Joy Rides a Bike

Summer is underway, and so is Joy:

Joy on a two-wheel bike with training wheels

She can go all the way up and down the long flat block you see here, with minimal assistance.  She was SO ready for a training-wheels bike -- and I'm glad, because it turns out that the 20-inch bike that fits her size is as large as the standard-size training wheels go.

Joy fought the helmet at first, and I was afraid we were going to have to spend half the summer doing a long, slow process of getting accustomed to the helmet (first we'll wear it for a count of five, then move on to a count of ten, etc.)  But the very first time we did helmet-practice on the couch with a little reward attached -- "first helmet, then candy" -- she blew past the count and wore it for several minutes with little protest.  So we took our little rewards to the street, and off she went.

Yes, I think summer is off to a pretty good start for Joy.

Eight Years Old

Happy birthday, dear Joy!

We just got back yesterday afternoon from our annual Memorial Day trip "up north" to the family cabins, a trip that regularly coincides with Joy's birthday.  I've just changed the "Introducing Joy" sidebar to reflect her new age.  Eight.  Hardly seems possible -- eight years old!

We celebrated with balloons and bubbles and little cupcakes in the cabin.  We'll have further celebrations at home, and shopping for a big-girl birthday bike as soon as we get our post-holiday act together to do so.

As Memorial Day trips go, this one was relatively uneventful, especially considering our track record of muddy departures and explosive avian visitations.  (Well, JoyDad did have to do some work on breaking out a beaver dam that was flooding the road.  But we'd had warning so that was expected.)

Our party was smaller than usual, just the four of us and GrampaK.  The weather was pleasant for the end of May, mostly cool with a couple of rainy bits but at least one warm-enough-to-swim afternoon.  We did our traditional walks in the woods:

and spent a lot of time on the screen porch watching the hummingbirds come to the feeder:

(When I posted this one on Facebook, I captioned it: "Secret for a long-lived relationship -- always respect your partner's side of the hummingbird feeder.")

You can tell that your daughter is growing up when she wants to drive the boat!

Not to worry, folks, it's safely docked.

One of the basic experiences of life up at the lake is the lack of running water.  We bring drinking water along, but wash water for the dishes and floor and ourselves comes from an old-fashioned pump just a little ways away from the cabin.  This weekend I had a startling realization -- though we'd been bringing Joy up to the cabin at least once a summer for her whole life, and sometimes more often than that... we'd never taken her down that short path to "help" pump water.  It's been part of Rose's experience since not long after she could walk.  But with Joy, early on I suppose it felt like too much of a hassle, and then later we just sort of had our fixed routines and always expected to come back from the pump with a full bucket in each hand, and no hand left to hang on to Joy lest she make a dash for the lake.

This vacation I finally realized what had been happening.  And Joy and I went to have fun with the pump.

So easy, to get into these ruts and hold our kiddos back.  We've got to do better than that.

We will not have another trip to the lake without a trip to the pump for Joy -- which she enjoyed to the hilt, my sweet water-loving child.  We've got to keep examining, and listening, and doing better.

Happy birthday, my sweet eight-year-old!

Global Warming?

May 2, 2004 

Rose, pre-Joy

May 2, 2012 

Rose and Joy

Accommodation

I had the occasion to go through some old e-mail earlier this summer, from around the time of Joy's autism diagnosis at the end of 2006. The diagnosis was not what we'd been expecting, though we'd visited a developmentalist who is a recognized autism expert. The post-diagnosis e-mail conversations with daycare & birth-to-three providers reminded me of one of the painful eye-openers from the evaluation appointment. Since (as my regular readers know) I like to look on the bright side, I was wanting to make sure the doctor saw what Joy could do if we gave her just a little help. But for evaluation purposes, the doctor needed to see everything that Joy could not do when all our little helpfulnesses were taken away. So we had to back off, and take a good hard look at what happened when Joy was on her own in unfamiliar territory with an unfamiliar doc being asked to do unfamiliar things with no intercession from us. It wasn't an easy thing to witness.

We'd been accommodating like crazy, without quite realizing the extent of it.

And guess what? We still accommodate like crazy, probably on auto-pilot too often still, though I like to think that we have a better framework for evaluating what's getting in the way. Accommodation is a balance, with immense positives for doing it right, and negatives (as with just about anything) for going overboard.

