Going to the Fair...

For as far back as I can remember, I've always enjoyed going to the local fair. My parents would take my brother and I and we'd enjoy petting the animals, walking through the booths, looking at the art from area schools, riding the rides and eating funnel cakes! Going there through the high school years was awesome as you could walk around a certain amount of time before having to meet up with parents a couple or few hours later. And then there was dating and walking around with my boyfriend who'd later become my hubby. Loved all the special memories! Just the smell of a certain kind of cooked food could immediately bring me back to a place in time...in my head! Our fair has been in the area for 70 years so there are lots of traditions associated with going there with many people around here.

At some point, after my girls were older and didn't want to go with me and before the boys were born, I stopped going. For the last eight years, I've luckily avoided the fair, fearing that my kiddo would get lost or we'd spend too much money. I thought he wasn't aware of it and wasn't missing anything. Last year, he saw the commercials on tv and was interested in going but hubby was out of town so we didn't get around to going. This year, since it had come up in various conversations, we decided to just bite the bullet and go!

We had an AWESOME time! We showed up at the fairgrounds around 10:15 in the morning and left there over 12 and a half hours later! Yes, you read that right! It was kid's day so the tickets were incredibly inexpensive. Instead of having to have 4 or 6 tickets for a ride (at $1 each,) each ride was only one ticket. We rode rides, pet animals, even went to a rodeo (which happened to be scheduled that day in the building on the premises.) I had never been to a rodeo before! I don't know why...I'm a native Texan and there are horses everywhere around here. I just never thought about it, I guess. We sat for 2 hours in awe at the bullriding, calf catching, barrel racing, and sheep riding events. Then, we went out and rode some more rides, ate more food and eventually, with our feet starting to ache, decided to leave after a long day.

I think what made the day more fun than usual was that hubby and I rode many of the rides with the kiddos. We followed them through fun houses, sat with them on ferris wheels and fed the pets with them. Normally, I would wait for them at the exits (and we did on some) but hubby and I played too, just as if we were young again.

Here are some pictures from our fun day!

My preschooler on the first ride we rode! He had no fear!




My kiddo LOVES ice cream with sprinkles! This was the coolest sprinkled cone EVER!


I was happy that there were many rides that the boys could ride together!


On this particular ride, my older son got very frightened. He asked to get off it (as it was still loading and we were in the air.) He then asked me to help tell the guy on the bottom to get him off. So I did. We both got off and watched while my younger son and hubby rode the ride. I told him how brave he was to tell me he was scared rather than sit there and not enjoy it. I think he would have been fine but I remember how afraid I was when I was a lot older so I didn't push the issue.


The boys feeding parakeets.


All my boys!


And some pictures of the rodeo:


Mutton Bustin' (small kids around 4 or 5? riding the sheep)


Lots and lots of food!




Our final ride for the night (another ferris wheel ride!)


(please forgive the huge picture sizes...with the new Photobucket format, I'm still experimenting on the right number to resize the pictures for here)