"BUT I DON'T WANT TO LEAVE MOM! ... I WANT TO LIVE AT THE STATE FAIR!"

Spoken by a girl after my own heart. For a full year we wait for the biggest, best, most fattening, event in all of Minnesota, our State Fair. If you've ever had the good fortune to go, you know what I'm talking about. I can do one better than Clara, if I could marry the State Fair, I would.

I was a 4-H kid you see, with cowboy boots, a big ole' western saddle and a horse to ride around a little arena, competing with other country geek kids for blue ribbons (and I did win a few I'm pleased to report). Having swapped my bib overalls for, well, bib overalls -- only now I wear them with a City Girl sashay -- going to the fair kinda feels like going home for me. Not everybody here likes the Fair (gasp!!!!! Treson!!!! I say to no one in particular, like Steve Laliberte for instance)

Seems my kids have developed a taste for the old fashioned and oh so wonderfully kitchy exhibits, hundreds of varieties of food on a stick, barn animals (including my personal fav -- the State's biggest pig) milking cows and of course, the Butter Heads (sculptures of "Princess Kay of the Milky Way" and her Court, carved out of butter!) Truly remarkable fine art. That you can eat.

I can not wait for next year. Neither can Clara.


So this is where milk comes from


Mmmmmm. Butterheads.


Lulu hauls his crops to market


My favorite 4-H exhibit, Paul Bunyan, as a baby. I think.


Looking for a wearbale crop art bikini?


The biggest pig


Littler pigs


Riding in a bee, whee