Of course, with any kid, you can't always be doing everything for them or they'll never learn to do things by themselves. Joy's no exception. But with Joy, and with autism in the picture, we have to figure out what we do need to do for her, and how to arrange her surroundings and our schedules, just to make things even possible.

Our backyard setup is one example that's been on my mind lately. Back at the beginning of this blog, we enclosed our large backyard in a lovely tall wooden fence, so Joy couldn't dash away into danger outside our yard. Immediately our stress level during outside play went down! We no longer had to hover on high alert lest Joy should suddenly dash and we'd need to spring into full dash ourselves to keep up & catch up.

This summer, unfortunately, there's been some stressful dashing within the yard, with Joy determined to acquire and CONSUME things she really shouldn't. One example has been our huge old 30-foot apple tree, which loads up with apples every other year. This was the year! and, not only does it load up, it drops them on the ground. And Joy has an insatiable desire to eat these luscious windfalls, no matter how full of rot and worms and ants they may get after sitting on the ground for a while. So I've spent hours collecting rotten windfalls and carting them to the compost pile at the back of the yard, often trying to get out in the early morning to take care of the overnight mess before Joy gets out of bed -- because once I'm on my own with her and we're in the yard, I can't move fast enough to clean up one apple before she gets the next one. Fortunately, apple season does eventually come to an end. We keep thinking the tree has dropped its LAST apple. Maybe the one-more it dropped yesterday will be it?

Then there's been a little stand of ferns and other shade-plants that grows up under the cherry trees in the middle of the back yard, that we affectionately call "the jungle." The little fronds on the ferns have been irresistable to Joy as well. She hovers by the plants (a mosquito-haven with all that greenery and shade), fondles and picks the fronds, carries them around -- and then, quicker than lightning, into the mouth they go. Bleah! We found ourselves having to cut yard-play short because Joy would get so fixated on picking and eating the ferns. Eventually Rose and I went the full-accommodation route. We cut down the jungle on Friday evening. Though it no longer provides a haven for the wild bunnies that Joy loves to chase around the yard, at least the fern issue is gone. Joy lost interest immediately, hurrah!

Should we have tried to teach her just to stay away from the apples and the ferns? Maybe. But what was happening instead was that the yard was becoming a non-livable place -- which, now that we've started having some gloriously comfortable weather, would be a crying shame.

It would also be too bad not to get full use out of this:

Three cheers to JoyDad for making this delightful belated-birthday present happen! Neither he nor I have a particular bent toward construction projects, so it's a step out of the comfort zone to do something like this. But we've got neighborhood friends who did this project in their own yard a few years ago, and the dad volunteered both his experience and his powertools to set up a temporary woodshop in our garage. JoyDad acquired the swingset kit and the lumber, and with two other helpers (one from his band, one from church) they got the swingset knocked together all of a Saturday morning. Then we re-assembled that evening for a barbecue & kiddie pool and swingset play.

Joy wasn't in a mood to come out and swing and reward the laborers for their work the minute it was done. But we've had hours of swinging since then -- and it has become much easier without the temptations to go dashing off for a snack of apple or fern between swingings.

This hasn't been an easy summer, on the whole. It's the first year we've had the situation that both kids have been in school, so both kids need new summer care -- previous years, Joy had year-round daycare and we sent Rose to summer day-camp-care. But day-camp-care that works for Rose won't work for Joy... so we went the sitter route. Two days of sitter, two and a half days of JoyMama, half a day of JoyDad per week. Quite a lot more direct Joy-care than we had during the school year! On top of that, we've been doing a home-based therapy schedule where we've had two-hour sessions 4 nights a week, plus one on Saturday morning. But then our provider changed policies, such that they'd no longer offer in-home services to families like ours... existing home-based line therapists were grandfathered in, but they wouldn't train anyone else to work at home. So the one line therapists who did 3 nights with us moved out of town mid-summer, and the clinic doesn't do evening hours in the summer, so that's three more evenings we're on-duty now. Then our remaining therapist gave notice, and we'll have to start with someone new in clinic when the school year starts.

I'm apprehensive about the upcoming school year. Long-time readers may remember the traumatic transition into kindergarten last year. The one saving-grace anchor was the familiar evening therapy routine that Joy could come home to... an anchor that has now been cut loose. We know that she'll have a different case manager at school, new teacher of course, and we don't yet know if she'll have ANY familiar staff, though we're hoping. We're getting a lot less prep-meeting time than we got last year too.

