Minnesota State Fair

Today Scott and I went to the great Minnesota get together. I love the Minnesota State fair! I don't know if it's the crowds with endless people watching potential, the 27 different foods on a stick (this year the new one was "hot dish on a stick", hot dish is Minnesotan for casserole), or the smorgasborg of smells mixed together of fried food, autumn air, garbage, and farm animals. All of it is nostalgic to me.

One of the sights to see is the butter sculptures of Princess Kay of the Milky Way and her royal attendants. Each day a new bust is sculpted right there in front of everyone. Maybe they're a little creepy, but it's tradition. Plus, what beauty queen from a dairy farm wouldn't want a butter head of herself in her freezer?

Another tradition is to buy a bucket of fresh made cookies and bring them to the all you can drink milk stand, which is fresh, frothy milk, and have a cookie feast.

It's not a complete day unless at the end of it your feet are sore and your clothes fit a little tighter.

Ah, Minnesota...

Playing in Lake water is so much fun, especially when the entire lake ends up in your diaper, sand and all. The diaper on my niece Sofia got so big it looked like a watermelon lumbering between her legs. It was amazing she could keep walking since her balance was precarious to begin with. Being at the lake is so wonderful and relaxing. With nieces and nephews, it's a blast!

I'm looking forward to Wednesday when Scott will come. Vacations are much better with husbands.

And you thought your laptop was small

Scott got a cool new toy from work.

It's about the size of a piece of paper. It's so small that it won't even fit a disk drive. Scott has to attach a separate media base if he wants to use a CD or DVD. He's having a lot of fun with it.

From out of the stone age...

We finally emerge into the Peterson blogging scene.

Yay! This is fun to play with! I can see how it can become addicting to post things and keep the world informed of all that goes on.

This is a painting that is the first in a series I'm doing about the symbolism in the Chronicles of Narnia. For those of you who have read or seen the movie, the figure of Aslan is obviously symbolic of Christ. This painting is called "Good and Terrible." Here are some quotes that were inspirational to this painting:

"When they tried to look at Aslan's face they just caught a glimpse of the golden mane and the great, royal, solemn, overwhelming eyes; and then they found they couldn't look at him and went all trembly."

"His hair was like pure gold and the brightness of his eyes like gold that is liquid in the furnace.... and in beauty he surpassed all that is in the world even as the rose in bloom surpasses the dust of the desert."