State Fair

I love days off.  And three days off with mi esposo (that's spanish for, "my husband"...I've been working on learning that a lot more seriously lately...so I'll basically be Mexican when we move home), has been a very good time.  Today was probably the best day.  It started out bright and early with a 2-hr drive to Minot, ND.  Well, first it started out with this beautiful sunrise during a beautiful morning run! 

Then the drive to Minot.  We had an eye appointment for Tanner since he hasn't had one for over a decade.  He hates the eye doctor more than I hate dentists...and if you know either of us...that's saying a lot.  It all stems from him having to wear glasses since he was two years old, and having to get the worst eye drops ever. They have to dilate your eyes and apparently it stings.  His mom says they used to have to hold him down and it was usually quite the scene to get the Dr. to get the drops in.  Thankfully he has grown up a little bit the last 30 years. That all went well and Tanner was very pleased with the positive feedback from the doc.  He did end up getting some pretty sweet, sexy glasses that I'm rather excited for him to have.

Minot has a few significant things that Williston doesn't.  One - good restaurants.  We ate lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings, one of Tanner's favorites.  Becoming one of mine as well - they have a fantastic black bean burger.  And number two - decent stores.  We spent a fair amount of time perusing a glorious Barnes and Noble.  It was awesome.  And then....drum roll please...THE STATE FAIR!!! Woohoo!  So this fair started on Friday and goes till next Saturday.  We have been hearing people talk about for a week about how great it is and how huge it is and on and on.  So Tanner and I were expecting at least the size of the Utah State Fair if not bigger.  Boy oh boy were we sadly disappointed.  It was tiny.  Well, maybe not tiny but no where near the size of the Utah one.  They had a piddly supply of animals, a little petting zoo, a handful of serious farm equipment and a few buildings with vendors and stuff.  But there wasn't anything REALLY cool.  Plenty of food and carnival rides and games and such, but it was kind of a bust.  We made the most of it and had a good time, though.

This was one of Tanner's favorite...and the only good people watching caught on camera.  There was plenty more, though!

Some huge cow from Africa or something.  They had a water buffalo too, which I enjoyed :)

They had this cool little fishing and hunting place and we tried forever to get our little bobber thing into those fish's mouths.  Tanner won, not surprisingly.  My first shot went into the trees...if that tells you anything.  We also got to shoot some bow and arrows which was pretty fun. 

They don't mess around with their enormous farm equipment here!

In other exciting news, we have a new member of our family.  Simon, a 21 year old boy from Washington, D.C. area who has been attending BYU Idaho rolled into town Sunday morning, was at church, needed a place to stay, and Tanner said he could :)  We'd been talking about renting one of our rooms out to someone for awhile, it just hadn't ever happened, so we were both for the idea when the opportunity presented itself.  So now our previously somewhat packed storage room is a SEVERELY packed and minorly inaccessible storage room.  Oh well...it will hopefully help him out.  Since T and I both have the gypsie/vagabond gene, we thought it would be nice to try and offer a roof over someones head while they got situated in this not so glorious town.  Our quaint little singlewide sure beats sleeping in his Honda. Tanner would definitely know seems how he lived in his little brothers VW Bus while in college and then his Hyundai Elantra for his first 3 weeks while living in Jackson Hole.  Truth be told, it's not really all that inconvenient and he seems nice enough.  Nothing is missing from the place yet :)

And to close...a little lovin' on our funny dogs.  They were cooped up all day while we were gone so right after we got home we took them to the park to play fetch.  First of all - Rozzi does NOT jump into the back of the car, she puts her front paws on the bumper, then waits for one of us to put our arms under her and lift her back legs up. She's a little high maintenance.  Tanner weighed her yesterday and she's just about 90lbs even - so picking her up and throwing her in the back of our cars is not doing our backs any favors.  One time a few months ago I opened the back of my car and she hopped right in - no coaxing whatsoever.  Has not even come close to doing it since.  Very annoying.  Well today, we tried, as always, to motivate her to jump in.  Nope.  Then Tanner opened the back seat door and stuck his head in and called to her and she hopped right in.  What the heck!?!?  So funny and crazy.  Whatever works.  So we drove to the park and played some fetch.  Samson LOVES fetch.  He'd play it 24/7 non stop if his 3 little legs would let him.  Rozzi just likes to pester him while he's going after it.  And by pester I mean bite his front leg, jump on him, plow into him, bite his head, etc etc.  Sometimes she'll beat him to the ball and bring it back part way, and sometimes she makes it all the way back to us.  Most of the time she just drops it half way and once it's out of her mouth it's the furthest thing from her mind. (we're really thinking she suffers from a serious bout of A.D.D.)  That's when Samson jumps in and grabs it.  Today she was doing that and she'd drop it and accidentally kick it forward a little bit and run after it like a goof and then Samson did this new between her back legs trick and grabbed it out from under her belly.  Probably is a lot more funny if you saw it but man these dogs are entertaining and bring all manner of joy and happiness and laughter to our lives :)  We love these guys!  (And on the way home, she wouldn't jump in back until Tanner did his little trick.  What a spaz!)