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.