July 12, 2007--4-H Judging

Today was the official beginning of 4-H week. The fair doesn't actually begin until Sunday, but most of the projects will be judged today, tomorrow, or Saturday. There are only a few exceptions. For example, sewing was judged last Friday--a week earlier than all the other projects. Joy was in that project, so we spent most of the day at that judging event. She was the only one in her division, and she got a blue ribbon, so she will most likely get a champion. You can never know for sure until you actually see the purple ribbon, but it does seem pretty likely. We had two projects being judged today--Joy had her knitting, and Jay had his model. This was the third time Jay had done his model, because they just were not turning out well. This last one Erick helped him with (the first two he done completely on his own) and supervised, plus he didn't paint it. It's not required in his division to paint, so we just left it that base gray color they come in. He did it just in the last couple of days, and it looked a lot nicer. On the way to the fair, I had told him to hold onto it, but he set it up on the cupholder and decided to read a book instead. The first corner we took, the car fell off the cupholder and two of the wheels broke off. I turned the van around and we went home and got the model glue, and we drove the rest of the way with Jay holding the wheels on trying to get the glue to dry. Joy's knitting was judged first. There were two in her division. The other was a small counted cross-stitch piece. Joy did much better talking to the judge this time around (she was very shy with the sewing judge) and the judge liked her scarf. She took Champion in her division. Jay had a lot more competition--models is a very popular project. We weren't sure how he would do, but he ended up with a Reserve Champion. We are so proud of our kids! Tomorrow is Foods judging. Joy is the only one being judged tomorrow, and she'll be competing against her aunt in her division.