Colin has a great love for all animals presently, so we went to the farm. Everything was very exciting.

We have been watching some new Baby Einstein dvds that we borrowed from Colin's cousin Mallory. (As she is less than 2 months, she does not yet enjoy the shows.) Colin has LOVED the farm animal dvd. However, the first time he watched it he showed a bit of his sensitive side. There was a scene where a lot of apples fall to the ground. Colin exclaimed "oh no!" and seriously got tears in his eyes. My boy loves his apples.

Just a few cute photos of Colin in his cooler-weather clothes. The sweater is from Aunt April. The chocolate milk mustache is from Nana.

Here are a few more photos from the concert in Atlanta. The performance was last Saturday and was a very cool program- very eclectic. The Southeastern Festival of Song (Sefos.org if you want to see more pictures and info) operates on the philosophy that good music is good music, regardless of the genre. So they will go from Paul Simon to Schubert in the same set of songs. One of the audience favorites was a rendition of Bruce Springstein's 'State Trooper', sung by the quartet with guitar and Brian playing weird traffic sounds on his cello. We all had a great time and hope to work with Sefos again soon. It is a great foundation.

Brian rehearsing with Kathy the night before the concert.

A photo of the cast.

I have been having fun taking photos of the song festival process.

Brian is singing and playing cello in the concert, which is why it is nice that his cello arrived after Delta tried to lose it.

Can you find my extra baby helper in the photo?

More adventures in self-feeding. I need to get the custard style yogurt for him to maybe make less mess. Happily, Colin's love of table knives has been replaced with a love of Matchbox cars. He loves all things with wheels.

We are staying in a very beautiful apartment, that we are trying to keep beautiful. I have Colin eat in the middle of the wood floor for easier cleaning.

He loves to drink the bath water. It is gross, but probably tasted a bit like yogurt.

So we arrived to Atlanta Sunday evening for the Southern Festival of Song. It turned into a long journey as several things went wrong right off the bat. Delta Airlines hates cellos, and we subsequently hate Delta Airlines. And Colin is not as easy as he once was on airplanes. I am very glad we did not have to fly to Israel or anything. But we eventually arrived and Atlanta is lovely.
So Brian is singing and playing a bit on his cello for the Southeastern Festival of Song. I got to take some test shots in the Hall today. This is Jason Hardy and Kathleen Kelly. No photos of Brian since he was chasing Colin.

The concert should be highly entertaining and is this Saturday night. Let us know if you will be in Atlanta.

We decided to take a little trip up to Park City after Colin's nap yesterday. Fall is arriving to the mountains- see beautiful foliage below.

It seemed as thought the fates were not going to support a fun outing as we got stuck in traffic for almost an hour on I-80 due to the remains of a widfire and then hail, deluge and 30 degree temperature drop right as we reached the Park City limits. I was not having a very good attitude at this point, but Brian parked, and we ran into a little souvenir shop to see if the rain would end. I bought a little happiness in the form of a fizzy beverage.

The rain did end pretty quickly, and then the sun actually came out. I love it when the sun shines against a black storm sky. We ended up having a lovely time wandering around Main Street, looking in some of the shops, pretending that we might actually be interested in buying that cool $450.00 green pearl necklace the shop keeper was showing me. Colin chose our dinner place. We were letting him walk up the sidewalk and he suddenly darted into a pizza place. They had cleverly placed a big Lego table right by the door and Colin was on it, playing furiously- so pizza it was.

There was beautiful light on Mt. Olympus when we arrived home. I love beautiful light.

The other afternoon we decided to go up Little Cottonwood Canyon, since we both had not been up there for a while. We got up to the Albian Basin above Alta. Brian took this nice wildflower/mountain shot.

We went up the canyon earlier than we had planned because Colin decided he only needed a 30 minute nap at home. He also figured out how to get out of his crib. He has been working on this one for a few weeks. I would love to see how he actually does it. I caught him with his foot over the side a few times, but we have yet to witness the entire escape process. The crib was his one last place of confinement but alas, no more. Colin will not be confined.
Since Colin was still tired, he slept in his stroller over very rocky terrain. (See above) We are still very in love with our jogging stroller. In the recline it rocks the baby as the stroller goes over bumps. I could go on and on about the stroller as it is quite the wonder stroller. It was the product of a full blown stroller obsession that took place while we were in Israel.

View from near one of the Alta lodges.

Random garden eggplant still life. I love how shiny they are. Brian grilled one of these for dinner last night.

Last night Brian got around to putting some of the harvested pears into a pie. He was very happy with the results as he has been on a quest for the perfect pie pastry since before we were married and he thinks he's found it. It involves a lot of butter and a secret ingredient.

As evidence of superb flakiness we submit these two exhibits (above and below). Note the highlighted area with its shards of crispy yet tender buttery layers. The filling was flavored with ginger, clove, nutmeg, brown sugar and a bit of lime juice. It was very tasty.

Below are a few photos and thoughts about our experience at the Utah State Fair- courtesy of Brian As you can see, I'm crowing about the fair in very dubious fashion. We did enjoy ourselves, and got our 8 dollars worth, but some things in comparison with the grand fairs of the midwest came up a little short. Indiana's state fair is about 4 times bigger than Utah's, which doesn't necessarily make it better, but you just can't be totally happy with your fair experience without some deep fried cheese curds. Indiana also had what was billed as the world's biggest pig.

The butter sculpture was suitably huge and gross, as we had heard the butter has been recycled for three or four years. Sad, because I love butter.

This is a novel way to present garden produce for judging. This one apparently won a blue ribbon. I wish we had made an entry. We could have done something killer with one of Ann's mom's eggplants. We did like visiting the fair early on, so all the produce wasn't rotting. The last few years we came in on the tail end, and things didn't look very fresh.

This rooster won some kind of prize. He looks very proud of himself.

Colin brushes sheep at the little farmers interactive area. He was a good farmer and it was a nice attraction for the kids, but I was lamenting the absence of a petting zoo. No petting zoo! I suppose there are too many liabilities involved. Some kid gets foot and mouth from a pygmy goat and the fair gets closed down by a law suit.

Here's Colin's victory shot as a future farmer of America.

I had a big problem with the food choices at the Utah state fair. At Indiana's fair, every where you looked you saw somebody deep frying some new unlikely thing- Not to mention the Pork Tent, where we spent a very romantic first wedding anniversary. But the Utah fair gives us "Panda Express". Like we can't get that at the mall food court.

Here's one cool thing. There was a dutch oven cooking competition, and this is one of the dessert entries. It was nice to see a pie entry in the Dutch oven competition, as there was NO PIE IN THE HOME BAKING COMPETITION. What kind of state fair doesn't have pie judging?!! The lady I questioned about it said something about problems with lack of refrigeration. I'm pretty sure pies pre date refrigerators by a considerable margin. Like the pioneers refrigerated their pies. Boo!

These are what Colin calls apples (basically any round fruit is an apple). Brian harvested the tree in the garden and got two large crates full. He wants to make some pies.

One of the prettier apples.

This is the view of the mountains from the garden. We really do love it here. When Brian's not working, we are on vacation in a beautiful setting.

This is my Mom's green man- he's a British tradition. She has him fixed on a wall of ivy. Brian helped her convert him into a fountain spitting water into a big earthen pot.