final Day of the Fair

I arrived at the fairgrounds at 6:30am to find Steven loading up the extra bales of hay. There was much work to be done before the fair started as things were dropped and left after the big day on Saturday.
While the barn aisle was being swept an older man came up asked me if I was with that gymnastic group and handed over $20.00. When he was asked why, he explained he was so impressed with the way they conducted themselves and how hard they worked. What a nice thing to do!
Sunday was not as crowded as Saturday, in fact we made much less popcorn and cotton candy but still the arena had a decent audience.
A TV station man with a video camera came up to the Jenis and Ylse and took some video, then taped the vaulting practice. Diane was told he would use what he taped and it would be on channel 17 out of Decatur. Hope we can figure out how to see it.
Both performances were better than Saturday but always Sunday seems to be a bit of a let down. Once done we rushed to the stalls and many many hands started removing all the stall decorations. In less than an hour we were packed, hooked up, loaded and pulling out of the fairgrounds. We stopped at Steak and Shake for dinner and had a good time rehashing the 2011 Horse Fair. We all felt it was a good expenditure of money with the amazing amount of exposure that came not just to the vaulters but to Horsemeister also. Raven is becoming a household name. We laughed at some of our goofs. We had been missing 2 parts to Ciera's harness and took the straps off of 2 suitcases, one broke during the performance. Isn't this something rednecks do? Jenis slid off the homemade really ugly pedestal and made everyone gasp.
Videos of the performances will be worked on today and posted. Rachel Sauder of momentscapturedbyrachel took some amazing pictures some of which will also be posted. The horses all made us proud from the smallest (Eisis to the largest the Elephant Ribbon!)
Here are a few random pictures of our experience. The first is my grand daughter Addyson enjoying the show.

some of Beth's granddaughters along with Kristin's Aubrey

Monica, Jessica and Rebekah at the extreme cowboy race.

Rhoda and Emily also at the extreme cowboy race.

The donations ready to be counted.

Anni bringing Ciera and Emily bringing Ylse and Wynne to the trailer for load up.

We had such a great time, it's hard to believe the fair is over for another year.