A day at the fair

The state fair is on through Labor Day. A friend of mine who is also a transplanted Midwesterner and I usually make it there to get in touch with our farm roots (even though neither of lived on a farm). She was unavailable for Little S’ inaugural trip to the fair. And what an adventure she missed!

We met Annabelle the cow

 

Got to sit on a sheep

And develop an obsession with sheep the rest of the day.

She dreamt of bacon

 

And got to meet a horse that was her size, which will make my grandparents happy!

 

She got an up close look at a chicken

And was fairly overwhelmed in the poultry barn by her favorite animals “bee-bee’s” (birdies). All a squawking loudly. The bunny rabbits that were there didn’t seem to mind it all, and she was delighted to see them as well.

The fair has a relatively new sports pavilion where Little S showed off her rock climbing skills 

Before you start calling potential sponsors, here’s the scale of that boulder she was summiting

A girl’s gotta start somewhere, right?

She still has a ways to go until she learns all of the rules of soccer

No hands, unless she’s trying to tell us she wants to be a goalie.

After her sports break, we got back to more typical fair activities. She was enthralled with team calf roping at the Junior Rodeo.

Momma couldn’t be more proud of her little cowgirl! We wanted to see how much Little S had learned by watching, so we gave her a saddle and some rope:

Turns out she’s not quite ready to turn pro yet.

That’s okay, she knows there’s more to farming than riding and roping. Like plowing the fields

I can’t imagine a cuter farm girl on her pink tractor.

Even though I didn’t grow up on a farm, we were surrounded by farmland, had classmates in FFA (yes, it’s still around) and my grandparents lived on a farm, so we were regularly exposed to animals, hay and manure shovels to use as sleds. I want Little S to know what farms are all about, so we will definitely make it a point to see that she gets to spend time with any kind of farm experience she can. If only I could talk Big S into a backyard sheep….

more videos

Making up for the long blogging break with some videos.

I told you she liked her bike. Here’s some biking and kitty happiness.

She CAN walk, she just chooses not to.

And a still from our night of 1000 babies! The hostel in NW Portland has music, brats and beer and our friends invited us. So, we went up there for a spell. Several friends and their babies were there. We got to meet 6 month old G and see his Mom whom I hadn’t seen since I worked with her years ago, before she went to work in India for several years.

He was fascinated with Little S, she just wanted to climb the stairs.

Summer sunflower waiting to unfurl

Sofia looking for birds

As August winds down, we still have many adventures in store! Although every day with Little S is an exciting adventure.

So, where were we….

In addition to the non-stop fun and cavalcade of relatives, the computer hard drive crashed, again. Computer tech on the side Mommy diagnosed it and replaced it. Dad is almost officially banned from touching the computer. He’s got some bad laptop juju. He’s going to have to get his own if he keeps breaking this one.

That notwithstanding…

We’ve had an exciting couple of weeks. We went down to Sun River for a cousin reunion of sorts. It was my uncle’s 75th birthday. I’m very fortunate that a few years ago they settled on Sun River as a great place to spend a week in the summer, and their children, my cousins head out there too. Otherwise, I would never see them, and certainly not keep in touch with them, except maybe the occasional Facebook status update or wall posting.

For this momentous birthday, my cousin who is an editor on a very successful reality show or two, spent the last year travelling around and contacting her father’s family, friends and co-workers, shooting footage of them sharing memories about her father. She spent nearly 1000 hours, over the past 3-4 months to whittle it all down into a 45 minute amazing video of his life story; the world premiere of which was in Sun River! To top it off, my sister was the chef for the weekend, cooking fabulous meals for everyone every night, including salmon that was better than restaurant quality.

The house the family was staying at was near a great park. Little S and I wandered down there a couple of days. The first day, she crawls up the landings to the arch and proceeds to climb the darn thing without any fear!

Climbing over my head, until she got to the point where she had to crawl down the other side, and that didn’t quite compute.

