Princess Ava

At the Benton County Fair the other night, Ava and I finished watching the Supreme Showmanship contest after we got there.  She was very intrigued about how the process worked as we discussed how to properly show cattle and sheep (the only species we watched).  But she was also intrigued by the "princesses" that were there to hand out the big trophy.  I happened to mention that I was a fair princess at one time too and she was in absolute awe!  Albeit a "few" years ago, but I was a Huntington County 4-h Queen at one time.  She asked if I had a crown too and I told her that I did and that it was stored in a box somewhere in the basement.  So of course, we had to dig it out the next day.  What a way to excite a little girl!  She loved that I let her wear the tiara and she was mesmerized by all the pictures and things in my scrapbook.  Later in the day, she came to me with the scrapbook and her red fancy dress-up dress on and asked if I could take her picture wearing the crown and a red dress like me in the picture on the front of the scrapbook:)

This led to digging out some other things too after she looked at the pictures of me in different fancy dresses.  She asked about my wedding dress and was surprised to find out that it has been in the back of her closet the whole time.  So we drug it out so that she could see it and even tried on my veil.  She asked if she could wear it when she got married:)  She even told me the little boy that she was going to marry!!!  We also had to get out my high school graduation cap and gown.  She wanted to go through all of the interesting things in the boxes in the basement but I had to promise those for another time since I had a lot to get done that afternoon.  But someday, we can have a good time looking at all the rest of the plaques, ribbons, trophies, awards, letter jacket, FFA jacket, etc. that are filling boxes and shelves in the basement.  I guess this is partially why you keep all this stuff - fun things and memories to share with your kids:)  When looking at the queen scrapbook, they saw pictures where I crowned the next queen and saw Uncle Doug when he was crowned the next 4-H King.  They both loved the story that I then told them about how Doug sat on his queen's crown during the fair.  They thought that was hilarious and I am sure that they will actually remember to ask Doug someday how it felt to have a crown in his butt:)