Our Favorite Week of Filth and Exhaustion

Summer isn't really over for our family until we have spent a week filthy and exhausted at the county fair.

For most people, a county fair is a nice place they visit on a Saturday afternoon to eat some of the greasiest food ever invented, buy a Sham-Wow, ride a few rides, pet a calf, see some sheep and head home. Yes, that's how normal people "do" the county fair.

Country people, however, are required by the sacred oath of farmers to move in at the county fair, forsaking all other activities or home life. They MUST BE PRESENT lest some cow poop and there be no one to immediately clean it up.

Not only do we gather up our finest livestock and 4-H projects (Ryan isn't old enough for 4-H and yet we still do all this), we create additional work for ourselves, baking cookies, making scarecrows (4th place Angelina Jolie and her babies, above) and taking photos.

The preparation for the fair is work and the being at the fair is draining. And the dirt, good God, the dirt. Greasy asphalt, bleacher dust mixed with poop and shavings, random blackness--all coating the knees of my children and streaking down their faces like they had sh!t for dinner. (Pre-fair, fairly clean photo of Justin above with his soon-to-be 1st place owl cupcakes.)

But for every moment spent vacuuming straw out of the carpet or every load of laundry, there are great moments like these: Ryan winning first place in pee-wee swine showmanship (above), Morgan winning third in the kiddie tractor-pull, Justin collecting a ribbon in the pig show.

We know why we spend a week at the fair filthy and exhausted--it's the best place in the world we could be.