Ain't Nothin' I Know Of Can Make You Fall In Love Like A Night At The County Fair!

We went to the fair last night. Here in Podunk, AZ they cancel school (even the college) for the fair. So since it was not a school night and kids under 10 got in free, we went for a couple hours. Plus, we had to find out THIS...which was cool.
So after a scare when we LOST Bronson (seriously) for about 10 minutes. My visiting teacher spotted him and was holding him until we found them. Boys! We let the kids go on a couple rides.

Our kids are so small that there were only a few that they were big enough to ride anyway. (We only buy a few tickets for this reason too so its not all bad.) So once they found the kiddie rides and a nice lady gave us an extra three tickets, we were able to enjoy it. There was a race car track.

And a kiddie train (on a track) that had animal sounds coming from it(?) Cute though.

After those two rides we didn't have enough tickets to give all three kids another ride. So we said we were done. But Bronson~the little runaway that he is~ saw this other "fun house" ride and bolted through the gate and past the ticket guy and into the ride...we were telling him to get back here b/c we didn't have any tickets and the guy just sat there and said, "Don't worry about it."

Well, as soon as the girls heard that, they bolted in too. I told the guy that I would give him the rest of our tickets to make it even and he said not to worry about that either. Bless that man. I mean, whoever heard of charging tickets for that kind of ride anyway? They did this ride about three or four times before we said it was time to go.

Then we went to look at some of the animals. We found the pigs, goats, rabbits, chickens and turkeys. All were big hits. Jeff kept running into people from work and talking their ears off. So after a while of waiting, I told the girls to come with me to look at the cotton exhibits.
We live in a cotton farming community. My Grandad Crockett (see previous post) managed a cotton gin for close to 20 years when I was growing up. We used to go visit him at work and he would give us little cotton blossoms from his field. I love everything about cotton.

A man who was at the display of how cotton is harvested showed us how they pick it off the plant, pull the seeds out of it and turn it into string and then fabric. He let the kids drop cotton blossoms into machine that takes the seeds out and then he let them each take home a big pouf of cotton. He was an older man. I asked if he knew my grandad and he did. I was so thrilled that he let us bring home some cotton just like my grandad used to let us. I promised the kids I would make them each a pillow to stuff with their cotton pouf.

Then we saw the bigger animals. We went straight to the cows b/c they "are soooo big" according to Madelyn. The kids each touched this cow on the head for about a millisecond and then stood there to take a picture.
We had a great night minus the "missing child report" fiasco. I am glad we took the opportunity to do this as a family.