She crawled all the way up to the big slide and went down it like a 4 year old. It was tall and fast, but that didn’t bother her.

She also started something new over the weekend down there. Perhaps inspired by 6 year old cousin once-removed (or something like that), she chose that weekend to start standing by herself.

As if that weren’t enough, since she was summarily dismissed from the premier of the movie for not turning off her cell phone, or something like that, she decided she would prove she didn’t need us anyway and took her first unaided steps for Dad!

Of course none of this was captured on the camera, other than the cell phone camera, so, you’ll just have to take our word for it for now.

We got back from our getaway and the next morning Nana and Bim (Grandma and Grandpa) were here for a few days visit. She showed off how big she’s getting with the assisted walking down stairs maneuver

And, she’s developed a complete OBSESSION with her bike!  Once we discovered how fearless she was, she now has to wear her helmet when she rides it, which means much of the day is spent pointing to the closet door where her helmet is and signing the word for “hat”. And signing and saying bike. (which sounds like Bee)

 

She will ride that thing down small hills and pick up her feet to go faster. She will cross the street (with us as crossing guards) and ride down a whole block and back. Unfortunately, she discovered that it’s really fun to push it up a hill and then pick up her feet to roll back fast. At least she likes her helmet!

The neighbors have a little bit older kids and told us we could borrow their bike, which just sits there most of the time. Turns out, that wasn’t such a great idea.

 

Because she is in LOVE with it. She doesn’t have to do anything but steer while Mom or Dad pushes on the (broken) handle on the back (that makes us have to bend over the whole time). But, she can go much faster! So today, she ditched her bike, crawled up the driveway and told dad she wanted to ride that bike. He obliged, and now she wants nothing to do with her bike outside. She’ll still use it inside to do zooming laps around the living room, but she has MOVED ON outside. She can’t touch the pedals, so she doesn’t get any exercise with it, but it’s still her preferred mode of transport now.

There’s some great video of all of this. I’ll work on getting that up for the next installment of the Lorpi files!

(maybe this will work…)

We now pause summer for a brief blog break

It’s just been a non-stop ferris wheel o’fun here in Lorpi land. No time to stop for blogging.

So, eventually it stopped being so darn hot. And has done a complete 360 to being rainy and low 70’s here. A welcome respite from all the watering I’ve had to do this summer.

Aunt Aimee came to town for a nice long visit.

She watched Little S while Mom went away for three days/two nights of camping and music at the Gorge Amphitheatre in George, Washington. (no really, that’s the name of the town).

Mommy was very happy to get to go and see her all time favorite band, Phish. Thanks to a great co-worker, I went with a group of about 25 people for a great weekend.

We had a great camp for everyone to get some shade during the day, eat communal meals together, meet new friends, and have a little home away from home.

This was among 10,000 or so of our closest friends ALSO camped there

But none of that mattered once the music started at arguably one of the most beautiful places in the world to see a concert

So, after that exhausting weekend, Mommy’s got a little cold, but Aunt Aimee is still here to baby entertain. Next stop, more relatives, then more relatives. First, we have to survive what seems to be some horrendous teething pains. Teething baby + sick Mommy= Thankgoodnessforauntaimeehowsooncanyoumovehere.

*photo credits of venue to K8 A. & Girl Jamie

Portland, Arizona

Yep. It’s been hot.

 

And hot some more.

Most of the week over 100 degrees, 105 and 106 paid us a visit. So, it’s been a good week to stay in the A/C.

Little S entertained herself like a regular teenager

When Big S told her to hang up the phone and clean her room, I think he got the eyeroll

 

She’s not walking yet, but she’s climbing anything and everything.  

I guess that’s her way of telling us it’s dinner time.

We’re not only supposed to get back to some real weather, but there’s a lot of exciting family events coming up in the next three weeks. It should be more inspiring photography and blog-worthy.