Vanderburgh County 4-H Fair & Derby

Saturday night was the Vanderburgh County 4-H Fair and Derby!  Shawn was excited to go and watch the derby and Gavin was excited to go and ride rides and play games!  We didn't have very good seats for the derby this year so Gavin and I spent the majority of the time riding rides.  Well he rode the rides, I just stood and watched and took pictures. 

 

When we first got there, we got Gavin the wristband so that he could ride all the rides he wanted to.

 

Showing off his ride wristband cause he's a big boy!

 

He did it!  He rode the Dragon Wagon roller coaster again this year even thought he said he wasn't going too. 

 

After riding the construction trucks and the roller coaster, we got some food and headed to the grandstand to watch the pre-derby concert and wait for the derby to start.  DeWayne Spaw performed the concert again this year.  He was there last year and is a great singer and performer.

 

There was a lot of people there for the derby.  In fact, 7,500+ people.  Our seats were not the greatest at all.  In the past, Shawn has had a friend go there early in the day and reserve our seats, but he wasn't able to this year.  We walked all around looking for some, but there was none.  Shawn spotted some on the other side of the track and on our way over there, I saw a family get up from the bench seats at the rail.  I asked if they were sitting there and she said no, so I said thank you very much and we all sat down.  Like I said, they weren't the best seats, but they were seats none the less.

 

We sat there for a little bit, but we really couldn't see and Gavin was wanting to go play games.  I told Shawn we were going to the rides cause I had just paid $20 for that wrist band and two rides wasn't cutting it for me.  LOL!  Shawn stayed and watched the derby the whole time, while we rode rides and fished for shark.

 

 

Gavin always wants to play games, but I just can't bring myself to pay $3 to $5 for a try at a game where you can win a silly prize.  He really wanted to do the shark fishing and he had a $1, so I added two more $1's to it and he fished for a small prize - a little toy squirt gun.

 

After that it was off to ride more rides!  He went down the slide twice, jumped in the bounce house one time, rode the carousel once, the roller coaster once, the construction trucks twice, the boats once, the motorcycles once, the ladybugs 3 times, and the spinning teacups twice. 

 

The spinning teacups are definitely more fun with a girl that knows how to spin them.  She had that thing spinning so fast, I thought for sure Gavin was going to puke coming off of it.  He didn't, but he was definitely wound up.  He was like a totally different kid!  LOL!

 

After all that, we headed back over the derby to watch the last truck race with Uncle Shawn.

A Day of Geocaching

Last Friday I was going to take a half day vacation and then head to Rockport to pick up Beth and Gavin and go swimming at the Rockport Pool, however the weather turned cooler, so I took a whole vacation day and headed that way so that we could have lunch at Angelo's and spend the day geocaching.

I picked Beth and Gavin and up and our first order of business was Angelo's.  Actually our first order of business was a geocache at the Rustic golf course (more about that later), but we couldn't find it so we headed to Angelo's for lunch.  I was originally going to just get breadsticks and a sandwich and then I remembered they had their lunch buffet so that's what I had.  It was all yummy!  While we were eating, our friend Cami came in for lunch so she joined us and it was nice catching up.  I forgot my phone in the car so I couldn't get the picture of the breadsticks to post on FB and make all of my ex-Spencer County peeps jealous!  I did snap one of the sign on our way out.

After Angelo's, we headed out on our geocaching adventure.  We headed towards Grandview cause there was a few placed there, however we came up empty handed on the first 3 or 4 of that we did.  Definitely did not make us happy at all! Geocaching is fun when you are actually able to find them; when you can't, it completely stinks!!  We saw this park in town and decided to stop for a bit so Gavin could play.  While we were there, a little kitty and doggie from next door came over to visit.  Gavin was in love with this kitty.  He loved on him and carried him all over the place.  We named them Playground Kitty and Teeter Totter Puppy.

