White Castle

No trip home is complete without one stop to White Castle.... and yes, we have to build a burger box tower each time.

Matie and GGpa

Everyone was trying to get their hug from Great Grandpa (GGpa) or Matie when they came over for the day, including me.  Since Jeremy and I live so far away, it is nice to be able to spend the whole day with them. GGpa even spent the night, enjoying a White Castle or two and a game of Telestrations before retiring for the evening. 

Tennis Lessons

With Annabelle and Juliette taking tennis lessons, they took advantage of playing with Daddo and Will.  Daddo has always played tennis, usually on Thursday nights. Will used to be a summer tennis camp coach in D.C., when they were over from the UK.  Both men are really good players and so we hope that they were able to pass on some tips to the next generation of tennis stars!

What I love about this is that Will, in his Team GB t-shirt, is fist bumping. This man won't even high-5!

 Jeremy was able to hit a few rounds with Juliette and Brando.  Will and Annabelle took on Daddo.  Where was I, you ask?  Well, I could say I was busy taking photos.... but really, I was hitting balls against the practice wall.  And if I am honest, I was hitting only a few balls against the practice wall--I had to spend more time retrieving the balls I hit over the wall.   Ahem.

Apples and Bananas Cookies?

 Will was given the most interesting cookie cutters we have ever seen by Annabelle and Juliette.  We aren't sure what kind of cookies these will be, or if they will fool anyone into eating a vegetables. 

Regardless of the real purpose, Will and Brando found another purpose: face decorations.

Cousins Playtime!

 Cousins Annabelle, Juliette, and Brando running rampant in Daddo's backyard. Cartwheels, bubbles, gardening, and a game of tag with Uncle Will....  What more fun can one have?

Yard Work!

No matter where you go, there is always work to be done.  The boys helped Daddo in the yard after it was thatched. Raking the grass into large piles and then bagging it took some time, but with modern farmers such as these, the work went pretty fast. 

From raking the grass to sweeping the front sidewalk, Brando was Daddo's biggest helper.

Apparently consolidating piles is a two-person job:

And in the end, the reward for a hard day of raking-- a nice Mic Ultra.

Fried Everything

Not only are there lots of interesting things to learn at the fair focusing on agriculture, but there are a lot of interesting foods to experience. Such as:

Pork Butt on a Stick or Smoked Turkey legs. 

Lots of things are either on a stick or fried, ad sometimes both.  This being Kentucky, there had to be some Deep Fried Derby Pie-- think pecan pie with bourbon and chocolate.  We tasted this, after watching the process of bits of pie being dipped into batter and then dropped into a deep fryer.  Once the pieces are cooked, they are sprinkled with powdered sugar and then drizzled with raspberry sauce.   And Deep Fiend Kool Aide is basically funnel cake batter combined with powder Kool Aide, so the funnel cake comes out red and is sprinkled with more Kool Aide sugar crystals. 

 

 

We probably didn't need the raspberry sauce--it was already sweet enough without-- and I will admit that it wasn't bad.  But it wasn't something that I will seek out again.

This also being the home of Girl Scout cookies, we had to try a basket of assorted Deep Fried Girl Scout Cookies: tag-alongs (peanut butter), samoas (the coconut-caramel ones), and thin mints.   A basket has six cookies, two of each variety.  Darren, Will, Cousin Diane, and I tried them.  The peanut butter tag-a-longs were pretty tasty.  The thin mints were weird. Mint is a not a flavor enhanced by frying.  The samoas were odd because the coconut shavings were crunchy.

But the extreme thing on offer at the fair was the Krispy Kreme booth offering chicken breast sandwich on raspberry-filled powdered doughnuts or a hamburger between two glazed doughnuts.  Gross.  There was about an hour long wait for these monstrosity of sandwiches and even there was even a display sandwich.