State Fair 2017

We have a bright, shiny, new community center near us, along with a new library inside...but all the unsupervised and rowdy kids attend there, so I still take my kids to the old 70's library a little bit farther away from our home.  The major upside to this (other than peace and quiet through the year, and the ability to see my children at all times in the old library) is that each library has a certain amount of prizes to give away during the summer reading program, and my kids CLEAN UP on these prizes.  :)

The down side is that I have to TAKE them to all the prizes...haha.  We still have 4 tickets to a water park that I haven't found the time to use yet this summer.  

So, Layla won two tickets to the State Fair again this year, and Jonas had the great "I have to work" excuse, so I took Layla and Finn to the fair.  It also happened to be the day Charlotte (neighbor girl, good friends) was celebrating her birthday at the fair, so we tagged along with them for most of the day and had a grand time.  

On the park-n-ride with Charlotte, heading to the fair.

 At Little Farm Hands.  After we were done Finn yelled "Being a farmer is SO COOL!!! I love it"

Riding little tractors in circles.  Who knew this could be so fun??

Collecting eggs to sell at market

Milking a fake cow.

Off to market to sell the wool, veggies, eggs, and milk they "farmed" on the path.  

At the end of Little Farm Hands they got one paper dollar for selling their produce, etc to market, and they could use that dollar to buy a juice box, a packet of fruit snacks, an ice cream sandwich, etc.  My kids 100% chose an ice cream sandwich.  At 9:30 a.m.  Good enough!

The favorite State Fair food is the corn dog, but they ALSO consumed this year:
snow cones
cotton candy
french fries
mini doughnuts
Seems about right for a fair, eh?

Fin LOVED the Great MN Sing Along.
All the adults were standing back  in the rear, and Finn just YELLED nonsense into the microphone the entire time.  I'm sure he was the favorite for sure.  He loves hearing himself on the mic.  He'll run up to the microphones in church just to yell into them, if we don't "remind" him about the rules in time!  

I have to say, I hate crowds, and I hate being hot, so this day was pretty good on both accounts.  We got there early enough that we spent enough time without massive crowds, and the day was mostly overcast and cool.  Excellent.

In the butterfly house.  

After we took this photo Finn SHOOK the bug off his stick.  Haha.  Sigh.  Oh, those poor butterflies.  They were doomed to die for the sake of entertainment and profit.  

Gotta hang out for a while on the Rainbow Playsets display, right?

Every Snoopy character they saw, they had to take a picture with, even though they mostly have no idea who Snoopy is.

So, the favorite part of the day I'm pretty sure was when they all got to do the trampoline jumping.  I'm trying to get my videos to upload, so we'll see if that can work eventually, but imagine SCREAMS and SQUEALS of delight and glee the entire time they were jumping.

 We headed to the animal barns after that.  The cattle barn brought back horrid memories for me of being trapped there as a child in a rain storm, of course, and almost having a sensory overload meltdown over the smell in there.  It was fine that day, but I was thankful it wasn't raining...haha.

This cow was just insanely large and oddly shaped.  Not sure what to think...

Waiting to spin the wheel for a prize.  Blah.  Anything that requires waiting in line for more than 2 minutes at the fair gets my no vote.  I lost many votes this day.

Watching sheep dogs herd sheep.  Pretty fun, but we came right at the end before they were about to award prizes, so we only saw the last dog.  Last dog should totally have won, BTW.  Killer moves.  ;)

In the fake forest fire prevention tower...

Her prize for the day.

On the bus ride home.  Man did my feet HURT.  We did it!  We survived!