be in front of people.

Yeah for Emily!!

Jump, Emily, Jump. She was having so much fun. This was the highest I have ever seen her jump. Then she tip-toe walked over to the judges' table to be judged once again.

The Fair Royalty were the judges. While at their table, Emily kept jumping on the table, then she saw their candy and crawled right over to it and put a piece in her mouth. When she realized the wrapper was still on it she took it out of her mouth and threw it at the Fair Queen. It was really funny.

The announcer told us that about 200 kids had been entered in to the Baby Contest and that the 10-18 month old girls (Emily's group) had the most entries. After all of the age groups had gone on stage, they announced that there had been a tie in Emily's age group and we needed to come back on stage for a tie breaker.

So we went back on stage to the judges' table to be judged again. The royalty still hadn't taken their candy out of the wrapper so Emily threw it at them again.

"The drum roll please..." We are waiting the hear the winners.

"And the winners are... Third place... Emily Farnsworth!!!!!" We were so excited to hear our name. We went back up on stage to get our ribbon, stuffed dinosaur, and growth chart. We also got our picture taken for the newspaper. We think third place is just as good as first. We always knew we had the cutest baby ever!!

We also want to congratulate our friends Stephanie and Dane Behling. Their daughter Kaicee won second place. :)

Showing off our winnings!

After the contest was over, we let Emily ride on Deeno the Dino, the fair mascot. She loved it.

We had a great time at the fair this year.

Camping at Farnsworth Res.

Over the 24th of July weekend we when camping at Farnsworth Reservoir with the my family. We camped there for 10 days and had a great time. Farnsworth Res. is on the Gooseberry side of Fish Lake mountain. Fish Lake is my favorite place in the world. It is so beautiful and I love being in the mountains. I took a lot of pictures so I apologize if this is long.

Russell and I thought it would be really funny if we went around to our family members' camps and collected dues for camping at our reservoir. We figured $5 a night would be a sufficient amount of money but for some reason, no one paid us!

We went fishing almost everyday while we were there. In this picture we were at Mill Meadow. All we could catch were yellow perch. This is Tyrel and Taylor showing off their catch. We also went fishing at Cold Springs and Gates Lake. We caught about 25 nice trout at Cold Springs and a we had a fish fry that night. Unfortunately, we forgot and left two if the cooked fish in the Dutch oven and we got visited by Mr. Pepe Le Pew that night. Our camp stunk so bad that next morning. Needless to say we remembered to check and clean everything at night from then on.

Emily loved the swing we hung for her in a tree. We could leave her in there forever as long as she was being pushed. She would say "Weeeee!" and smile so big.

After fishing at Mill Meadow, we drove to Loa to get a shake at Maria's Grill. When we stopped to get gas at the Sinclair we saw the dinosaur and thought it was a perfect photo op. This is Emily and Jared riding the Sinclair dinosaur.

Russell had to go home for three days so he could work. While he was gone I let Emily sleep with me in our bed. As you can see, she likes to sprawl out when she sleeps so she took up the whole bed.

It was cold this night so my sister gave Emily a snowsuit and she was toasty warm.

Emily is riding my parents dog, Scooter. This dog is big enough to be a horse.

What can I say, that is one cute girl!!! (10 months old birthday picture)

We bought this Ladder Ball game to play while we were camping. All of the nieces and nephews had a good time throwing the balls at the ladder.

Emily playing with cousins Taylor and Tyrel while everyone else went four-wheeling.

We went on a big four-wheeler ride on Monday. Four-wheelers are the best rocking chairs! Emily slept the whole time we were on the ride. While in the ride, we drove past a couple of beaver ponds at Twin Ponds and we saw a moose! We were driving by and my mom said "Look at that big bull." (meaning cow) Just then it lifted it's head and I said "That's not a cow, its a moose!" It was really cool. We were probably only 20 feet away from it. I was wishing I had my camera so I could get a picture. The moose is really rare to see on Fish Lake. This is only the third time I have seen one in all of the years I have been camping at Fish Lake.

We went on a bike ride along the Lakeshore Trail between Bowery Haven and the Fish Lake Lodge. Emily loves riding in her bike stroller and cousin Taylor got to ride with her too. We rode to the Lodge and got and ice cream and then rode back to Bowery.

Ready to ride!

Emily loved playing with all of the cousins. She is telling all of them to "Stick 'em up!" as she waves the cap gun at them.

"Don't mess with me, I've got a gun!"

While fishing at Gates Lake, Russell's chair decided to break. I guess that's what you get for buying cheap stuff at Wal-Mart.

And down he goes! (It was actually really funny but Russell didn't think so!!)

Dad teaching Emily to fish at a young age.

Still fishing. Look how beautiful and calm that lake is!! I love this place!

"TA DA!" Emily and Dad are goofing around at camp.

After camping to 9 days, we had to leave heaven and come back home. Russell and I were trying to figure out a way to stay there forever and never come home but the only thing we could think of was insurance fraud and we didn't want to go to jail so we had to come home. Before coming home, we went to Kanosh and our nephew's baby blessing. All of my family members had just come off the mountain so we all had our camp trailers at my sister's house. We called the place the Hughes' KOA.

After church and the baby blessing, we had a luncheon and played outside. Emily loved jumping on the trampoline with cousin Tyrel. She laughed every time Tyrel bounced her even though she would fall on her face.

We had a great time camping and we wished we could stay up in the mountains. The only bad part about the week was fighting with the road construction and the flaggers. (Way to go Lacie, you assaulted the flagger! lol. Anyway, they should have changed their signs to say the actual times they were working on the roads!)

All in all we had a great time and I cannot wait to go back next year. I cannot believe it is already August and the summer is about over.

Thank you family for the fun times this past week. We love you.

Swimming Lessons

For two weeks in July we put Emily in Parent/Tot Swimming Lessons at Sand Hollow Aquatic Center. Emily loved playing in the water, kicking and splashing. During the swimming lessons, the babies learned to be comfortable in the water by singing songs and swimming to water toys. The babies learned to blow bubbles in the water and float on their backs. Every time I tried to show Emily how to blow bubbles; however, she would drink the water so I kind of stopped doing that. The instructor even had us dunk the babies under water and jump off the side of the pool into our arms. Emily and I had a great time together. On the last day of the lessons, I was able to take Emily down the big water slide. Emily loved the slide until we hit the water then she got a little scared. I recommend these swimming lessons to other moms. It is a great way for your baby to get comfortable in the water and not be scared of water.

Emily loved kicking in the water as we sang "Motor boat, Motor boat!" This was her favorite part of swimming lessons. She would kick so much she would splash water in my face and hers.

Emily is waving to our great instructor, Erika.

Here Emily is learning to float on her stomach and splash with her hands.

Still floating on her belly and looking and smiling at the other kids in the class.

We sang "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" as Emily learned to swim with her arms.

Swimming to get the ball.

"Row, row, row your boat, gentle down the stream..."

Emily loved holding onto me and floating around. Swimming lesson were a lot of fun.