We started the day by sleeping in and having raspberry and cheese sweet rolls for breakfast. Upon coming downstairs, I was greeted by this note from Beth ~
How do you not have a fabulous day when you start it with a note like that? :)
We ate an early lunch, then headed off to the fair. Rob's allergies really flared up and he was not feeling stellar, but he was a trooper and doped himself up on dayquil as he didn't want to miss out on the day.
Our first stop was a drive up ATM, where I, for the first time in my life, managed to scrape up our car by hitting the post on the side. It was super narrow, so as I was trying to back out to prevent further damage to the front, I hit the other side and even got stuck for a second. It was not good. With images of the side of the car peeled open like a can that has been opened with a cheap can opener, Rob and I bit our tongues and tried not to be too upset about damaging the car we bought a month ago. We checked the damage when we parked at the fair and it wasn't as bad as it sounded. There's a scrape on the front about 6 inches long that can probably be fixed just with paint and there's a 3 foot long scrape along the bottom of the other side, but you can't see it unless you get down and look under the side door. It's all cosmetic damage, so we were lucky :) Neither of us swore or yelled, so we did pretty good I think!
The kids all had free tickets from school and we had looked up discounts and knew to bring cans for the food drive in exchange for hugely discounted admission. I love that the TX State Fair does that! We took a picture just past the ticket booth. Eva insisted on wearing her purple tutu over her outfit.
We hit the livestock area first. We watched a demonstration about horseback riding for a while, saw what I'm sure is the largest pig in the universe (it was easily 6-7 ft long and about that big around), and checked out the farm animals. The kids had to take pictures at the farm cut out board of course, even though the top hole was super high and there were no hay bales behind it to stand on, and there were only four holes. We made do :)
We were quite impressed with the size of this bull! Rob made sure we took a photo with it ~
We went through one of our favorite parts of the fair - the animal pavilion that allows the kids to get up close and personal with various animals. This is one of the few places where we actually spend any money. We always buy food for the kids to feed the animals. This year we bought a huge family sized cup, but got individual dixie cups for each kids that we could refill from the huge cup, which turned out to be a good thing as a couple of cups got spilled.
We took a picture with the baby giraffe ~
Most of the food went to the animals in the big middle pen, primarily the goats.
Beth, Kylie, and Eva got to feed some weird looking bull-like animals that Rob thinks are related to Indian cows.
Megan and Jack were about a pen ahead of us, so I didn't get many pictures of them. Beth, Kylie, and Eva stayed with me. They got to feed the dromedaries (which they called camels, but I almost never remember which are which, so I didn't bother correcting them).
After watching a couple of teenagers feed the adult dromedary, Eva decided she wanted to try. Unfortunately, her arm wasn't quite long enough and the fence was too high for the dromedary to reach down to her cup. I love that she saw something and wanted to try it, even though the animal was so big! She's never been one to let fear of the apparent impossibility stop her from doing something she wants to do :)
Kylie even got to scratch the dromedary's neck ~
We also got to see porcupines, zebras, alpacas, llamas, African deer, and several other animals. My favorite was the 4 horned sheep ~
When we walked through the livestock section, we discovered the Kildares performing on a rotating stage. The Kildares are a Celtic rock band that my brother loves. Rob likes them too, so we decided to take a break and listen. We found an empty picnic table over to the side and let the kids run around a bit. Rob watched the kids while I ran off and found some cotton candy (the one fair food the kids really, really wanted), smoked sausage, beef jerky (for Rob . . . and the kids), and a soda. I fed Laura while we ate. I love that you can nurse in public in TX and no one gives you weird looks :) We saw several other moms nursing their babies as well.
As we watched the show, several young men dressed in the clothing worn by Hasidic Jews danced to the music. I thought it was interesting that the only people free enough to dance with abandon were those who might be viewed as having the strictest lifestyle.
When the concert was over, we headed off around the Cotton Bowl (the huge stadium in the center of the fair grounds). We found a fountain that the kids splashed in for a few minutes ~
We planned to go through the aquarium, the Chinese lantern display, and a couple other buildings, but each was charging admission, which adds up quickly with 6 of us to pay for, so we stuck to the free displays. The kids discovered another photo op and took turns being butterflies.
Beth and Kylie ~
Jack and Megan ~
Eva ~
Kylie, Eva, Jack (at the bottom), Beth, and Megan ~
Rob was about to take a picture of the kids and me when a nice passing fair employee offered to take a picture of all of us ~
Meg lost a tooth as we walked!
Rob needed a bit of a break by this point, plus the kids wanted to see the Birds of the World show anyway, so we found seats near the back of the amphitheater where Kylie, Jack, and Eva could run around without disturbing other people.
We finished off the cotton candy ~
How Laura spent most of her time at the fair ~
I was surprised by how entertaining the show was! My favorite part was when they called up a volunteer from the audience and the bird he was supposed to help train ran straight at him, causing him to fall backwards into the small pond. It was so well done, Rob and I didn't even realize that it was a planned part of the show until the guy came back out and was chased across the stage again by a different bird.
We told the kids before going to the fair that they would only get to go on one ride each, but could pick any ride they wanted (although we altered that by vetoing the ferris wheel once we saw how many tickets it was). We found a nice spot to rest, a picnic table on a fake grass display (no fire ants!), where the kids could play. Rob stayed there and I took two kids at a time to go on rides.
Beth picked the ladybug ride and LOVED it ~
After seeing how much fun Beth had, Megan decided she wanted to go on that ride too ~
Jack and Kylie were next. Jack, of course, picked the motorcycle ride ~
Kylie picked a roller coaster with cars that spun. Fortunately there were three other little girls who wanted to go on that ride too, and the operator put them all together so they wouldn't slide around as much ~
We finished off the day with freshly made chicken tenders (they battered them as we watched), fries, a turkey leg, nachos, and powerade. As we were eating the turkey leg, Jack asked "Mommy, can we pretend this is the wild?" Following my affirmative answer, he grinned and said "Great! Can I have more of that big bug?" pointing at the turkey leg. We may need to cut back on the number of survival shows we're watching! ;)
We stopped on the way out and let the kids play a game to earn some small stuffed animals. We were disappointed to learn that we only got two stuffed animals as we thought each would get one, but the man gave us an extra one and the kids seemed fine with it :) All of the kids were amazingly well behaved, so we stopped on the drive home and got ice cream cones at McDonald's :)
