Weekend at the Straw Poll & State Fair

We went to the Straw Poll on Mitt Romney's ticket this weekend. Bruce was really getting into all the free food, t-shirts, etc. and we both really liked listening to the candidates speak. Some were a little out there (John Cox, who ended up getting only 41 votes) and others we were very impressed with--Romney, Huckabee, Brownback. Alice slept through most of the program, thankfully, because it was about three hours long. The MC was Laura Ingrim and Newt Gingrich also spoke.

Here's a picture of Laura Ingrim shaking hands with all the candidates.

The next day we went to church in Des Moines and sat behind Mitt Romney and his family. It was funny to see him chasing his grandson down the isle. As soon as the meeting was over, he was swamped with people wanting to shake his hand.

Here's Alice at the State Fair, planting her plastic seed. There was this whole set up for kids to help teach them about farming and how things are produced and sold. It was a little funny to me at least, that Alice was planting fake seeds, picking fake apples, tomatoes, carrots, etc. and also harvesting corn and soybeans (they just handed her bags of each) when she'd already done all of those things for real. I wonder if it confused her at all.



This is one thing she hasn't experienced--milking a cow.

Alice also got to pet all sorts of newborn animals--pigs, sheep, goats, cows, and chicks. Pigs were definitely her favorite. I think this little guy is 4 days old.

She also had fun playing in the corn box.

My favorite part was the 4H building where all the projects were. I was very impressed with the quilts, sewing projects, artwork, woodworking, cooking experiments, etc. the kids did. We also saw a 1400 lb. boar and a life-sized cow sculpture made out of butter.

Alice went without a nap that day and it took her all of half a minute to completely zonk out in the car on the way home. She had two fruit snacks in her hand that melted and got everywhere!