fairest of the fair

We went to the county fair today. I like going through the animal barns at the fair, they're all so clean and neat and the animals are scrubbed up and nice looking. It almost makes you forget what a pain in the butt they can be. I like the cow barns...and in Wisconsin, there are plenty of those. If, and that's a huge IF, we ever got a cow, it would have to be a Jersey, they're so soft eyed and pretty, plus, they've got some of the highest percentage of butterfat, which would be a priority to me since if we had our own milk, I'd want to make stuff like butter. Then we went to see the goats, which are really cute when they're not being mischievous. After the animal barns, we hit the midway and the food stands. I don't know if they're as important to your fair as they are to ours, but cream puffs are a Wisconsin fair tradition. So, I had the traditional fair cream puff then, I found Nirvana. Deep fried chocolate chip cookie dough, people. Oh, and topped with whipped cream. I was not leaving the fairgrounds without one of those little lovelies in my gullet. There were 3 of them, each a little bigger than the size of a golf ball. Hubs and I each ate one and split the third, which was waaaay more than I really needed. Not exactly an important part of the food pyramid, but hey, it's the fair, you've gotta splurge just a little. I should get some credit for passing on the deep fried blooming onions, deep fried twinkies and the elephant ears.

if he only knew...

Tomorrow morning, angel #4's cat is going into the vet to get neutered. He's 8 months old, so this is long overdue, but it's been a busy summer and this is the first we got time. I want to get him fixed before it starts causing problems.

The craziness of school is starting already. Last Monday WE started cross-country practice and Angel #4 started volleyball practice. #2's practices are from 9-11am and WE's are from 6-8pm, so that makes for 4 trips back and forth to town to get them to practice. Once school starts, they'll both have practice at the same time so we'll only have one town trip a day, which will be much nicer.

Still haven't found my Mouli, but I'm still looking, because I KNOW it's here somewhere, so I refuse to look for or buy a new one. There's no place else it could be. WE lost his running shorts he wears to practice as well, we suspect that his shorts and the Mouli ran off together. I'm not sure what offspring a union of that sort would produce, but I bet it would be able to grate cheese in a real hurry. :P

WHERE IS MY MOULI????

Besides a couple of boxes of books, winter clothes and a box of small and basically useless electric kitchen appliances, we're all unpacked. But I've got a missing object to report. I can't find my Mouli. It looks like this bad boy:

I got it about 15 years ago for $1 at an auction still in its original box and I loved him with all my might. He made the trip to Hawaii with us and came back up when we returned to Wisconsin, though one of his blades got a little bent up in the move. I used it for shredding cheese, zuchinni, and Fels Naptha soap (I make my own laundry detergent). I love that little guy. But, I've turned my house inside out and upside down and I can't find it. I last used it right before we moved, so probably the end of June. I noticed it was missing on Saturday when I had a bunch of zuchinni that needed shredding and I couldn't find it. I've also run out of laundry detergent and have had to resort to using store-bought stuff, because my MOULI HAS DISAPPEARED!! I've re-searched all the unpacked boxes, crawled through the grainery, barn, attic and garage looking for it. I'm at my wit's end and it's not pretty people. So, if you've seen my Mouli wandering around looking lost, please send him home, I miss him.

In non-disappearing Mouli news, Saturday we went to a beautiful wedding. A girl we've known since before she was born got married in her parents backyard on a beautiful sunny day. Sarah looked gorgeous and it was hard to reconcile that beautiful young woman to the little girl who used to play with Angel #1. I think #1 was really missing being here to watch his lifelong friend get married, but those are the breaks when you join the military, I guess. Anyway, around 3:30pm, just when the bride and groom were saying their goodbyes, they had a little surprise in store for them. There's a small, grass airstrip on her parents farm and the bride's grandpa hired someone to land his plane there and pick up the bride and groom. We all stood off to the side and waved as they flew off to start their life together. It was almost like a movie.