And we've had some rough behaviors ramping up as the summer wanes, probably due in some part to the fact that it's SO MUCH me & JoyDad on duty lately. We're feeling stretched thin, holding things together with duct-tape-and-string. (I can hardly imagine what it would be to have only one parent to do it all, for whatever reason.)

So we continue to accommodate what we can, hoping we can find a better balance once we get through whatever transition issues will be upon us with the start of September. I might even be able to blog more often, but the ongoing activity on the blog will have to be part of what I consider as the balance becomes (hopefully) less duct-tape-and-string and more deliberate.

Think good thoughts for us and Joy!

Summer Activities (and, Budgets are Moral Documents)

Now that school's out, I'm getting to spend a lot more time with my girls!

Yesterday started with a taunt left on our deck railing, from one of the squirrels who've been raiding our strawberry patch:

Our top two morning activities were puddle-stomping and Capitol-visiting.

It was a sunny day, making for some excellent reflections.

Then after we got cleaned up from that little escapade, we headed down to the Capitol, where the Senatorial rubber-stamp was about to be put on the devastating Wisconsin budget, all-cuts-all-the-time (major tax cuts for corporations, major cuts to schools and health care and middle-and-lower-income families, zero shared-sacrifice for those at the top of the heap.)

The Capitol was fairly quiet at mid-morning, other than a signficantly beefed-up police presence. We got one kindly officer to take our picture beside Wisconsin's replica of the Liberty Bell. Here's the plaque that sits next to it:

The top line reads, "Dedicated to you, a free citizen in a free land." Oh, the irony, after having had to go through a security gauntlet to get into the Capitol, designed solely to squelch protest (they'll be removing the metal detectors soon, within days of the budget taking effect.)

We felt the "freedom" gut-punch once more as we attempted to visit our Senator's office. We walked past Senator Risser's office door by accident a couple of times, because the 3-officer law-enforcement presence obscured our view of the names on the door. (Risser's office shares a front door with Senator Leah Vukmir, from across the aisle). When we finally figured out that this was where we wanted to be, and asked the lawmen if we could please enter, they asked us if we had an appointment. Well, no, we didn't -- we're used to dropping in unannounced for visits with the staff, that's how things operate in Senator Risser's office! No ma'am, we're not supposed to let you in without an appointment.

I'm glad I'm a known quantity in my state senator's office, for I was able to send in my card with one of the officers, and then the doors swung wide. After our visit, one of the Risser staffers came out to speak to Senator Vukmir's palace guard the lawmen, and let them know that Senator Risser's office wants to speak with any constituent who shows up, appointment or no!

Next we took the elevator up, to wander around the observation deck at the base of the dome, and look out over the city and lakes from all angles.

And then we went down to the Square again, and left some messages for anyone who wanted to read them, until the next rain washes them away.

Budgets are moral documents. And the budget that passed in Wisconsin last night badly, badly fails that standard.

(Funny how sidewalk chalk is cute when it's a hopscotch frame or child's artwork, and VANDALISM! if it's got certain political content.)

The Mosquito Days of Summer

I think we're in what might colloquially be called the "dog days" of summer. It's been an unusually warm week, with unusual humidity, an energy-sapping combination. And then to add injury to lethargy, along came swarms of mosquitoes. I'm surprised that the wretched level of mosquito-ness didn't arrive earlier in the summer, as wet as it's been around here. But we suddenly hit plague level about a week and a half ago, where even a solid soaking in repellent didn't keep the critters at bay for me.

When I go out to the garden to harvest (beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers!) I put on lots of hot clothing -- jeans, long sleeves, a hat. In this weather! but that's the only thing that helps the Deet enough to keep me from being sucked dry.

Fortunately Joy isn't quite so susceptible, and doesn't get bit much if she's got on a good coat of Off. It's more important for her, though, because she doesn't have the self-control to keep herself from scratching the bites. So if she gets bit on the legs, that translates to open sores, and then she has to wear long pants to keep herself from further injury. In this weather!

One thing that's been very nice in this weather, and that's been swimming at the public pool. Last summer the weather just did not cooperate, plus it was a challenge to keep tabs on Rose while keeping a constant eye on Joy. We only made it to the pool a couple of times all summer. This time around, we've been to the pool three times since last report!

