fall fair 2007

The fair is a big deal in our house. Papa has been volunteering there since some time in the late 60's and now is the manager of the School Fair Committee, a committee that Mike also volunteers with. So what exactly does that entail? Well in a nut shell, organizing and displaying any and all items that school aged children enter into the various competition categories. Abby had her first foray into the school fair last year with some pumpkins she grew. Last year she did good enough to place second in the largest pumpkin category.



This year there seemed to be a lot more pumpkins that were all about the same size as Abby's. So we had to be content with a "thanks for entering ribbon". That's her pumpkin there on the end.



Now before you feel too bad for Abby, she kicked ass in the tomato category. With no small thanks to Papa, vegetable coach extraordinaire. Overall she had 23 entries and scored herself a cool $40 in prize money. What's she going to do now? Take Papa out for a "hamburger and some beers".

I do enjoy going to the fair. You just never know what or who you're going to see. Like the lady in the high heels and the white ballerina-esque skirt at a dusty old agricultural fair. (Carrie Bradshaw fan are we?) Or one of my brother's buddies from high school, who I haven't seen in so long he's had time to get married and have a very cute baby boy. I also got to witness my first ever teenage stampede. As Mike and I walked the midway with Abby every teenager in the place started racing toward us in swarms. It was vaguely reminiscent of the scene in The Lion King where Simba's Dad dies. I can only assume there was a doings transpiring somewhere although with no one yelling, FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT, I have no solid proof. None of that was even remotely as cool as this.....



That is our car. The one that we had before we bought our van. Abby was quite excited to see our old grey car in the "smash up derby". Mike was disappointed that by the end they could have put it back on the road, meaning the damage was minimal. Rumor has it the old grey beast will take another stab at it Thanksgiving weekend. The car you can make out a little bit ahead of our old one is my cousin Adam's who won best decorated car. It's too bad the batteries died in our camera before we could get anymore pictures.

Now for a lot of people the fair is all about the rides. Not so much for Abby. I mean she likes the carousel and would ride that endlessly. She also enjoys the cars and motorcycles that go around in a circle. What she doesn't like is any animal rides.



She did, however agree to give the elephants a try with Kailey, but much to Kailey's disappointment Abby wouldn't allow her to pull on the bar that makes the elephant go higher. So while all the other elephants flew as high as they could Abby and Kailey stayed as close to terra firma as they could with Abby yelling "I'm not going higher!" the entire ride.

So that along with some peanut butter fudge, mini donuts and fresh cut fries was the fair all over and done with for another year. As much as I do enjoy it I am always happy to see it leave. This week is always my "single parent" week with Mike at the fair grounds most of the week and all of the weekend and I'm not even going to lie to you, Maya is a lot to handle on my own. Today she fell off our bed and cracked her head on the blanket box leaving a nice goose egg and I'm sure a whopping headache. Then I caught her with about 10 round plastic bingo markers in her mouth. She's forever trying to drag a chair over so she can get in the junk drawer (where she found a sharpie and managed to get the lid off) or the sink (where she'll try and drink out of the dirty cups/bottles if there are any). There was an incident involving one of Abby's markers and my kitchen walls. Thankfully they were washable markers. Yesterday I caught her putting money in the microwave, this was after I fished two dimes out of her mouth. She's a handful, an incredibly adorable one, but still a handful. So I did breathe a huge sigh of relief when Michael walked in the door tonight and then wept a little when he said he'd signed up for two more committees. The community minded jerk.

photographic evidence available here