Fair Day

Most kids around the nation are off for President's Day. The girls' school, however, was not. Yes, they celebrated our forefathers and learned about presidents, but rather than having a day to be at home, they gave the kids a day off the week before. Not exactly for a pre-President's Day celebration, but instead to ride some scary carnival rides and eat bacon wrapped chocolate and deep fried oreos at the Florida State Fair.

The schools in the northern parts of our county give free tickets to school students to use on one certain day during the fair. I had been begging asking for Greg to go with us for the past two years since living here. His reply: NO!

Fine! So I let him watch Hayden. I ended up going with another friend and her two children. We met in the parking lot and found each other right away, which was surprising since it was several acres large. Tickets weren't bad since the kids tickets were free, but it was the ride tickets that cost so much. After purchasing two arm bands and my ticket, I realized that going to Disney would have been cheaper. And we hadn't even bought food yet.

There were hundreds of vendors selling everything from mattresses to hot tubs and jewelry to shoes. Once you got through that section, it was on to the food and rides. It was set up pretty well with the kiddie rides all clumped together. Since it was School Day at the fair, the place was crawling with kids. And parents. And really weird people. People of Wal-mart is rather tame compared to People of the Fair.

After several rides and some lunch of chicken strips and fries (no deep fried candy bars for me), we watched a hog race. I was pretty excited for it when we first arrived, but watching dirty pigs run in circles sort of made my excitement lose it's luster. We ended up at the petting tent which was filled with overfed goats, donkeys that looked like their tummies were about to explode, and a giraffe that had a certain "HELP ME!" look. There was a kangaroo, too, that I think was plotting an escape.

Somehow Riley got turned around and ended up coming head first, feet up through the slide.

Of course, we just added to the problem by purchasing two bags of carrots and feeding any animal that would take the food. Those poor animals need to get on the Dukan Diet.

We had a lot of fun, even ended up winning some goldfish. However, they were dead by the next day. Guess who has to take a little trip to PetSmart now?