Madison County Fair

The air outside our house smells faintly of dung, and Thursday morning I woke up to the sounds of cows mooing, horses neighing, goats bleating, pigs oinking, sheep baa-ing (is that a word?). I felt like I was living next door to a farm. So what was it?

The Madison County Fair! The fairgrounds are only a few blocks from our house, and I don't know if it's because Iowa is so flat, or maybe it was just that the wind was blowing the right direction, but that morning I could hear all the animal sounds, and often the air around our house smells a bit like a farm.

The fair reminds me of those movies where people in the 50s go to a little county fair, and they see the quilt and baking entries, and walk through barns and look at all the horses and cows and pigs (I discovered this week that a barn full of pigs smells TERRIBLE-it made me never want to eat pork again). The only thing is that it's not the 50s, and there is no old-fashioned ferris wheel, only other carnival rides that look unsound.

I did enjoy watching the 4-H kids demonstrate their horsemanship, although I was a little out of the loop on some of the 4-H jokes. The announcer would say something, and the crowd would burst into laughter, while I had no idea what was going on.

Sadly, I did not have a chance to go to the mud run, the rodeo, or the demolition derby. I was somewhat disappointed, but those were extra money and I did not feel like paying. Maybe next year this will change. I feel like I shouldn't let my cheapness keep me from experiencing Iowa.

Too Long

Yikes!

It's been so long since I posted. So, just to catch everybody up, here's what I've done in the last two months.

MAY: My parents and brothers came out for a visit. We had a really nice time, eating a lot of good food, watching good movies, hanging out, and enjoying all the fun that Madison County has to offer. Speaking of which, I did not realize how exciting the Madison County Historical Museum would be (I am not being sarcastic, I actually like museums. Ian says it's the homeschooler in me). And we saw all the bridges of Madison County, because my mom is goal-oriented and likes to be thorough.

Then, we spent two weeks playing parents. A couple in our church took a mission trip to Uganda, so we watched their house, three kids, and two dogs. One of the dogs ran away for three days (some might say that I lost it), so there was much searching, praying, and tears, at least on my part. I think Ian only participated in the searching and praying. No tears.

JUNE: Ian went to Reno/northern California for almost two weeks. I would have been lonely, but I had Abbie and Kimi, the two summer missionaries (who were teenagers here back when I was a summer missionary) to hang out with. Petey became very attached to Kimi, and we wondered if he thought she was the new Ian. I did miss my husband, though.

When Ian got back, we participated in running a day camp in Des Moines at the Friendship Center, an inner-city ministry. It was fun, but very tiring. I liked getting to know the kids and discovering that I had retained many of my basketball skills, in spite of not playing at all for the last three years.

Also, I've been doing a lot more freelance writing and a lot more fiction writing, which is fun but resulted in my letting the poor blog go by the wayside. But now I'm back! Hopefully for good.

Worlds of Fun

This last weekend, Ian and I and several other adults took a bunch of kids from our church to Worlds of Fun, a theme park in Kansas City, Missouri. The park was hosting a few Christian bands (including Skillet and Switchfoot), so we left early Saturday morning and drove south for three hours. I was quite excited to go to Kansas City and to be in Missouri, since that's one state I still hadn't visited. (Now I have completed the whole column - Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana.)

We had a great time! It was fun hanging out with the kids and getting to know them better. There were some really good rides, particularly one called the Mamba. It was so fast that my eyes were watering, and I was completely terrified the whole time (in the good way, of course), so the thirteen-year-old I rode with accused me of crying at the end and laughed at me. (Let the records state that I was not crying. It was windy and I was laughing hard from terror.)

The concerts were good, and we spent the night in two guest apartments at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. We were expecting to sleep on the floor, but they had provided several mattresses in the both the girls' and guys' apartments. The next morning we went to a small church there that a friend of ours attends. It was really neat because the community was from a lot of different cultures and we got to sing "How Great Thou Art" in Swahili. Then we drove home, and everybody was absolutely exhausted by the time we arrived in Winterset.

All in all, a good time.

Bikes!

Ian and I used part of our tax return to buy bicycles for ourselves. I didn't have a bike, and Ian's was really old and he had to leave it in Reno when we moved. So we got new ones. His is a mountain bike, since he likes to bike on trails and do stuff that I would consider scary, and mine is something that's a cross between a mountain bike and a street bike (see how little I know about them, I can't even remember what they're called), because I'll probably do most of my riding around Winterset, though it would be nice to ride on trails every once in a while.

So I rode five and a half miles from our house to Clark Tower this morning. It was very fun, and a good workout. Let's just say I am very out of shape, thanks to my wimpyness about getting out in the cold over the last few months.

There is also something satisfying about riding short distances on your bike instead of in your car. It makes me feel like I'm exercising and saving fuel at the same time, and as my friend Cory would say, provides a "false sense of moral superiority--the best kind of moral superiority." (Sorry, Cory, I used this quote without permission. I thought it was funny.)

One More Thing...

Oh yes. And cleaning. That's one more thing I forgot to mention when I was speaking about my new glamorous lifestyle.

Now that Ian has a full-time job and I do not, I do most of the cleaning, and washing dishes by hand, since we don't have a dishwasher.

Lest you think my life too fun...