State Fair

Cindy and Jon timed their visit just perfectly! I was so excited when I read Shannon's email on Friday afternoon letting us know that the State Fair was in Raleigh! I hadn't been to the State Fair since I was in high school and have only visited the county fair a few times since then.

We decided to partake in the kiddie rides, games, and of course volumes of fried foods during the day Wednesday. It can best be summed up with a photo journal of the day...

Caroline, Lottie, Kylie, Darby
Four girls in four strollers ~ makes me wonder how hard it will be to get a good photo if all 11 make the reunion next summer...

Caroline & Jon
Next it was off to kiddie-ride land. Somehow Kylie and I didn't make this ride with the others, (something about too many adults riding...) but we had fun watching the other girls ride!

Lottie, Kylie, Caroline, Darby
What is it about being at a fair that makes you lose your mind and spend money as if it grows on trees? At least the "carnies" at this game let the girls play with the ducks for about five minutes before they made us take a dumb prize. As hot as it was, I wanted to ask if we could stay for five more minutes if we left the stuffed animal behind...

Kylie really got into dunking her duck!

Kylie, Caroline, Darby, Lottie
As we continued to stroll around, we stopped to admire some bubbles. By clicking on the picture you can see that Kylie "is so over the excitement" of bubbles ~ we blow them frequently on the back deck. Of course her lack of excitement could foreshadow that nap time is calling...

Caroline, Darby, Lottie, Kylie
The thing that cracks me up about this picture is that Kylie appears to be the shortest (she's just sitting in a crack in the hay bales), but you can tell that her legs are still the longest...
Then it was time to say "see you next time" to Darby as she and her parents had to roll.

What good is going to the fair if you don't eat your weight in fried foods? Kylie REALLY enjoyed her corn dog while Caroline watched on. We also had some fresh fried potato chips and later sampled Deep Fried Nutter Butters ~ imagine a funnel cake with peanut butter filling ~ AWESOME!!!

Caroline, Lottie, Kylie
We figured the girls would enjoy seeing the animals and headed to the cow barn immediately after lunch. All three girls happily "mooed" as we walked along, but by the time we got to the cows "food coma" had set in on two of our little ones...

I had thought about taking Kylie on the Ferris Wheel, but her nap lasted quite some time and before long Caroline was out too. The closest she got to the wheel was the refection of it in the water behind her...
Oh, and yes, it was inevitable ~ as the girls lay there with the THREE mommies taking pictures, someone walked by and said, "Are they triplets?" Seriously?!?

When Kylie finally woke up, the poor baby was drenched in sweat (I promise that I thought it was going to be cooler when I packed our bags on Tuesday morning!), so I decided to share my lemon/limeade with her.

"Hey Mommy, this is amazing stuff! I feel refreshed already!"

Last thing on the order of the day ~ spend our last tickets on the bumble bee ride and share a watermelon Italian Ice. Then we hiked back out to our free parking (who wants to pay $10 to park close?) and headed back to Shannon's house.

All in all it was a wonderful day spent with dear friends. The only two things that could have made it better were if Ian had been able to come with us and the temperature had been about 10 degrees cooler. Good times, good times!