A Fair Day

Here's to getting the taste of that last post outta your mouth.

We had a lovely Sunday. Early afternoon I found my way out to my porch and couldn't help noticing the hungry three up in the corner. I've been photographing these littluns since they were robin's egg blue, so I grabbed my camera and sat down below the nest on my porch bench hoping to get one of mommy feeding them. It's unbelievably cute. They stretch their necks long and high and mommy stretches up high on her legs above them, dropping ickies into their gaping mouths. But mommy didn't come while I sat there this time, probably because Sean joined me with a bowl of blueberries and was hopping up and down in between each mouthful.

Here's where I usually sit and read or play games with the kids and hubby. Last night we even roped in my sister and brother in law. They enjoyed it too and I beat them in a game of Knock Out.
And here are the hungry three. I'm surprised they haven't fallen out of that nest yet, the way they flop about in there. The butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker in their little boat.
WHERE IS SHE?!
I don't know, Butch, but my baby is eating just fine over here. Yesterday Luke found a worm and handed it to me. I climbed up on the side there behind Sean and dropped it into the candlestick maker's mouth. He was much obliged. Sean noticed today that the mom was feeding the babies a dead wasp and that sent us on a mission. You see there was a paper wasp nest hanging in the tree over the basketball court and Stan couldn't rest until it was down. It was rather close to the comings and goings of the kids. They build one of these nests every year. One year Seth was riding his bike on the driveway and a wasp actually dropped into the cracks of his helmet and stung his scalp. Anyway, Stan sprayed the nest last night and then many dead wasps layed all over the backyard. Sean realized that the robin mom was feeding her babies these poisoned wasps, so we went on a mission and collected as many as we could into a ziploc bag so the babies weren't eating poisoned bugs. Can't have that. And it kind of brings home the whole web of nature thing, you know? Spray poison here, kill the hungry three there. Nevermind killing an entire nest of wasps, but one stray basketball and someone would have gotten a major hurtin'. Later, we saw the mom underneath the wasp nest searching for more.

Then later still, we had a terrible storm and Stan decided to take down the nest while it rained. He did and here is part of it.

The larvae were moving.

We had headed over to the 4H fair this afternoon right before the deluging thunderstorm hit. The boys got to climb the rock wall. Seth refused to ride the mechanical bull even when I offered him $5 just for the pleasure of watching him. Sean tried out two sides of the wall before we decided that the storm coming might present a problem, you know, tying your kid with metal cables to a high tower in a lightning storm.




Lukey wasted no time and climbed all the way to the green button...which he pushed...and nothing happened.






Soon after these pictures the storm hit. It was the neatest sensation. We were walking on a ridge toward our car and on our left side it was hot, while on the right a cold wind blew in causing us to be both warm and cold all at once! We all felt it at once together, really neat! While at the fair we got to see two Swiss Mountain dogs (just like Ruby, only short-haired), two wolves with which for $10 we could have been photographed (ah, no), some pigs, cows, horses...goats...I probably don't have to tell you what was at the 4H fair.

The storm driving home was unreal. We could barely see the road in front of us. Very exciting. At one point it was so thrilling, I grabbed my cell phone, texted "HELP!" and sent it to Seth sitting in the seat behind me.