Life's Not Fair

But yesterday, life was a fair...

Natalie and I spent yesterday at the Virginia State Fair.

I've wanted to go to the state fair for the past three years, but something always seemed to get in the way. So even though we'd both been up since 6am, I'd already driven to and from Charlottesville for a class and Jen was away for the weekend, I thought that we'd give it a shot. I expected that we'd be there for 1-2 hrs, have a meltdown and go home. I was a whole lot more fun than that!

Before we went I showed Natalie the web site for the fair and we agreed that we would do 2 Natalie things, 1 Daddy thing, 2 Natalie things...you get the idea. It didn't quite work out that way - big surprise. She was very excited, though I don't think she knew why.

While there were a lot of people at the fair, the lines were surprisingly short. Usually she just had to wait for the current ride to end. As a result, she went on the merry go round twice, the car ride twice and I'm sure several other rides twice that I can't remember.

After a few rides (definitely more than two) we left the kiddie ride area so that I could get a hot dog. Somehow I ended up with a very small pretzel and Natalie ended up with an ice cream cone that was almost as tall as she was. I'm not sure that you could call it ice cream though because I'm certain that there was neither ice nor cream in it.

We walked through the livestock area (can you go to a state fair and not do this?) and saw alpacas, steer, lamb, guinea pigs, roosters and much, much more. Natalie's favorite animal was (no jokes please) a pig that was a big as I was. I'm not kidding! It must have been 6' long! It could have made the biggest BLT ever!

We then went back for some more rides. The first was the boat ride so that I could wash the gross, sticky ice cream smudge off her hands. You had to see her hands - I'm certain they were dirtier than the water, meaning that the net germ/dirt flow would have been away from Natalie.

After a few rides we then decided to get some more food and go see some of the shows. We got some popcorn - or I should say, Natalie got some popcorn. I reached in and grabbed a handful and she literally grabbed the popcorn out of my hand, put it back and told me to ask next time.

After watching the aerial troupe we went back to the rides and Natalie went straight for the two rides that I NEVER thought she would go on. The first was a - well I don't know what it was. Kind of a swing, kind of a bouncy thing, kind of a bungee thing (see the picture). Natalie's not a fan of new things and this was definitely new. But she wanted to do it. I didn't even prompt her.

To top it all off, the next ride she wanted to go on was the Ferris Wheel. Earlier in the day, she didn't even want to walk near it. When we got on it she screamed every time we travelled from the top to the bottom. The good, I'm having fun, little girl shriek, not the scared, gonna poop in my pants-type scream.

So what did we learn today?

1) No matter how tired you are, you can always find the energy to go to the fair.

2) The Virginia State Fair has the CLEANEST restrooms of any public event I've ever attended.

3) Never leave Natalie alone with Cheese Fries.

4) If you lose your car in the parking lot at the state fair there are 15 other guys with the bright idea to use their remote car alarm to find their car too.