Our summer vacation is almost over. We've had a very full, fun and busy summer. Baseball and 4-H were major events all summer long. Our 4-H fair was last week and the kids did very well. All 3 kids were in several projects, so it seemed like we were always running to one meeting or another. They were all in ceramics. This is a picture of all their ceramics projects this year.

The pictue doesn't do them justice. The large cross is metallic copper, and the parts that show up as black are really blue. The cross, done by my oldest, won best of show this year.

As the fair got closer, we spent a lot of time getting our animals ready.

Janelle practicing her "showmanship" with Snowflake, her favorite bunny.

All 4 pigs got a bath

Even the chickens needed a bath!

Showing one of the rabbits to the judge. This one got a blue ribbon.

The boys showing their pigs, also blue ribbon winners.

Now that the fair is done, we've taken this last week to relax and start working on the required record books for 4-H. Everybody agrees that the record books are the least favorite part of the 4-H year.

School starts on Monday. I'm ready, but the kids say they're not.

We have a new batch of kittens in our barn. This is a good thing, because we are down to only one female cat, although we seem to have plenty of tomcats. Here's some pictures of the new arrivals. Actually, they're already a few weeks old. We don't always find the kittens right away, and that is a good thing because the kids aren't as tempted to hold them too soon.