Kate & Alex: 4th of July

We spent the fourth up in VT with Grammie and Scott (The Northeast Kingdom). Luckily for us, Grammie lives just down the road from a pick-your-own strawberry patch. Needless to say, Kate had a ball picking and eating them.

The farm is called Mountain View. And what a view!!

Papa finding the best row

Kate learned real quickly to only pick the ripe ones. She thought the basket was for stems, however, after she ate the fruit of the berry....

mmmm berries

Papa

At lunch, Kate grabbed her stomach and moaned "Oh, I ate too many berries!"

Not all of the berries made it home... we snacked quite a bit!

Home to make pie!

The next day, we went to Barton to the fairgrounds for a 4th of July celebration. It was a real experience for me! I had never been to a real country fair (although this was not officially THE fair, that is in August) or tractor pull (more on that later).

This is the truck we parked next to. Note the sticker. Gulp. No Boca burgers here!

This is the track for the tractor pull. For fellow 'flatlanders', a tractor pull is an event where they hook a large amount of weight to the back of a tractor (I never did figure out just how much) and watch the tractor try to pull it as far as it can. There were classic tractors from the 40's and 50's (some real beauties) and some more modern bruisers. The tractors weighed anywhere from 3 to 11,000 Lbs! The tractors would scream down the track and finally succumb to the weight in a cloud of smoke. Sometimes the front ends come up and they really smell. It was actually very addicting and we watched it for quite a while. Kate loved it!