Applebutter Festival Pageant

Salem has an annual Apple Butter Festival during early October. There are pageants and entertainment, a parade, craft and food vendors, groups making and selling apple butter, and some games. After sitting out the Doddridge County Fair Pageant, Taylor decided she wanted to do the Apple Butter Festival Pageant.

The color red had to be included on either the dress or an accessory, so my very creative and crafty friend, Kelly (check out Llama's Bowtique on Facebook for beautiful hair accessories and ribbon sculptures), made Taylor some bling for her dress and hair! Taylor looked beautiful! There were 24 children in the pageant, ranging from 3-7 years old.

This pageant also required a talent. Taylor and I worked really hard thinking of the perfect song. After much deliberation, and creative word replacement, we had found it: The Apple Butter Slide! We started with Tracy Byrd's Watermelon Crawl and replaced words as appropriate to make it about Apple Butter and Salem!

All the children looked great and did a wonderful job! Taylor got scared when it was her turn to sing, and I had to get her off the stage to sit with me. After the rest of the children finished, Taylor decided she was brave enough to give it a go - and she did great! I am so proud of her! The pageant director disqualified Tay because she didn't sing at the right time, but she had a blast and was SO proud of herself for singing her song!

Here are some pictures, and a video that my sister took, the video isn't great quality, but you can hear Tay's song (for some reason my sister got mesmerized by the judge in front of her bobbing her head with the song, lol)! A certain individual that will not be receiving a Mother-Of-The-Year award remembered the video camera, even charged it...when I turned it on to record Tay, I realized there was no memory card in it!







Because I haven't seen any expose on this, I thought I'd share a little known fact that I learned this past week - because of Health Department rules, the Apple Butter is not made with whole apples, they have to start with store bought applesauce! Gasp!

Back to School!!

Taylor started back to school last Thursday! She was super excited to get to First Grade and see all of her friends! I was super excited to get one of the kids out of the car for my commute - they pretty much fight constantly, and it really wears you down!

Taylor picked out her outfit the night before, and insisted on wearing not only the coordinating necklace, but a scarf as well. The girl LOVES to accessorize! She was also super excited to wear her Sketchers Twinkle Toes Groovy Baby shoes - every little girls dream! They are pretty much every annoying thing they could do to shoes rolled up into one pair - glitter, rhinestones, lights, embroidered peace signs...you get the point!

We are super lucky in our schools as we do not have to provide any school supplies, just a backpack. Taylor picked a Barbie bride backpack, and in all it's pink and girly glory, it's actually pretty cute. The dress even has a piece of fabric that is loose (which requires the backpack to be hung on a hook by the door out of the reach of the ornery kittens).

Taylor loves riding the bus, and was ready to hop on when it arrived! I reminded her that I would like at least one picture this year, so she didn't sprint up the stairs and disappear like last year! We found out that Taylor's regular bus driver, George, had experienced a heart attack during the week was having bypass surgery instead of taking the kids to their first day of school. Taylor is so sweet, she has been praying for George each night!










Taylor had a great first day of school, although she was pretty tired when she got home! She announced that she didn't have any homework, I think she was a little disappointed, lol!

Stay tuned later this week, Trace starts school on Wednesday. If anyone wants to hang out with me while I cry all day, let me know!