It’s only been like a matter of DAYS since I’ve last typed a blog post – right?

Good grief we’ve crammed a lot of activity into those days somehow.  Part unintentionally, part on purpose.

Friday the kids and I attended the North Carolina Mountain State Fair.  I’ve wanted to attend this shindig for years after seeing it annually advertised and this year I just decided we would go for it.  (It helped that on Friday the entrance fee was completely waived for students and their teachers. I have students.  I’m a teacher.  I can afford free.)

There was the Midway (not at all free) and its weird rides, its gaudy colors and its fried everything.  But everybody needs to throw a dart at a balloon and get a stuffed turtle that their mom will give to the thrift store when they aren’t paying attention.  And some kids need to ride their first carnival ride.

And we ALL need to see pigs race in a circle with a hundred people screaming for their favorite pig to win.  And also a race for three geese and one for four goats and then a final race with pot bellied pigs.

We saw the second place pumpkin – isn’t he gigantic?

I think we all loved wandering the giant aisles with woodworkers sharing their craft and gobs of teen art entries and photographs and winning pies and jams and a giant pig waiting for judging that just had to be named Wilbur (I’m sure of it) and we watched chicks for real hatching right before our eyes and we saw llamas and painfully cute pygmy goats and painfully odd looking steer.

Also.

Bergen rode a mechanical bull.

Then Friday night we had just a magical evening with friends under the twinkling yard lights and sometimes having such charming evenings at this house make it feel so heavy and sad to think of moving from this friendly farmhouse setting and it tugs at my heart a little to imagine the new and the change.

Saturday was for sleeping in and having a few buddies over to play with the kids and then being so excited to greet my brother and his wife and their two dogs for a little weekend visit.  (And for Mosely to make whoopee pies. Delicious delicious pies.  That make me want to eat every last one of them alone.)

When did my brother start looking identical to my uncle anyway?  (He’s been in the Marines for more than two decades where facial hair was against the code so it’s startling and fun to see stubble on his face.)

Otto thinks the name “Uncle Danny” means “Let’s Go Fishing” and London translates it more in terms of Monopoly games and I think both kids were plenty satisfied this weekend.  (Until London – for the first time ever – lost a game to Uncle Danny.)

It’s been full and fun and it felt like a little slice of fading summer, like that last bit of light as the summer nights grow shorter and the air is just trying to turn cool and letting you know that the seasons are changing.

Yeah – it felt like that.

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