 

After we left the park, we started back up geocaching and scored one at the Grandview Civic Center.  Yeah!! :) :) :)

 

We tried another one or two in Grandview and had no luck.  We decided to cross the new bridge and drive the back roads down to the river to see if we could see the Rockport Bluff from the Kentucky side.  We couldn't see it from the road, but there was a pull off area where we could of parked and got out and walked, but didn't.  I knew Bethie was hurting and wasn't getting out and there was no way I was walking in the river bottom woods by myself!  Maybe we'll try it another time.

 

After that, we geocached some more and found another one before picking up mom to go with us.  The main reason I wanted to pick her up was to help me find the cache at the Rustic.  Now about the cache at the Rustic.  I had read the night before that there was a cache at the Rustic, one that was fairly new, someone had just found it two days before us, and one that appeared to have a travel bug in it.  I've never gotten a travel bug before and was excited to possibly get my hands on it.  Once the GPS took us to the location, the hint was "under the stars to the east".  I searched all over that area and couldn't find it.  I finally gave up and decided we would go back later in the day to try.  Hence the reason for picking up my mom.  I knew she would be all over those bushes to help me find it.  We headed back out there and searched for a while and kept coming up empty handed.  We even almost got careened by a golf ball from a friend who was golfing.  A few other people even helped us look and we couldn't find it.  We finally gave up on that cache.  I logged that cache as a did not find and emailed the cache owner that I was there a couple of  times that day and even had 4 sets of eyes looking for it and couldn't find it.  I got an email back from the cache owner that after I emailed him and logged my DNF, he went out to check on the cache and said it was missing, and that if it was there, I would of easily seen it.  I hate that someone stole it, probably right after the last person found it just a couple days before us :(

 

Yeah, I found another cache!  Did I mention that geocaching is a lot more fun when you are actually finding the caches?

 

The cache in this cemetery was definitely in a neat container and location.  It is placed in a cemetery and the GPS took us to a big pine tree in the middle of the cemetery.  I looked all around and couldn't find it, then I happened to glance up in the tree and saw a bird there.  I thought, oh my there's a bird just sitting up in the tree.  Then I glanced a little closer and noticed the bird had a clip in it's butt.  It was a bird decoy clipped to the tree and was the cache container.  Definitely the most fun cache container we've found so far!

 

The next cache we looked for was in the same cemetery.  Mom thought for sure it was up the hill because of the description and took off running up the hill only to end up falling down and landing on her face on the hill and losing her shoes.  LOL!!  I knew all along it was on the opposite side of the road, however it was behind a fence and LOTS of poison ivy!  Ugh!  I logged that as a find, just couldn't sign the log.

A few more back roads caches and cemetery caches. 



We found another bigger cache that was supposed to have some travel bugs in it, but it was in a bunch of poison ivy covered brush so we'll have to try that one again in the fall/winter time.

 

After we were finished geocaching, I dropped Beth and mom off at their respective homes and Gavin and I headed back to Newburgh to meet Uncle Shawn for dinner at Jalisco's, and then headed to home to bath Gavin and myself and all of our clothes and shoes.  I didn't want to track any poison ivy into this house!

 

We had a great day and a lot of fun caching!  Can't wait to get back out there again and find some more with mom, Beth, and Gavin!

Weekend fun with friends

I took a half day vacation last Friday and headed to our friends the Robinson's for an afternoon of swimming, hanging out with friends, and grilling hot dogs.  We had a great time swimming and laughing!  Max and Layla also got a chance to dip their feeties in the water too :)

After a long day of swimming, we headed to The Patio in Cannelton for dinner.  When Shawn got off work he drove to Bowen and Heather's and the we all rode together for dinner.  Bowen's parents also joined us.  We had a great time hanging out with friends and enjoyed a delicious meal.  Heather had actually eaten at this restaurant the weekend before with friends and told us how yummy it was.  It definitely didn't disappoint.  We'll be back.

Saturday after I got finished cleaning, Heather and I were texting back and forth.  I was headed out for lunch and the next thing I knew, I was headed back home to get my swimsuit and then head back to their pool for an afternoon of swimming and relaxing!

Enjoying our frozen strawberry margaritas...non-alcoholic of course!