Shelly, Hannah and I attended the State Fair on Friday the 22nd.  It was the 2nd State Fair for Hannah.  We took her last year when she was only 3 weeks old.

We decided to get to the Fair as early as possible so that we might avoid the crowd.  It wasn’t all that crowded at 9am so we went directly to the Animal Birthing Barn.  We saw baby Turkeys on our way in, and were lucky enough to see a few pigs being born.  Very cool.  We then proceeded to a few other of the animal buildings.  Along the way we found a stand that makes wood (carved) signs, which we’ve been looking for at the Fair for a few years.  We’ve been promising my Mom and Dad a wood sign for their ‘direction post’ at Conrads.  The prices were reasonable so we ordered a sign that would be ready just a few hours.

In those few hours we decided to walk around and of course eat some ‘fair food’.  Normally we’d head straight for the cheese curds, but this year we decided not to since we just recently joined Lifetime Fitness to lose a couple of pounds.  But, since the Fair only comes around once a year we did splurge a bit.  We at the following:  chocolate covered bacon (yum yum), Sweet Martha’s Cookies, all-you-can-drink Milk, a shredded turkey sandwich (new, very good!), beef jerkey, snow-cone, apple-freeze and some fruit. 

Overall, the fair was a lot of fun this year.  By the time we left (~2pm), it was packed, and we were happy to be leaving.  Next year we might even let Hannah ride on some of the ‘kiddie’ rides.

On Thursday, August 14th, Hannah’s Birthday, we had our immediate family over to the house for a little party.  Shelly had been planning the event for weeks (maybe months), so we were both excited and relieved the day had come.  The theme Shelly chose for the party was ‘Picnic’.  I won’t try and describe all of the details of what Shelly did; I’ll let the pictures of the party do the talking.  But mainly there was a lot of color, flowers and summer/grill-food.

Earlier in the day a few of us took Hannah to the Minnesota Zoo.  The main attraction this summer are the 3 Grizzly Bears, and boy are they cool.  I wish I had taken a few pictures of them.  If you have the chance to make it out there, trust me you won’t be disappointed. 

After the zoo visit everybody met at our house for some appetizers on the deck and a sample of “Hannah’s Best Root Beer”.  To go along with the ‘Picnic’ theme, Shelly thought it would be fun to make some homemade Root Beer.  The whole process was fairly simple and the result was a pretty good tasting product.  The carbonation level is a bit on the low-end, but if you add some ice cream to it, it makes one excellent root beer float.

Once we were all filled up on Brats and Pulled-Pork sandwiches, not to mention the homemade baked beans and rice pudding (both recipes from Grandma Olive) it was time to give Hannah her first birthday cake.  Shelly constructed a ‘dessert tower’ made up of carrot cake cupcakes topped with edible (marshmallow) flowers.  Hannah loved it!

The night finished up with Hannah opening presents (too many as usual) and eventually saying ‘good night’ to everybody as she stayed up way past her bedtime.

Overall the birthday was a huge success!  I take zero credit for any of it (except for maybe the Root Beer production), as Shelly was the mastermind and the one up the majority of the nights prior to the party prepping every last detail.

Here is a link to the pictures of the day:

On Friday, Jason and I took the day off of work to drive up to Moose Lake and setup our bait stations.  With both of us each having a kid now finding the time to trounce around the woods is hard to do.  But with the ‘free pass’ from the wives we got on the road around 6am for a long day ahead of us.

Once we got up to Conrads we started loading up the trailer to bait our first station.  We brought along the following bait:

• Four 5-gallon buckets of doughnuts
• 2 gunny sacks (50 lbs each) of Cinnamon Toast Crunch
• 40 lbs bucket White doughnut glaze
• 30 lbs container Molasses

After a bit of trouble finding our 4-wheeler trail from 2 years ago, we finally loaded up as much of the bait we could carry and started off into the thickest part of the woods (prime bear area).  To lessen the load of carrying two 5-gallon buckets each (along with other supplies) I picked up a “water noodle-thingy” (5 foot long, foam flotation tube that has a hollow core.  We cut the tube in half, inserted a rope through the core and tied each end of the rope to the buckets.  This way we could use our backs to help with the weight without having the rope dig into our necks.

Once we reached our bait station, I volunteered to go back to the 4-wheeler to get the remaing bait while Jason prepped the site (dug/cleaned the hole for the bait, cleared any brush/branches that may impede our arrow, locate logs to lay on the bait, and clear an area for our ‘honey burn’.  Once I got back to the 4-wheeler and grabbed the remaining bait (both gunny sacks of cereal and the bucket of doughnut glaze) it was apparent my trek to the bait station would be very painful.  Thank goodness, about half way through my trip, Jason decided to find me to help lighten the load; I don’t think I would have made it with out his help.

Once we emptied all our bait into the bait hole, covered it with the 6 foot long logs, covered the pile (and coated a few trees around the station) with molasses, we started our “honey burn”.  A honey burn is a trick we picked up from a local in Moose Lake a couple of years ago.  Basically, you find an old tin coffee can in which you can place a container of Sterno in.  Above the sterno you hang a tin cup (vegetable can) with a long bolt through the diameter (so as to balance on the lip of the coffee can).  In the vegetable can you pour about a cup (or so) of honey.  The smell of boiling honey is a perfect attractant to any bears down wind.

After finally getting back to the 4-wheeler we drove back to the truck and headed back to Conrads to pick up more bait for our next 2 stations.  While loading up bait for our next trip, Jason started working on the 4-wheeler because it wasn’t starting.  To make a long story short, after 2 hours of taking apart the whole machine we finally were back on the road, headed for Barnum.

The Barnum public land we hunt (both bear and deer) is not nearly as thick, rough terrain as the public land in Moose Lake, so we were able to find the 1st bait station and bait without any issues.  But, because of the 2 hour setback from hacking the 4-wheeler to pieces (literally) we ran out of daylight and had to settle for only 2 bait stations this year.  With the amount of work that goes into baiting each station, and the limited amount of time we have in our schedules, I am glad we only have 2 stations to keep filled this year.