County Fair

Tomorrow is the last day of the Marion County Fair. This is also our last fair in probably 18 years that we don't have anyone in our family showing anything. So we went to watch some of the swine show (a must every year) and do a final walk around all the stuff. Of course I forgot the camera, I could have gotten some priceless shots. Now that I am thinking about it, the camera was in the van the whole time.

We started out by having lunch. One of the local churches was serving a spaghetti meal, with bars and brownies larger than my hand. With it being the fair, I let Chloe skip the spaghetti and go straight to her cookie bar. A mistake that I don't seem to ever learn from. She was telling me how hungry she was 30 minutes later...however she may have just been wanting to get the ice cream now that I think about it. We watched some of the swine show, where Donna asked me lots of details about how the kids learn to make the pigs go where they want to, "especially that little boy". She points to a young man shorter than she is. Kids never pick the easy times to ask these questions, so I explained a little bit to her about "little people" aka dwarfs. Then we went on to check out the open class and 4-H exibits, try to get some ideas for next year.

We had the most important part of our trip to go. Picking up cotton candy for daddy. Every year when we go to the fair daddy asks as we walk in the door "did you bring me any cotton candy?" so last night he gave Donna some money to buy him some cotton candy. She holds up her "dollar" ($5 bill) to the man and said, "I need to buy my daddy some cotton candy!" We could get 2, so instead of fighting over which color to buy we got him one of each. They were also selling ice cream bars, and the kids were very good about not begging so I asked them if they wanted to get one. You would have thought I told them santa was coming twice this year they were so excited. Chloe needed spiderman with gumball eyes, Alex would take one of those also, and Donna wanted that push-up thing. The lady at the stand came out of the trailor to talk to me and told me that she was so impressed at how well behaved the kids all were. She said she had been watching them, and after that week she could tell when a child was well behaved and she wanted me to know that they were perfect.

As I looked down at my 4 kids:
Alex who was trying to find a way to throw the gumballs away without me seeing
Donna struggeling to get her push-up to push up
Chloe with this red and blue mix running down her arms (it's 92 degrees with 75% humidity)
Ethan sound asleep with a mix of food, spit, and drool all over him
And I feel so very blessed to have my 4 wonderful rag-a-muffins!

I did learn today however that my kids need to have push-ups more often! Those were the big thing when I was a kid, and Donna couldn't figure her's out. I also learned that my kids are better behaved than I think they are, and that God can use a food vendor to help me see that. Oh, and that if I take the kids out in the hear and wear them out, they will come home and watch a movie quietly!

Blessings:
I am blessed with a van to drive my kids to the fair. 2 years ago I had to walk and have Adam pick us up when he got home.