The Big E Fair

After saving all our change for quite some time we finally decided to dump our pig out, count up what was inside and spend, spend, spend.  We'd been waiting for a grand occasion to do this and the Big E Fair seemed like a perfectly good one.  

 

I absolutely love fairs and had been meaning to go to this one ever since I moved to Boston.  It's huge and counts as the state fair for Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Maine.  It was by far the biggest fair I have ever been to.  People were all over the place and the parking situation was unreal.

It had everything you could possibly want in a fair, including quilts and 4H projects, food vendors galore, people selling crazy things, elephant and camel rides, carnival rides, a circus, animals, free concerts and each state had it's own building where you could learn about why they were so great.  Here are some of the highlights.

Animals - this was fun and kind of gross at the same time. I say gross because watching a cow get milked by a machine is never fun, just trust me on that one. 

We did get to see this lovely goat though who posed and gave a little smile for the camera (too funny).  We also saw cows, horses, kangaroos, monkeys, elephants, and camels as well as sheep.   

We saw sheep getting a hair cut

And sheep that needed a hair cut  

By far our favorite part of the fair was the food of course.  The big E is known for two things, the Cream Puff and the Craz-E Burger. 

We are proud to say we tried them both.    

(Cream Puff - pretty self explanatory and really, really good)

(Craz-E Burger - a bacon cheese burger with a Krispy Kreme bun)

We weren't so sure at first, but after one bite we were sold.  It was delicious! So, so, so, so bad for you but delicious.   

Matt thoroughly enjoyed every last bite.

Also, one of the biggest highlights of my night was finding the TORTATO!!! Okay, so they call them millennium chips out here but it's pretty much the same thing. I was in heaven. 

The fair was exactly what we needed.  It was relaxing, fun and I think we ate enough to last us at least a week.  We watched a group of guys sing songs from the 60's, learned a lot about bees and how they make honey, tried out crazy work out machines that nearly shake you to death and even got to see a show of BMX tricks.  We can't wait to go back next year.  Maybe you should join us. :)

 



I Spent What?

We printed a few coupons, cut a few coupons, looked at where the sales were and headed to the store.  We got a ton of stuff but nothing was better than this sweet deal.  These six items would regularly be around $15 out here but all we had to pay was a measly $3.00! 

Matt and I were so excited about it that we were giving each other high fives in the checkout line and laughing like crazy.  People watching probably thought we'd just won the lottery or something.  So, a BIG THANK YOU to Kristin for inspiring us to clip coupons. 

I really think it might just be Matt's new favorite thing. It's a total game for him to see how many deals he can get us.  My new favorite thing . . . this video.  I watch it and can't help but want to start doing my own hand tap dance.  How cool would that be to do at a ward or family talent show? People would go nuts!

Early Morning Seminary . . .

It's 5:35 a.m., it's as dark as night outside and we are awake and driving to our first class. We're surprisingly happy and alert and the radio is playing nothing but good songs.  I try to be positive and decide that this must be a sign.  Seminary is going to be GREAT! 

Just as we come over the hill and begin to see the temple, the broken bells song we've been enjoying blares from the speaker "It's too late to change your mind" over and over again.  All of the positive thinking that I'd been desperately trying to hold on to melts away in an instant and I can't help but want to cry. 

"What am I doing?  Is this some kind of joke, seriously?  Me . . . a seminary teacher?  Do you have any idea how much my seminary teachers hated me, how much seminary I skipped?  Just ask my mom, she'll tell you.  She got calls from my teachers all the time because they would watch me drive out of the school parking lot.  I knew they saw me too.  I would wave to them as I did it. It's true, I was a total brat.  This is payback isn't it?"

No matter how much complaining I did, it didn't change the fact that I had in fact said yes and that it was too late to change my mind.  So, I put on the best face I had and we walked in. 

The students started to arrive and I would love to say things went great, but to be honest things were a little awkward.  The kids just stared at us when we asked them simple questions, I made the mistake of asking "Are there new scripture mastery cards every year?" (I told you I never went) and I had a hard time remembering the kids names.  We walked out of our first class feeling like completely uncool teachers. 

Don't feel too bad for us though because that was the worst day by a long shot.  Our 8 students warmed up to us a little bit more over the next few days and the lessons just got better and better.  The participation was there, we figured out how to run our class and by Thursday I started to feel like this might not be so bad after all. 

Our lives outside of Seminary on the other hand took a serious turn.  I only show you these pictures because this is absolutely NOT how we run our home. By the end of the week we both looked at each other and died laughing because our house was such a disaster.  Can you blame us when our schedule looks something like this all week?   

• 
  
  Wake up
• go to seminary
• go back to bed for a little while 
• go to work
• come home
• find something for dinner
• prepared next days lesson
• go to bed
• repeat 

We could barely stay awake at work let alone come home and be expected to clean and make dinner and do all of the other daily chores that you wouldn't even think about otherwise.

By Friday our dinner became completely unhealthy and random.  We would both come home, look in the fridge and just shove in our mouths the first thing we saw that sounded good. This particular night Matt pulled out apple sauce, orange juice, toast, mac and cheese, and sun chips.  Lovely. :)

When you're running from place to place and you don't have time to think about anything except how good a nice soft bed will feel as you drift off to sleep, the hallway becomes a great place to throw your clothes as you head that direction.  Seriously I think this is like 2 days worth of clothes.

Matt and I were so exhausted by Friday that upon returning from work that evening we jumped right into bed.  We pretty much slept our whole weekend away and it felt GREAT!  We woke up for about 5 hours on Saturday afternoon to celebrate our successful first week of seminary with a little lobster and a lot of cool people.  It was our wards annual clambake and it was just what we needed.  One of our students even came up to us to say hi.  I couldn't help but think to myself,  "See, we are cool!"     



Wish us luck as we begin week number 2 in a few short days.

End of Summer Outings!

We got up close a personal with a few very large animals at the Stone Zoo.

(That's a baby flamingo. Aren't they ugly!)

(Handlebar mustache: Ba, ha, ha, ha!)

When we came out of the building that housed the little monkeys (above) it started to downpour. We weren't quite as prepared as this little family so we got soaked as we ran for our car. It was kind of fun.

Ever been raspberry picking? We went for the first time and had a blast. Well, Matt had a blast while it took me a little while to get over the mass amounts of bees hovering over the bushes.

I got over my fear pretty quick when a cute family from our ward came to say hello mid squeal and run action. (Super embarrassing!)

And finally, a first day of school shot for us, bright and early at 5:20 am!

That's right, we're early morning seminary teachers and we started school this week. If we survive the next few days I'll give the new calling a post of its own. It's gonna need one. ;)