evergreen state fair

Although Wesley is refusing to go back to sleep after his 15-minute powernap in the car, I am choosing to ignore him and pray he does go back to sleep and instead write this blog. Ah.

Today we went with our cool friend Christi and her bebe Emily to the Evergreen State Fair! I feel like a blob since we live in the coolest state ever, and yet we hardly ever do stuff. (Do we hike Mt. Rainier? No. Camp at Deception Pass? No. Stalk vampires in Forks? No. Kitesurf in the Sound? No.)

The fair was a great place to start. A friend of mine has a booth there and got us a free parking pass (saved $10!) and I got my ticket ahead of time from a drug store (saved $2.50!) Please note that despite my enthusiasm for saving, what we saved was promptly spent on wonderful food, including but not limited to, a corn dog, the hugest lump of curly fries I've ever seen, corn on the cob, an elephant ear, ice cream cone, and kettle corn as a souvenir.

Some highlights:

The Snohomish County Department of Agriculture had a cool booth where you could make your own creature out of Snohomish-County-grown vegetables. I laughed and of course immediately began my creature. You can see my creature is way less cool than some of the others left for display. (Check out the broccoli/carrot/green bean man in the bottom left corner there. I love it!)

I don't know what you call this, but it's when two guys on a log in water try to knock the other guy off the log. It was super fun to watch. Log rolling maybe? They try to mess up the other guy by like splashing water on him with their feet, changing directions, etc. It was fun!

This was a cool demonstration; we got to see guys with gigantic chainsaws carving wooden stumps into cute bears that you'd buy for your cabin in the mountains. I am pretty sure my in-laws have one. It was loud and of course totally something a baby boy would be intrigued by. Unfortunately there was a bit of sawdust so we didn't hang out long.

Of course, Wesley enjoyed the livestock. We have only read about these cool animals in books! "Tingo" the goose was especially fond of Wesley and Emily and "barked" at them for awhile. I got a funny video of it. Wesley clapped when he saw the sheep. We also saw HUGE dairy cows with HUGE udders (which means so much more to me as a post-nursing mother), horses, goats, ducks, roosters, rabbits, whew.

I was most impressed, of course, with the "country fair" entries, especially the fancy cakes. I am SO doing a movie-theater-themed party at some time and making THESE -- that's right folks, they are cupcakes! COOL!

We felt obliged to do some sort of carnival "ride," so we put our little bebes on ponies. Wesley was cool with it. He was super belted in; I didn't even have to hold him, but I was right there. He had a funny look on his face the whole time, like he couldn't figure out if he was on the brink of tears or squeals of delight. He rode "Derby" the pony. I bet those ponies get super bored going around in circles all day long. Ahh the life of a carnival pony.

Some more fun pictures of my little toddler at the fair:

The fair was 100% reminiscent of my days as a kid, and I have vowed to do more awesome things in the fabulous state in which I live. It was also a gorgeous day (when we thought it would be cloudy and drizzly), so we lucked out. We had a super time! Thanks Christi!