The most recent pool run was this evening, just me and the girls. A warm humid day, but the pool felt wonderful, and the mosquitoes apparently don't venture that far out over chlorine or something. Rose has gotten so self-sufficient, now that she's gotten so much better at swimming and is willing to do the slide on her own. This evening she ran into a friend from last year's after-school program, and they had a happy time together.

Meanwhile, Joy was building on her breath-holding skills. Last time I reported that she was voluntarily submerging and popping back up. This time she was going under for 2-3 seconds at a shot, and was propelling herself down to touch the red line on the bottom of the pool that marked the 3ft depth. Swimming! and experimenting! She also made some forays where she tried to sit down on the line rather than put a hand on it.

I still have to watch her like a hawk, because I want to be aware when she goes under. Also have to try to catch her if she's going to fill a swim-diaper...

No quarter yet, by the way. But the laxative is working -- got to look for that coin four times today. And I did find a pink sequin as a consolation prize.

All Wet

What a wonderful weekend for getting into the water!

On Saturday evening we took the whole family to the public pool. It's lovely to be able to go one-on-one with the girls as they get more adventuresome. Rose has been taking swimming lessons during summer day-camp, and can now tread water a little bit and do a splashy crawl for a few yards. She's also stretching out taller and taller, to the point where she can stand up easily in the water at the base of the lovely long waterslides. I've been trying to persuade her to go down the waterslide for the past couple of years -- but they won't let you wear your goggles, and they won't let you go down tandem, and these have always been her excuse. Finally on Saturday I convinced her to go down one slide while I went down the other. Guess what she did over and over again, all on her own, for the rest of the evening, and was terribly disappointed to quit when it was time to go?!

Joy, meanwhile, was making new discoveries too. She was experimenting with going underwater (all in the 2-3 foot zone of the pool, not to worry!) She was teaching herself to hold her breath, either popping right back up or submarining forward underwater for a bit. No coughing and choking at all. It was wonderful to see.

Since Rose was so busy with the waterslide, I didn't get any two-girls-jumping-in photos like we did last year. Joy didn't mind the lack of company, though. She jumped quite happily on her own. And the new twist this time was that she didn't always really need someone to catch her! She needed someone to jump towards, but there were several jumps where she went in and under and then stood up all on her own, without JoyDad having to touch her at all.


On Sunday we stayed in the back yard for our pool play, with a new larger inflatable pool and a big blue bucket. Joy loves the bucket in particular. This move I call "the ostrich":


She was probably drinking the water. Oh did she drink the water, both at the public pool and at home. I don't know how she could hold that much -- her subsequent diapers certainly couldn't....

Rose invented a new game to distract her sister from consuming the water (perhaps we could call it a non-drinking game?) This one involved big buckets of dump and splash! I hasten to add that Joy doesn't mind being deluged. It makes hairwashing in the tub much easier than it otherwise would be.


At least Rose has a sense of fair play and equal opportunity deluge:


I can't believe that it's August already.

A Walk in the Park

Back before the summer started, as I was finishing up my LEND semester, I was looking forward to the more relaxed schedule. I'd have more time one-on-one with Joy again, with Rose at summer day-camp full time and my work schedule back down to half-time.

It didn't exactly work out that way. Just after my LEND graduation, I got offered a quarter-time summer gig through my LEND contacts, working on a guide to services and supports in Wisconsin for families of children with special health care needs. I couldn't pass up the opportunity, and it's been a fine experience so far. But it did eat right back up that extra time that was going to make this summer so much more relaxed.

Fortunately, it didn't eat up all the time. And with the summer weather being reasonably kind to us so far, Joy and I have been making some fun one-on-one excursions. To the local lake-front beach. To a kiddie splash-pad fountain setup at a local park. To our free local zoo. And yesterday, to the lovely conservation park right across from the elementary school that Joy will attend in oh-my-goodness-just-about-a-month.

We had perfect weather for our outing yesterday, sunny and warm with a light breeze. The prairie flowers are simply stunning this time of year.


Occasionally I had to encourage Joy to keep walking over the rocky sections of the path (rather than dropping to stim in the gravel and rub it onto her legs.) But mostly she kept going.


And once we got to paths of mown grass, it got even easier.


The long grass at the side of the path holds its own attractions, besides giving definition to the path to keep us from straying far.


There was a park bench under this oak tree that kept us circling back to this part of the path. We sat on it, stuffed grass strands through the slats, jumped down from it, used it as a changing table! (Didn't see another soul the entire hour we were out, other than one jogger just as we were returning to the parking lot.)



