MN State Fair 2010

Mark really enjoys the MN State Fair!  I mean really.  He talks about it year round.  I enjoy it but it's so expensive.  Each year since we've had kids I've enjoyed it more and more.  This year we really had a great time.  We went the Friday before Labor Day.  It was chilly and windy.  Way more my style than bright sun and 90 degrees.  The kids were in the double stroller with their jackets zipped.  We parked at our usual spot at the Boys' Scout Lot.  We were on our way.

Our first stop was something new!  The ABC Forest.  We met Deb Frasier, the author of One the Day You Were Born, one of our favorite books.  I think I have three copies.  Our former librarian ,Sue, was volunteering there so she introduced us.  There were some cute activities.  Here was my favorite activity:

I love it!  I wanted to do individual ones with each of the kids names but it took a while to pick out the letters.  They had alphabet crowns on.  Oh, a teacher's dream.

 Thenit was off to our family hot spot: Little Farm Hands.  It's so fun to see the kids do all these farming activites.  Grab and apron and a little bucket and you're off!

                                                                   Milk that cow!

Give the hay a ride on the tractor.

At the end of all of the activities they put all the items away and they earn a 'dollar' to buy something.  Victoria chose a stuffed sheep and Christian chose an apple.
The loved it more this year than any other year. 

Clearly this was all my idea.  I was actually holding Victoria up into that hole.
Who can pass up a chance to be a cheese on a stick?

This was Christian's dream come true!  He loves horses!  They walked right over to him!

                             We got to pet a piglet.  Victoria was positive his name was Wilbur.

Victoria was the only one small enough to wiggly her way through the massive crowd to put the teeny tiny chick.  I just held up the camera high and crossed my fingers.

That's the sheep she 'bought' back at the Little Farm Hands.  We were all having a great time looking at the animals.  Christian was very interested in all the smells.  A regular person who has been smelling for years has a hard time with all the smells.  Poor C kept saying, "What dat mell nowwww?!"  As we were walking out of the cow barn I stepped in a massive cow pie with flip flops on.  So bad I almost slipped and fell because my right foot was stuck in it.  It splattered on my bare foot.  I had to use baby wipes to clean it all off.  It sucked.  Mark found it far more amusing than I did. 

After all that we had to find something to eat.  Here's a look at a corn dog that could feed a family of four.

Notice how long that stick is?  It was huge!

At this point we had already been at the fair about three hours so it was off to the Midway for some real action!
This is where we really go crazy!

We caught frogs

Caught fish.

Caught more frogs.

We won a lot of crap - I mean - super good stuff!

Like this very cool sword.  I stood in front of the sword bucket so he wouldn't choose that.  Then he spotted another bin across the way.  Boys will be boys I guess.

Oh  my that stroller was full of goodies - just the way we like it.

Then we had black and white pictures taken in a little photo booth.  Our first time with all four of us.

After more than four hours at the fair we headed home for nap.  They both took a good nap and then we brought them over to Auntie Sandy's for the night.  Guess what Mark and I did then. . .went back to the fair for another four hours.  We ate, drank, people watched and had a great time.  It's the best way to end the summer.