4-H

This year both Madison and Ellie were involved with 4-H projects.  This was Madison’s 3rd year.  She chose to do “The Writer in You,” a creative writing project.  She loves writing and will write stories just for fun in her free time.  This was a bit more challenging in that she had to write to given prompts, picture prompts, with a dialogue driven plot, in a specific scene, poetry, and more.  Our plan was to start earlier than normal and get it done before school was out.  Then, we decided to buy and sell a house and that plan fell apart.  Instead, we pushed the last few weeks of the summer, right before judging.  It made for some tears – it is hard to write creatively in a moment’s notice.  (Unless you participate in Power of the Pen…)  But she did it.  She went to judging and did a great job talking with the judge about herself and her project.  She earned an "outstanding” ribbon for it.

    

In fact, she ended up receiving a special award at the fair on Sunday evening for her project.  There were only 7 of these awards given out for various still projects, and she earned one of them.  Pretty cool!

    

Ellie transitioned from Cloverbuds, where there did group projects, to 4-H, where she chose her own project. She chose to do “All About Dogs.”  This project did not require us to own or show a dog, but rather it helped kids explore dog breeds and how to interact with dogs.  The really nice part about her project is that she met weekly with her advisor to read over each section and discuss the questions.  So, the bookwork was done before we knew it.  We took a few opportunities to attend some of the dog sessions over the summer where kids who were going to show their dogs in obedience, rally, or showmanship areas could come practice and get tips.  We wanted to see if we thought Pepper could handle this.  Not sure he could, but I guess we could always try it.  Ellie had fun observing what was required and taking tips she heard home to try out on Pepper.  At the rally event, a woman allowed Ellie to use her dog to practice what it would be like to go through the rally course.  Ellie had a blast with this. 

    

She then had to make a poster showing something she learned.  She made a poster where she displayed pictures of the three breeds of Pepper (Pekingese, miniature Poodle, and Bichon Frise) and a picture of Pepper with the characteristics of each of the breeds that he displays. She had to take the poster to the judging session.  This is a big deal because the kids go all by themselves to meet the judge and share what they learned.  While she knew she would have to do this, doing it was much harder.  She had a really hard time.  Thankfully, by the time she was getting herself pulled together to try approaching the judge again, we realized that the judge was the same lady that had loaned her a dog to use to practice for Rally.  Once she sat down with the judge, she talked for a long time and did a great job.  She walked away with an “outstanding” ribbon, too.

    

Random Pepper moment with Ellie – she was feeding him lettuce like a baby at the table.