What a beautiful day.

Random Tuesday Thoughts

On toilet-training:
You can lead a girl to potty, but you cannot make her tinkle. (sigh)

On gardening:
Beans, beans, good for your heart! We got green beans. We got dragon tongue beans. I need to process some beans tonight for freezing.

On growth:
Joy can now reach the mantel in the living room. We used to put things up there to be out of her reach. Must create new strategies.

More on growth:
Rose started soccer practice last night for the upcoming season. When we tried on her cleats (which she was able to wear through the end of the season in May), it was like the stepsisters trying on the glass slipper. We went up two and a half sizes to get her comfy with room to grow for the fall.

Still more on growth:
When it rains a lot (and it has), the weeds in the garden go crazy! But at least it's easier to pull weeds from damp soil than from hard-baked soil.

On peek-a-boo:
Joy has created a delightful new twist on an old game. When you put a blanket up to your face for peek, she doesn't yank it down -- she lifts the other side and burrows under to join you. And then says "peek"!

On switch-flipping:
Guess what has faded back into Joy's communication repertoire. Self-biting (and to some extent, chomping others). She's doing some swatting & hair-grabbing too, and not excluding her daycare buddies. Just in time for kindergarten. Would like this to fade back the other way very quickly.

On school administration:
A new principal has been hired for Joy & Rose's elementary school. Must get him introduced to Joy. I hope he's easy to work with. Joy needs allies, especially if we're in a mode where she tips easily into intense protest...

On summer:
How did it get half over already?!

Northwoods Adventures

As the holiday weekend approached and we watched the weather forecast for our northwoods getaway, we feared an adventure full of sweltering heat and vicious bugs. Several years ago JoyDad and Rose had suffered through such a Memorial Day sweatbox at the lake, barely able to step out of the overheated cabins without being carried off by mosquitoes and biting flies. (Other years, we've had snow at the end of May. You just never know.)

This year couldn't have been more beautiful. The sun shone hot at mid-day, but the air was dry and didn't hold the heat at night. In fact, everything was dry. The lake was low. But the drought meant that the bugs were at an all-time minimum for spring. It felt like mid-summer.

The dry roads meant we could go driving on paths that are usually too muddy or flooded -- and as we were out driving, we saw a black bear! He lumbered along ahead of us for quite a ways along the road before crashing his way into the forest. Fortunately we were several miles from the cabins at that point. Right next to the cabins all we saw were hummingbirds, eagles, woodpeckers, loons, ducks, and a little red squirrel!

Oh, and the two little crawdads I caught by hand as we cavorted in the shallows right off the pier. And the leech I brushed off my foot. Rose was wary of the muck and rocks in the lake, but Joy could have played all day. She splashed and splashed...


... and climbed the pier and jumped back in, over and over.


She also figured out how to "swim" by walking on her hands in the shallow water, pulling her body along behind.

All that exercise could work up quite a thirst. One meal Joy was sitting next to me and reached over toward my share with a big "more"! The most likely desirables were the beverages -- a tumbler of milk and a bottle of beer. I poured her a little glass of milk, but she's been on an anti-milk kick lately and pushed it away after one sip. The comment came from across the table -- "Hey, maybe she wants your beer!" And from Joy, the explosive echo: "BEE!"

One of the great pleasures of the lake vacation is the photography. Rose now uses the old digital camera we got back when she was six months old:


She's learning to identify wildflowers as well as capture them in pixels. Here's a pink ladyslipper:


And I found and photographed a nodding trillium:


Ah, but I haven't yet shared the biggest adventure of all. Splashing by the shore was fun, but the real action involved the pontoon boat (thank you Uncle Marathon, and Uncle DO who couldn't be there this time!)


Take the boat out on the lake, anchor in about 20 feet of water, tighten up the girls' life-vests, and throw 'em overboard! OK, not really. We threatened to do it to Rose, but she shrieked and insisted on climbing gently down the ladder. Joy wouldn't have minded -- any way into the water was fine. Uncle Marathon was eager to take the plunge as well...



One one such swimming excursion, we were anchored a ways out in front of the cabin, about half-way between the pier and the eagle's nest. GrampaK had stayed behind at the cabin to take it easy. We were glad that he was in good enough health to come to the lake in the first place, but swimming wasn't part of that package. So the rest of us were out with the boat, just getting started, when suddenly GrampaK's voice came rolling out over the water, calling Uncle Marathon by name. And then these words, urgent and chilling:

Come. Home. Come home now!

