Country Fairs and Woodstock for Jesus!!!!!!

Nothing shouts summer in the country more than country fairs.......We pretty much spent the entire weekend having a blast at our local Old Home Days fair where the kids showed their chickens and entered good old fashion contests like pie eating, floral arranging and photography/crafts competitions. There were tractor pulls, horse shows and cow chip bingo. If you have even a small percentage of a little country hick in your blood, you know all about this kind of bingo. You buy a "deed" (square on a grid) for $10 and hope that Bessy the cow plops her first poop on your spot in a marked field for $500. Needless to say, Bessy did not leave her cow chip on plot #138, but we still left rich with memories of the weekend. :)

So grab your dark bottle of root beer, your bag of shelled peanuts and that fried dough boy and enjoy! :)


Enjoy our photos.....and I've include some shameless bragging too.

N won first place in the floral arranging contest.....she was judged even with the adult entries. The theme was "Yes we can". Funny thing, she really just plucked these random flowers from our garden, yanked the flag from our mailbox from Memorial Day.......and tied on that sparkly craft wire. Worked for us! We found out that she was two votes away from The People's Choice grand prize winner too.

Then both E and N placed 2nd and 5th with showing their chickens. They worked very hard preparing for this showmanship event. They had to study and learn all the proper names of the chicken's body parts, practice handling the chickens correctly and even get the chickens ready by giving them a bath.



There was a cock-a-doodle doo contest where we entered our two roosters. It was hilarious watching the kids cheering on their rooster trying to coax them to belt one out. And here is N talking to Tiny Tim after he didn't win the crowing competition. She told me she needed some one on one time with him to assure him that she still loved him even though they didn't win and he was still #1 to her.

(try not to note her sparkly tacky hat.....I told her she could pick out one thing under this vendors' tent and saw those obnoxious sequined hats out of the corner of my eye. I tried to redirect her path, used a Jedi Mind trick and chanted to myself, "avoid the sparkle....do not be sucked into the sparkle".......but sure enough, the sparkle caught her eye and drew her in. *sigh*


Here's E giving a little "peace" with his pal, Kevin who placed 1st in the Polish Hen division too. Kevin is actually a hen.....if you've seen the movie Up, you'll see why it's a great name.

This is a better shot of Kevin....this is one of N's photo entries captioned "Bad Hair Day?". Not too bad for a six year old with my Kodak Easy Share, huh?



She also took these two that I absolutely love....we captioned the eggs with "In the beginning....."

This one with E's special pair of Old English chicks we called "We've got your back".


OK, I'll share one last photo.......this was E's entry and it scored a 97 out of 100 possible points. He titled this "Barnyard Bliss"......it's our little doe-ling Liesel who loves to sleep in her feed bucket. He just happened to catch her at the perfect time, perfect lighting, etc.


And now we are getting the camper all loaded up and heading out to a festival that I have been waiting since last August to return.

SOULFEST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The only way I can describe it is it's a Woodstock for Jesus. It is the most amazing place to be.....just imagine about 100 Christian bands/artists over four days playing on a mountain! Casting Crowns, Third Day, Skillet, Newsboys, and Sanctus Real just to name a few. This will be our third year and I cannot even explain what an awesome spiritual experience it is. There are worship services, inspirational speakers like this guy, skateboard ministries and all types of exhibits.

The first year we went, we had only bought tickets for a one day trip, but when we walked through the gates and saw about a hundred tents pitched going up the mountain, I was floored! We then knew that we would be camping the whole week for all future Soulfests.

Camping on a mountain with thousands of Believers celebrating Jesus Christ for four days straight......this is our ultimate vacation.

So today I am packing, cleaning and preparing......and will be off first thing tomorrow morning. The trip is only about three hours which is perfect because I am not a big road trip person. Actually 4 hours is my limit in a car pretty much. I would rather repeatedly slam my hand in a car door than be driving any longer than that. Since we are taking two cars, Josh is towing camper and I will be in the trusty minivan.....I will need to be prepared for this journey. I have tons of goodies packed including Twizzlers, Doritos and Crystal Light. (like the "Light" makes a difference, right?.....hey, it's vacation time!). I am going to be jotting down all the K-LOVE stations to get my Jesus praise on. I am unable to listen to any of my own CDs because one of my sweet children stuck a juju bean in my CD player before the ink even dried at the car dealership. nice.

As much as I know I will want to blog about the amazing things I will be experiencing this week coming up......this is a nice way for me to unplug and focus on God and my family that He has blessed me with.

Last year, we just got the camper and everything all set up. My son G and I were sitting by the campfire and he looked up and noticed how the sky was completely filled with stars. Now, we live in the boonies and catch some decent starry nights but usually it is just a few minutes of gazing up and then the mosquitoes start taking chunks out of us and we go in. We were blessed, not only be able to sit in awe of this gorgeous diamond mine in the sky......but there was not a single mosquito around.

So as we were just taking it all in......we saw, not one......but three shooting stars all within seconds of each other. It was like God was giving us a little "welcome to my world" message. Totally cool.

That was the beginning to a week's worth of God after God experiences. Everything from people falling slain in the spirit during Toby Mac to powerful healings to people just unplugging from the world and reconnecting to Jesus.

If you ever have a Soulfest type festival near you......I encourage you to attend one. You will leave a different person, I promise.

So I decided to schedule some posts this week while I am refueling, relaxing and rejoicing. I thought it might be entertaining to repost a few of my older posts every couple of days just incase you feel like popping back in my world. Kinda like when I did the Rainy Day Monday post......These were posted when I had about 3 readers (as opposed to my tens of readers now) and again.....two were Josh and I. So I thought you might enjoy them as a rerun. :)

So for now.......I hope this finds you smiling and well.....and enjoying the SONshine every day.

Peace, love and stay barefoot~
*~Michelle~*