Take Me to the Fair

Our county fair is so late in the summer, it's not even summer any more. In my most humble opinion, that is just stupid. Why should you have to carry a jacket around the county fair and then still freeze to death when the sun goes down? Stupid, I say, stupid. Why... when I was a young'un, it just wasn't fair if you weren't sweating.

But we still go. Everyone does. What else is there to do in this town? Not much, that's what. And they do make the fair so appealing, what with tractor pulls and um... tractors... and well, souped-up-tractor pulls.

Midwesterners like their tractors.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that every tractor owner and dealer in the county brings all their tractors to the fair to sit there for the week.

Of course, I knew Jonah would get a real kick out of this.




And he did!

Until he saw the carnival, that is.




"Please can we go on rides? Please, please, plllllease?" he begged.

Yes. Of course we can.

So off we went to... look at the photography exhibit. And the art exhibit. And the home ec exhibit.

Mommy did, that is. When Daddy and Jonah got bored (and they did. Boy howdy...), well...




They looked at more tractors, of course.





"Pleeeeease?"

"Please, what?"

"Pleeeeeease can we go on rides, now?"

Yep.

Eventually.

And off we went to look at the animals.




But still, ever in the background, the carnival beckoned...





I think it was worth the wait.

(Even though he tried to change his mind as soon as we got on the carousel. "Maybe I don't want to do this... Maybe we should go see more tractors...")



The carousel was fun, however, as were the boats...




...and the safari train.

(My baby!! Riding fair rides all by himself!)






And Daddy even got a picture of Mommy and Jonah going down the BIG slide together!





Or... uh... well, he missed, actually.

Moving on.

Another favorite midwestern attraction is the combine derby!

That's right, folks, combine derby. As in, old retired combines go head to head in bang-bang smash'emup entertainment.

As we didn't want to pay a premium for grandstand seating (yeah, we went to the county fair on a state-park budget...), we went with the cheap seats.




The view was... lacking.



But we could almost see what was going on, and it was fun anyway.

After a quick walk through the 4-H barns (Mommy's favoritest part!) we took a very tired little boy back home to bed-- thoroughly filled up on fair-fun for the whole year.