And then silence.

[to be continued]

Welcome Summer

Some snippets of warm weather delight, to entertain you while we're on vacation! Joy is so pleased with our little inflatable whale pool this year, even the little sprinkler-spout on the front -- which she didn't like at all last summer. Not that we had many swimmy-days in 2009, anyway. This summer is starting much warmer, much earlier...

Apple Picking

It was a cool summer, with the chilliest July on record according to this morning's paper! But now that fall is imminent, we've had a long string of dry sunny days with highs in the upper 70s and mid 80s.

Perfect for an apple-picking trip this past weekend! As if we didn't have apples coming out our ears from our own trees earlier this summer. But there's something special about an apple orchard, at a gorgeous farm where they even have an old-fashioned tire-swing for the kiddies...


Look at that sky.


It's good to get out and about as a family!



P.S. My better half is celebrating his umpty-umpth birthday today. Happy birthday, dear JoyDad!

Scenes from the County Fair

Nothing says "summer" like the county fair! (Even if the temperature is in the 60s and you have to wear sweatshirts.)

When we told Joy's Saturday-afternoon barista that we were going to the fair that evening, she wondered how we'd do it. Do you use Joy's monkey-backback? she asked? Nope, we just do a whole lot of firm hand-holding.

If I'm remembering right, we've taken Joy to the fair every year of her life. First time out, she was 2 months old and napped through it all in a Baby Bjorn carrier! Then she was in stroller, then on her own feet -- with her hand in a firm, firm grasp.

Joy really did great this year. We decided to make something of a game of trying not to break the bank at this year's fair, which meant that the over-priced creaky midway rides that we can never predict which girl (if either) will enjoy -- were out. Instead we started with a lumberjack show. Except it was lumberJILLs, lean tall powerful women throwing axes and chopping and sawing and log-rolling. And wielding immense chainsaws that were deliberately hugely-loud. Our young sensory-sensitive lass had a rather rough time of it. Yes, that would be our "neurotypical" Rose, who spent most of the show with her fingers in her ears. She objected to the chainsaws, and the loud announcer, and the cheering crowd. But fortunately she stuck with us, and ended up very much enjoying the log-rolling competition, especially when the women did a little kick-splash maneuver to distract their competitor with a spray of water!

Joy, meanwhile, was pretty calm about being corralled for the show. We got off to a less-than-ideal start when I was sitting her on my lap, and then suddenly felt something warm and wet on my jeans. Those darn MA generic diapers! But Joy was wearing pants that didn't show the spot, and I decided to be bad-mama and just let us both air-dry. Later in the show, she became fascinated with the long dyed-red tresses of a generously-proportioned woman sitting in front of us. I was not quick enough to keep her from reaching out and exploring a handful of hair, but fortunately she didn't pull, and the woman was sweet and took it as flattery. In fact, she turned around several times in the following minutes to twinkle and flirt with Joy, who responded with smiles and giggles.

After the show, we headed into an exhibition hall where there was a big bouncy-house obstacle course freebie for the kiddies. Rose tackled it with abandon, rope-climbing and all:


Joy was less convinced.


She was willing to go into the initial tunnel, and Rose helped her get past the first obstacle. But then she declined to go further, and we eventually had to commission Rose to help her back out. I think if it hadn't been for the crush of other kids, and if we could have gone in to coax her along, she'd have conquered it.

Next was a petting-zoo area for baby farm animals:


We had to help Joy with the petting, and work hard to keep her from chowing on the wood-shavings (ew.) Rose enjoyed the baby animals a lot, though.

Then we all went back outside to shiver over and share a massive four-dollar serving of cookies-n-cream ice cream, and then the traditional big splurge: the pony ride!


Those poor sad little ponies, circling under their little tent! But the girls were so happy to get their rides, and we didn't have to wait in line at all. In fact, we were the only ones in the circle for our turn, a pleasant chance.

Then it was off to see some of the competition animals, bunnies and cattle. For some reason Joy kept wanting to do a kick-boxing maneuver and get her foot up to the level of the bunny-cages, so we didn't take her down all the aisles that Rose went down! It was a sign that the evening was drawing to a close.

I wonder how next year's fair will be. It's a new adventure every time.