A Whole Lotta Happy?

After our unsuccessful attempt to go to the fair last Monday, I decided that the little kids and I would go during the school day on Thursday.

The NC State Fair theme for 2009 was "A Whole Lotta Happy." I'm still not sure I buy it, but here are some pictures of our (very long) day.

It was close enough to lunchtime when we got there that we persuaded Russ to join us for lunch. We started with one of our favorite fair foods, roasted ears of corn. Those are always terrific, and this year my braces are off so I could eat them!

After we got "real" food we indulged in a some fried dough covered in powdered sugar. That was really yummy.

Jared got sugar on his face and was going to wipe it off with some of the bread so that he didn't lose any of the sugar! (I nixed that idea.)

He really was serious about getting every last bit of sugar.

We decided to take pictures of the really bizarre food offerings we saw. Here they are, in order from least offensive to most repulsive. (Although the last two are really pretty close.

(that is my "I can't believe any person alive would actually eat this stuff" face,
in case you couldn't tell...)

After the food we went to see the BMX show. Russ was still with us, so I was able to sneak off to a better seat and get some great pictures of the bikers in action. It was the first of many times that day that I wondered "what on earth would possess someone to do this for a living???"

After Russ left we spent some time watching the crafts people. I always love seeing all of the beautiful things that people make, and now the kids are old enough to be impressed too. One of my favorite things is to see the potter throwing pots, although he kind of gives a moral sermon while he's working that's a bit over the top. His products are really beautiful, though. The kids also got a chance to work a loom, which was neat to see. And we bought a very expensive cup of ice cream made by old fashioned churns powered by John Deere engines.

We had decided that since last year all we did at the fair was eat and ride rides, this year we would do no rides so that we would have time to see the shows and the animals. One of the shows I really wanted to see was called Circle C Pig Racing. I didn't know exactly what it involved, but I figured pig racing was not something to be missed.

Apparently all of the fair-goers had the same idea, because when we got to the small grandstand area a few minutes before the races were to start it was completely mobbed without even any standing room. We decided that we would come early to the next pig races on our program.

And then we got a brownie and a strawberry smoothie to soothe our disappointment.

We ended up going 40 minutes early for the next round of pig racing, and waiting in the hot sun to make sure we had a seat.

The kids enjoyed their cotton candy; I was pretty cranky and tired by this point and was grateful that I could text Cindy Lynn on my phone for entertainment.

One lady who was sitting beside us during our long hot wait on the bleachers told me that she had come from Florida specifically to see the pig races.

All I can say is there must not be a lot going on in Florida.

When the announcer came out he was pretty funny. First of all he told the crowd "If you haven't seen pig racing before, you've lead a sheltered life." And then later he said "this is the redneck way to make a living."

We got to see pigs, pygmy goats, and ducks race. I thought the ducks were the most fun to watch.

The crowd around the pig races was really crazy. There were people who crawled (in the mud and straw) under the bleachers to try to see, people who stood on the top of the electric boxes, and people who just held their small children up in the air.

After the pig races we passed a climbing wall, and they all immediately decided they wanted to trade in their $4 pony ride for a $5 trip up the climbing wall. I agreed, though if I'd known that that was the end of my money (I actually didn't even have $15 left--only $14, but they were already up on the wall by the time I discovered that and then what could they do but take my $14??) I probably wouldn't have let them, but I did. And so that was the end of eating fair food, darn it. I had wanted to try a few more fun things before we were done.

They all loved the climbing wall, although Rachel had some trepidation about getting down after she was all the way at the top. But after she got the hang of it she thought it was great.

Another show we went to see was this one:

In the end I decided that the poodle show was kind of sad. What a strange life--to travel around the country with your poodles getting them to jump through hoops. As you can tell, this poodle wasn't too thrilled with it either...

After the poodles we went to see the "real" animals. Our first stop was the cow barn, where it was obviously milking time. Ouch--it made me cringe to see all of those full udders! It was fun to watch the milking, but I didn't get any good pictures because they were all behind glass. The kids were really fascinated by the milking, right until several of the cows urinated as they were being milked. Then they were just grossed out at all of that urine on the floor!

They liked walking around and looking at all of the different breeds & colors of cows. I forget what huge animals some of these cows are. They were also SO bony. I wasn't expecting that at all. Don't you always think of a cow as a pleasantly rounded animal? Well these certainly weren't, at least not the milk cows.

The kids were having a great time watching all of the cows until one walked by us and started pooping. The owner just grabbed a shovel and held it behind the cow to catch all of the poop. I had to snap a picture of the kids horror at the sight. (It was a lot of poop!)

As we were walking out of the cow barn some older gentlemen offered the kids a wristband. The condition on the wristband was that they would need to explain what the different colors meant. As I looked past the men to the sign behind them I realized that we were being witnessed to; the group was something like christianfarmers.com. The kids wanted the wristband and so we sat and they listened to the man talk to them. The only problem I had was when he said that one of the colors was to remind us that we are born sinful. I (gently) interrupted him and explained that we actually believe that babies are born innocent, and he said he guessed that was ok.

When it was over and we walked away Rachel looked at me and said,

"Well, that was awkward!"

After the cow barn we went into another barn. One of the first things we saw was a mother pig with a littler of piglets. They were so cute, all laying on each other & asleep. I'm always amazed that animals handle having a lot of babies so much better than I did!

Maybe this little video shows why she handles it better. I can't imagine being able to sleep through this kind of pummeling!

Our last stop was the sheep tent. I really got a kick out of seeing the sheep. Probably because I've never seen sheep with such great hair-do's before!

And I'm not sure what was going on with this guy, but he got his own special blanket.

That was the end of our fair experience. We had hoped to visit the petting zoo as well, but as hard as I tried I couldn't find it. By then my feet were so tired and all I could think was that we'd better go or we'd never be able to leave and have to spend the rest of our lives there, running the poodle show or something sad like that.

So--was there a whole lotta happy? I'm not really sure. There was a whole lotta eating, and a whole lotta whining for cheap toys for sale all over, or to have their weight or birthday guessed so they could win some other cheap gimmicky toy. There was a whole lotta walking and a whole lotta borderline heatstroke. And there was some fun as well — watching the bike tricks and the pig races and even the sad poodle show. But boy was it a long and exhausting day, and I'm not in a hurry to do it again any time soon!