A Fair Photographer

Yes, I know I promised I’d get posting on my recent trip abroad, and I will do that.  Right now my main task there is to figure out how to organize all the things I want to say.  When you’re gone for that length of time and have as grand a time as we did, that’s a pleasant but nontrivial task.

In the meantime, life goes on.

We managed to time our trip fairly well, actually.  We arrived in Sweden just after our friends there had completed a Major Family Event, so we didn’t interfere with that.  We left to go to England in time to see the end of the school year awards ceremony for the kids, and our visit fell neatly between the end of the Diamond Jubilee (which left the entire country covered in Union Jacks) and the start of the Olympics (which encouraged the keeping up of said Union Jacks). 

And we got home just in time to prepare for the County Fair here in Our Little Town, an event in which Tabitha and Lauren now have active roles.

Not as active as they were prior to the trip, alas.  The vicious heat wave that engulfed the US as we were leaving claimed Lauren’s show rabbit, Hazel, while we were away.  Lauren was very mature about it, really.  She was sad for a bit and asked if we could have a funeral for her when we got back, which we intend to do shortly.  And then she started planning for new rabbits, specifically Dwarf Hotots, a breed of small white rabbits with what appears to be Theda-Bara-style kohl eye makeup. 

Life, as noted, goes on.

So Tabitha is working on her art projects and her woodworking project, and Lauren spent yesterday choosing from among the pictures she’s taken over the last year for her photography project.

Lauren, it must be said, has quite an eye for photography.

We managed to get the photos mounted this morning after scouring Our Little Town for photo mounting tape (an apparently rare if not particularly costly commodity these days), and after lunch we headed over to the County Fairgrounds to get them judged.

We signed in at around 1:30.

“How long of a wait do we have?” we asked the pleasant man at the sign-in desk.  “From here?” he replied, “maybe two or three hours.”

Okay, then.

So we headed off to the local DQ for some ice cream, and back home for some books to read while we waited.  And then we returned.  And waited.

Eventually they did call Lauren’s number – almost three hours to the minute after we’d signed in – and she went up to explain her photos.

She did a very nice job of it, apparently.

Most first-year photographers get second-class red ribbons or third-class white ones.  Very few get first-class blue ribbons, and fewer still get multiple ones.

Good work, Lauren.  I’m proud of you.