Wordless Wednesday--High in the Sky Over the Fair

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Got Milk? and butter and animals at the New York State Fair

Gracie got to see how she looks in a real milk mustache.

New York is a lot more than the Big Apple, it is a great big rural state with many, many farms. The New York State fair is full of animals.
They even had some "oreo" cows to go along with all the milk New York dairy farms produce.

The dairy princess Grace and her mooing cow Daddy.

The butter sculpture is a tradition at the fair. It took 2000 gallons of milk to make the 800 pounds of butter used to make this year sculpture.

It features a old fashioned milk truck.

Driven by a cow of course.

They call this an old fashioned milk truck, but in the neighboring town to us, Vernon, there is still a milkman who delivers milk door to door from the Vernon Dairy in good old glass bottles.

New York is also the home of the Adirondack Park. The park covers some 6.1 million acres (24,700 km²), a land area about the size of Vermont, or of the Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Glacier, and Great Smoky Mountains National Parks combined.

There are a lot of exibits at the fair featuring the hunting, fishing and the sports of this great mountainous area.

We saw beautiful horses

real big momma pigs,

llamas with fancy haircuts,

sheep wearing coats to keep their wool clean,

real tired sheep,

pink chickens(?--does anyone know how they do this?)

we watched chicks hatch as we looked on....

It is always great to hold a little chicks,

sooo fluffy!

Make sure to hug a cow, any chance you get!!

Dragon Knights Stilt Walkers at the Great New York State Fair

We were very impressed by the Dragon Knights Stilt Walkers we encountered at the New York State Fair yesterday.
They came wandering by and Mark and Grace weren't sure what to think about them.

They were pretty creepy looking, but also so unique that you had to watch the amazing puppetry they used to make the "dragons" come to life.

Gracie is getting a little closer!

What outstanding make-up on the Dragon Master. Grace was still brave here, but when she turned around one of the dragons nipped her on the neck. That was it for Grace, she moved waaaaaay back after that!

Mark pet the dragon's head, but when he turned away it followed him, nibbling him on the head!

They had a real neat performance as the Dragon Master directed the dragons moves.

Check back for move of our fun from the fair.(There is too much fun for just one post!)

The Great New York State Fair!!

Today Pat, 4 children and I headed to the New York State Fair. We try to do this every year and we all have a great time. This year Becky stayed home with the babies, Dan and Matt had soccer practice and Patrick Jr had to work.

Hopefully, I will go back next week with some of the kids who missed out on the fun this week.

New York is an agricultural state,(there is much more to NY than just New York City), and above, the kids portray some of the livestock of the region.

Mark participated in the raptor demonstration, he did a wonderful job in spite of being quite scared of this "meat eating" owl.

Dad took this picture of a real live bald eagle in the raptor show. I think this photo deserves to be blown up large and hung on the wall.

I think that this white Iceland falcon was one of my favorites.

We watched the New York State troopers repel off a 60 foot tower. They repelled down backward, forward, feet first, head first and upside down. Great job guys. (It was law inforcement day and Pat got us free entrance tickets to the fair today.)

Gracie made friends here, just as she does everywhere.

She made friends with bears, and

friends with horses.

The kids drove fighter jets,

jet skiis,

and snowmobiles. It may have been 95 degrees today, but we all know that winter in northern NY is headed our way.

Our favorite thing to do at the fair is to find all the free stuff that we can. This year was no exception. We made quite a haul.

We have counted-

56-pencils

25- pens

12-coloring books

8-rulers

6-key chains

4-gun locks

2-t-shirts

and other things to numerous to continue.

We do want everyone to be warned though. If you are headed to the fair and the weatherman says that the temperature will be 95 degrees but the "heat index" will be much hotter, know that some of your children will arrive home looking like this.

It is now time for bed.