Pago and State Fair

We enjoyed a lovely weekend. Ben and Ashley went out Friday night with their friends, Jeff and Catherine. We dined to Pago, a restaurant that Ashley has been wanting to visit since it opened a few months ago. We savored caviar, lamb, and crab appetizers; quail, fish, and pork entrees; and 4 very luscious desserts. The neat thing about this restaurant is that almost everything is locally bought, so the menu changes frequently based on the fresh ingredients. For example, Ashley's entree included very fresh heirloom tomatoes, fennel flowers, chicken and shitake mushrooms, and fingerling potatoes. Ben's entree had fresh apple and locally grown, antibiotic free pork. Amazing! We highly recommend it for something different.
After dinner we went to the ballet, which included a selection of short pieces correographed by members of Ballet West. It was better than Ben and Ashley had anticipated and made for quite an evening.
Sunday, we headed to the Utah State Fair. We thought that we would visit the animals first. However, being the final day of the fair, many of the animals were cleared out already. We did see a few though: goats, a gigantic bull (pictured below), a 3-month-old calf named Bubba that Maia got to pet, a very vocal sheep that Maia was terrified of, many bunnies, and pidgeons. With the small number of animals, we were done visiting them within 30 minutes, so we went for the fun and games.

Maia got to ride a pony named Rocky (she was a little sad that she could not ride the very tiny pony, but started smiling after she pet little Rocky).

A pink-haired clown made her a pink balloon dog with a heart on it. She went on the carousel and into the jumpy house.

A farmer gave her a prize winning pumpkin. She pretended to be a farmer in the children's area (collecting harvest and selling it to the market). But the main attraction was the Giant Yellow Slide. Maia said, "I want to go on that!" Ashley had fond memories of the slide from when she was a child and agreed to take her. Maia excitedly ascended the mountain of stairs and sat on Ashley's lap on the mat. Ashley was a little terrified looking out on the valley and was hoping (just a little) that Maia would get scared and turn back down the stairs. She did not and it was time to slide! Ben was at the bottom taking pictures and we were moving so quickly that most of them are blurry, but we have one with Ashley and Maia looking quite nervous. Still, at the end they were both laughing and said that it was their favorite part of the fair!