The Wisconsin State Fair - Everything you ever wanted, and more

So it was a bit bigger than the Payette County Fairs Ryan remembers from his years of cattle raising. And a bit less health-conscious than we'd ever noticed. At one point Ryan said something like, "Don't they have any vegetables or something?" Yes, they did, as I pointed out. "Dr. Vegetable" it was called, and it was a deep-fried version of any vegetable you could imagine. Even deep fried pickles. Next door to the place with deep fried oreos. But, guiltily, we must admit that pretty much our sole purpose for going to the fair was the fried cheese curds we heard so much about.

Native Wisconsiners were surprised to hear that we had never had fried cheese curds. One friend told us he pretty much grew up on them (yikes). Perhaps that's why Ryan complains about seeing so many overweight people in the hospital all the time here! Well, we can't say much, we had two orders of them. Plus brownies and their famous cream puffs, and pizza and lemonade..... Not to mention the fact that we went to a Brewers baseball game with the hospital the night before and they gave us $40 worth of food there so we had cheese fries, pizza, ice cream, etc. Needless to say I was feeling pretty sick by the end of the weekend.

We did get to see some good hog racing at the fair, and a team of lumberjills (female lumberjacks, or "chicks with axes" as they say). I don't know if anyone has seen log rolling competitions, but that was easily my favorite part of the fair. Two lumberjills facing opposite ways on a log in a big pool of water trying to roll the log and knock the other one off. Highly entertaining. Cash didn't like much but the cream puffs though.

I also learned this week that Ryan is better at blowing bubbles than me. Who knew you could be better or worse at that?

Cash and the neighbor boy enjoyed chasing them around while Ryan blew up a storm, polishing off a whole jar of bubbles.

We enjoyed more Ryan this week with his easier schedule, although he doesn't get this weekend and sleeping in thing yet. His first Saturday off, he got up early while Cash and I were still asleep and banged around the house for a few hours - preventing me from any further sleep. Hmm, maybe we should go back to the schedule where you work on the weekends and get out of the house! Hopefully he'll get used to it.

We're headed to Utah this week for some family time and will be there for a couple weeks. I hope. I'm flying standby, so we're really just hoping I make it there!