State Fair

The FP Gal put up a long post with pictures of our day at the fair here. I won't give a full recap but I will make some comments. This might work best if you read her post first. Go ahead, I'll wait.

.
.
.

Ready? Ok, we tried going very early this year and it worked well. I'm thinking next year we try for even earlier (7a or so). It was very cool and the crowds were reasonable. We started off with breakfast which kind of took the pressure off from gorging on fair food.
Relia is so much more aware of what's going on around her. She recognizes most of the farm animals and I think she really finds it interesting to see them in person. She went to see the Miracle of Birth barn and watched the ducks being born. As they came out of the shell she said, "Babies happening!". Isn't that wonderful?
She also wants to go on the rides now. We're pretty sure she'd disagree if she ever actually got on one. The surges and dips and whatnot would probably get to her. Next year she'll be three and tall enough to go on some of them. We'll see how that goes. On a related note, we're going to make certain that she goes on a carousel at some point. That seems like a good beginners ride.
Fun fair stuff? There was a trimmer company there that was giving out free facial hair trims. I volunteered and got my goatee in shape. It worked out well for me because I hadn't trimmed it for awhile. The barber was from the Illinois area. It turned out that he was a White Sox fan too.
We didn't try anything crazy for fair food. The FP Gal needs to have a pronto-pup every year and she satisfied that. Relia wanted ice cream and we were able to accommodate. Every year I think that I should try a turkey leg. Each year I forget until after I've eaten something else. This year I was in a non-greasy mood (I know, I was surprised too) and went with a gyro. Relia didn't like it. She did steal my raspberry lemonade though.
It was a good day. By the end I was exhausted. So was Relia. I always feel like we let the FP Gal down, as if she could go for hours more than we can. Hope I'm wrong about that. In any case, I'm already looking forward to next year. Relia will be even more grown up. And she'll have a little sibling to enjoy it with too!