Well, it was quite a week at the fair! I was a little nervous about all 7 kids at the fair and the boundaries having to be pulled in for our 5 to suit the boundaries that were in place for the new two - but it worked very well. The whole week was great!

As for show results, I'm so impressed and pleased! My kids did great! DD (child #3, 13 years old) won Grand Champion Meat Ewe with one of her ewes and then went on to win Overall Supreme Ewe for 2006 at this fair! WOW! Between her and her brother that she raises sheep with (SS, child #2, 14 years old) 3 of their ewes placed in the top 4 overall. In Fit & Show they all did well too. The same daughter won Reserve Grand Champion in the Intermediate division and came in 3rd overall. She's been wanting to participate in the Round Robin for years. But this year she missed it by one - and she was okay with that. It's generally the Seniors who participate anyway and she's got one more year of being an Intermediate. But then came the news that the boy who won 2nd place would not be able to participate so she had to take his place! She was SO excited!!! She did great and had such a good time doing it. :~) Then came livestock judging. The same two kids did well again. DD made it to the state livestock judging team last year and has done very well all year long - until this week. Something happened in one of the classes and she got 18 out of 50 points in one class. Other than that, she nailed most of the other classes and for her oral reasons she won the trophy for the highest score in oral reasons! The same son placed FIRST in the senior division in judging but didn't get as high of a score in the oral reasons (obviously). Now, if you've done 4-H or FFA livestock you will understand what all these things mean. They are all quite the achievements! These two did amazing! Todah Rabah!

As for the next two kids who raised meat goats, they did well too. Our girl (SD, child #4, 12 years old) and our boy (DS, child #5, 10 years old) tried their hand at goats and did their best together. They have a good model to follow in their older brother & sister. They placed in the middle of their classes in Fit & Show and in the top 5 in Type. DS wants to raise goats again but SD thinks she's done with animals. We were honestly surprised when she said that she wanted to raise a goat last year at the fair. We thought that she'd change her mind (come to her senses) before spring but she still wanted to do it. It was harder for her than she though it would be and she feels that now she's tried it, she knows what it's about, and she realizes that it's not her thing. :~) Good for her for trying and sticking to it all season!

Both DD (13) and DS (10) nailed their public presentations too, and the record books came out with good evaluations even though they were judged weird this year and they got scored much lower than they needed to be. But I'm not going to argue with the judge, they still did great.

We have invitations to the State Fair next month that we need to discuss and invitations to other 4-H clubs too. We have had a lot of trouble with our current club and in all honesty, we should have left that club 5 years ago when we noticed the problems that we were having and the influence that some of the families there were having. But we got sucked into the "missionary" mentality and stayed. It was a bad decision. It is time to leave. Even without that being public knowledge we were invited to join a few other clubs. So we're going to talk about it and see what clubs fit best with our goals before we make any decisions. Still, it's nice to be wanted. That is a VERY different feeling than what we get from our current (or should I say former?) club.

Oh, the two "sheep kids" also bought the Overall Supreme Ram. They intend to breed their ewes with this ram for the next two years and sell the lambs to local club kids for market project animals. They also want to take some of their sheep to other shows and see how they stack up against other animals. We'll see....

So fair went very well. They all did wonderfully well. The whole week was pleasant for the most part, with only a few short "issues" which are to be expected given the circumstances in our family right now.