My mom's side of the family had a reunion on Saturday as well, but we'd had a busy couple of days and were really just wanting to go home and chill after the wedding. My refrigerator died on Wednesday night and at 10pm, the girls and I were hauling our refrigerated stuff outside and to the garage refrigerator. We went out of town early Thursday morning to work at the day camp for the mentally handicapped that we like volunteering at and spend the night at Rent-a-Grandma's house so we could go there again on Friday (the camp is a 2 hour drive from our house). We got home late Friday night, left early in the morning for the 2 hour drive to get to the wedding and finally got around to taking the old fridge out and putting the garage fridge into the kitchen on Saturday night. That was a bit chaotic since I was also trying to make a zuchinni cake for my dish to pass for the family reunion for my dad's side of the family, which was on Sunday. A lot of that time was spent looking for my Mouli so I could shred the zuchinni. Our doorways are really narrow, so hubs had to take all the doors and hinges off the fridge to get it into the kitchen. Things were a bit crazy.

The girls and I went to the reunion right after church on Sunday and, since something happened and my cake turned out looking awful, I didn't put my name on my cake pan and had one of the girls quietly slip it onto the dessert table so no one knew it was mine. :p I also found out how much I adore my cousin Theresa when she told me the story of how one of her roosters attacked her and she took out a gun and shot it. I think she's my hero. My family also has a 50/50 raffle every year. In case you don't know, a 50/50 raffle means that whoever holds the winning ticket gets half of the proceeds of the raffle, the other half goes to a charity. In my family's case, the charity is one my cousin's disabled daughter takes part in. It never fails though, every year, whoever wins the raffle ends up donating their winnings to the charity as well. How can you not love a family like that? This year, the winner was a young 4th generation relative who is getting married soon. I'm sure he could have found a use for that $100+, but didn't think twice about not accepting the winnings, even when someone brought up the fact that he was kind of broke. It gives me the warm fuzzies. So you don't think that my family is just a bunch of boring do-gooders, they also got out the water balloon launcher. In another family tradition, a whole bunch of kids stand out in the yard and try to catch the water balloons as they come whizzing through the air. By the time they run out of balloons, they're all covered with welts and bruises. So yeah, we're all a bit warped as well as altruistic. After a few ears of grill roasted corn and some hugs from a couple of awesome aunts, the girls and I headed home. I think this was our busiest weekend of the summer and it's all downhill from here. I don't even want to think about frost and cold, but, since this is Wisconsin, things will be getting downright chilly here in the next month or so. I miss summer already and it's not even over yet.

And just when I think it's over

The crazy continues. Saturday afternoon, the car broke. Literally broke. It was an old car, older than all my kids, and it was definitely showing its age, but when it decided to give up the ghost, it made its plans totally clear. Angel #2 was driving down the road, thankfully through town, so she was going slow, when the steering went out. The car started pulling to the left and she steered to the right and the steering wheel just spun, like a kiddie car in the carnival. She crossed a lane of traffic, thankfully there were no oncoming cars, and came to a stop at the side of the road facing the wrong direction. One of the first cars that went past her was a cop, so she flagged him down for help, since the rear of the car was sticking out into traffic, and he directed traffic until the tow truck came to take our old faithful car away. The tow truck driver took one look at it and said it couldn't be saved, the entire sub-frame broke off, which apparently, is something that helps hold the car together. So the car headed off to the junk and Sunday, we scrambled to find a cheap vehicle fast. Our only remaining vehicle was our pickup truck, which only holds 3 people and is stick, which Angel #2 isn't very proficient at. Fortunately, we've got wonderful friends and by Sunday afternoon, we were driving home with a 1996 Taurus. It's not perfect, but it's much better than what we had, besides, the a/c works, which it didn't in the old car, so we're coming out ahead. Considering we paid $600 for our old car and it lasted us a year, we came out ahead all over the place. Hopefully, this new one will hang on for a long while as well.