Yesterday Jrock and I drove up to Armstrong (where they make the cheese!) and went to the widely-acclaimed but never-yet-seen Interior Provincial Exposition.  It was super fun, and brought us back to our childhoods. 

Jrock said it was like the fall fairs back home, except that this was “much more polished.”  We actually couldn’t believe how clean everything was – not one bit of trash anywhere! Plus, he got his fix of examining the cattle. (Farm boy.)

I enjoyed seeing the cute and furry animals, and told Jrock in length about the money-making I used to do at the North Peace Fall Fair.  I would enter everything from photography to vegetables to poetry to sewing, for the $7 and $10 prizes.  I remember one summer I made $70, which was a whole lot to a little kid!

The food was great too – look! how healthy is my plate! a delicious taco salad and a fresh blueberry slush – the poutine and coke is Jrocks.  He is counter-healthy.

My favorite part of the day was watching the dog agility.  You know you are part of the community when you start recognizing people where you go – a lady I work with and volunteer with in Rotary was MCing the dog events.  And the receptionist from the Adoption Centre was showing her (joyfully misbehaving) black lab.  Here’s a little treat video from the dogs below, if you like such things…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/hxPKqogH4Jc]

The whole day we said that we’d love to bring the kids back every year – super fun.

We finished the day with a trip to the Village Cheese Company – the artisan cheesmaker in Armstrong.  Delicious! I especially love their Westwold (herbed) white cheddar, and the garlic havarti, and the blueberry, and the cointreau-infused cheddar, and the smokehouse gouda, and… we came home with a lot of cheese!

We’ve been in this house since October last year, and it had been presentable since January, but until last weekend, we hadn’t hosted a party.  I decided I needed a pick-me-up and it was time to invite a bunch of people. So we sent out the invites and enjoyed the company of 20+ friends, all from different areas of our life: work, adoption friends, Rotary, friends from our home in Alberta…  We had grandparents to babes, and (in typical fashion,) people originally from Sweden, Zimbabwe, etc. It was a great time and the bunch of strangers walked away with some new friends. 

On the menu (I’m always about the food) were blueberry bison bratwurst, fresh corn-on-the-cob, homemade lavender biscuits, garden salad (you guessed it – from my garden!), tabouli with veggies and mint (from my garden,) and watermelon and cupcakes for dessert.  Yum yum!  Oh, and I made scratch lemonade and some mint green suntea with mint from the garden. People brought wine, and I’m glad to report that we have friends with taste, since there was quite a bit of good wine leftover. Double yum.