Alright...let's take a time machine back to Saturday for a moment, shall we? On Saturday, we spent most of the day marveling at how creepy the sky was. I assume that most of you hve seen the pictures I posted on Facebook, so I'll spare you from monotony. Regardless, it was weird and there were ashes falling from the sky. I kinda hope that doesn't happen again. (By the way, the fire is now 38% contained. We can still see some smoke in the sky, but haven't seen flames in a couple days and the sky has been pretty clear for the most part.) After checking the air quality reports, several news stations, the websites set up to update on the fire, etc...we decided to brave the outdoors and head to the Antelope Valley Fair and Alfalfa Festival.

Entering the Fairgrounds at about 2 p.m. Beautiful day, huh? At least the cloud cover kept the temperatures down.

This is what the sky looked like from the parking lot. It was somewhat amusing to me how, every once in a while, you'd see someone marveling at the sky...but other than that people just kind of walked around like nothing was out of the ordinary.

After we looked at a lot of art exhibits (which seemed mostly like crafts people did in classes and entered. There were even a few catagories where there were several different entries of the same project) we went to the Rural Olympics. The picture above is what the sky looked like from the grandstands. You might find the idea of Rural Olympics odd...but this is apparently (according to them) one of the most popular events at the fair. It was fairly entertaining to watch (better than the 2 hour Truck and Tractor Pull). Here's a taste of some of the events.

Yeah, that's right..the Antique Car Potato Race. This was kinda crazy. People hang out the passenger window of their car with a harpoon while someone drives and they try to stab potatoes. The video won't load for this either...perhaps another day.

The next video is...I don't remember what they called it...but the trucks had to back up straight through these barriers they put up for them. Whoever got done first won.

Another event was this race where you had to drive a tractor between these insanely close together stakes. The video is of a guy doing it, and the stakes are kind of hard to see, but it was impressive. The lady's did it, two, but without the arm on the tractor. One lady almost fell off and got crushed 'cause she turned to hard and too fast, but the girl that one was really impressive..and almost set the world record. Who knew there was a world record in this sort of thing? (but the video won't load)
There were plenty more events in the Rural Olympics, but that's where my camera died :).

Of course, being the Antelope Valley Fair and Alfalfa Festival, we HAD to get a picture of the award winning Alfalfa.

The following was an event that we happened upon accidentally. Adam didn't want to stay to watch but I convinced him to, and then he didn't want to leave until it was over. What was this tantalizing event, you ask? It was a sheep riding rodeo. Kids were put on top of sheep, they let the sheep go, and the kids (for the most part) promptly fell off. It was crazy...most of the kids fell...a few made it all the way across the "arena." Here's a bit of the excitment:


So that was Saturday. On to Sunday. On Sunday, we woke up early, bought some food for a potluck BBQ at Albertson's, went to Sunday School at Wayside (possibly for the last time there) and then headed to our second visit to The Well (thewellav.org). We had a good time, had a good lunch, and decided that we like the church and are going to continue going and get more involved with things. It's exciting to have a church we actually feel compelled to support and go to. It makes it feel a little more hopeful that things will start to feel like home sooner rather than later. After church, we headed home, went to the grocery store, and then went back to the fair for the demolition derby. Four hours later...we crashed (no pun intended) for the night ourselves after taking pictures of the fires burning.

Monday, Adam went back to work, and I more or less bummed around the house. I didn't end up waking up until 9:30 or something ridiculous like that. I honestly don't remember what all I did besides making banana bread...possibly doing some laundry, though I don't remember...and making dinner (a revisit to the stuffed sweet potatoes). Then Adam and I caught up on all the Hell's Kitchens we had missed thanks to not having our modem from AT&T (by the way...they DID send it, it turns out...just to Adam's old apartment...durrr.)

Tuesday, I did laundry, baked some bread (I have yeast that has to get used up before October's through), cleaned the kitchen, and started to make dinner. (I'm sure I did more than just these things. At least it seems like it...but I'm a little behind on this, so it's hard to remember.) Heidi called just as Adam was getting home and dinner was well under way to see if we wanted to come over for fajitas. Since I had made far more fettucini alfredo than we needed for two of us, we compromised and I brought the bread I baked and the pasta over to her house and we all ate there. After dinner, watching the Criss Angel "Mindfreak" episode that Jedd starred in (VERY fake and VERY frustrating to watch), and playing outside with the neighbor girl, we headed home.

Yesterday, I DEFINITELY did some laundry...again woke up kind of late, made some pretzels to use up yeast, put away all the laundry that was clean but not hung, watched some TV shows online, and then got ready to go back to Heidi's for fajitas. Adam bought us some plane tickets for Illinois before we left. He'd want me to tell you this story, so I will. On Tuesday, we were going to buy the tickets, but we ended up going to Heidi's instead. When we got home, they were 125 dollars more expensive than they had been. Then, Adam called his brother because we found out we might need to be in Peoria earlier than we thought, but to do that, we'd be spending a lot more money...so we held off buying them until Will could talk to his fiance and see what the plans were. So...Adam got home from work last night and checked on the tickets again to find out that they had gone back down to the original price....thus eliminating any need for rearranging schedules and plans...and we jumped to buy them. He JUST texted me to tell me the prices have yet AGAIN gone back up...so it's good that we went to Heidi's to prevent us from spending too much...and that we bought them when we did.

Today, I have spent a lot of time A. writing this, B. trying to get wedding pictures organized to get them printed for an album, C. finishing up laundry (there was a lot), D. talking to some people online, E. switching my Sallie Mae to the joint account, and F. just thinking. We're going to watch Hell's Kitchen...have some lemon pepper fish...and go to bed early, tonight.

And now that I'm done with the novella I promise you, I'm going to get back to being productive. Hope you feel caught up and enjoyed our weekend/week as much as we have. Peace out.