The McCoys had a cookout at their house this afternoon. It wasn’t particularly warm, but somehow the kids wound up putting swimsuits on and playing with the hose for most of the afternoon. There is a lot of mud at the farm. Most of it was on Alex and Mayson. The quote of the day came from Alex, who, when slattered with a handful of mud from Mayson, turns around to face him, and says "Oh, it's on." Mud...everywhere... and Travis has been taking a look at my dead tractor, and according to him, it is dead dead dead. The engine is just totally shot. But, he happens to have another lawn tractor engine that he will replace it with, so he's going to keep the thing for a little while. We have a new push mower anyway. Yesterday we took the kids (and their bikes) to the Winona Lake Fat & Skinny Tire Festival (or Bike Fest for short). There were a bunch of events for kids, which was all we were really interested in. They had a bike decorating contest which Alex won a prize for, mostly because he brought on of my old car license plates from home to put on his bike…it happened to say something like 43X6547 on it, and he told the judges it was a math problem. They liked that. He and Missy added a bunch of streamers and assorted creative junk. Missy also won a prize in a coloring contest. There was a parade for the decorated bikes after that, then the kids could ride in an obstacle course. Then we left because it was just starting to rain. Overall, I gotta say it was not well managed. Nobody seemed to know exactly when or where anything was supposed to be happening, not even the organizers. There was consequently a lot of standing around waiting for someone to tell us something.