County Fair

It's been a very busy few days.

I've spent some of the time helping my dear friend pack up her house. It's such a strange thing we women do. A close and wonderful friend will come to us and tell us the inevitable news that they are moving to the other side of the country. We spend a day or two in disbelief and crying together over the loss, then we clear our schedules and go help them pack their houses. Weird. But, that's exactly what I've been doing.

We also spent some time getting ready for our vacation week that started yesterday. In the afternoon I took the three Little over to the county fair.

It was so delightfully perfect in the quaint Midwestern sort of way. The Little Mr.'s sat on tractors, rode a pony, fed a goat and sat on tractors. We watched a tractor pull and some pig races and sat on the tractors again. They had a Tae Kwon Do lesson and broke a board, climbed the rock wall and got fire man hats. They got tattoos and police badges. They played the ducky game and "won" toy guns. We ate french fries and corn on the cob. In short, we did almost everything. It was perfect, not too crowded and not too hot. Sunny and clear, plenty of animal barns to explore. We saw pigs fight over their food and heard the cows mooing. It was all there, and all good.

The most amusing part of yesterday was the friends that marveled over the idea that I had taken all three kids to the fair alone. Huh? These are my kids. I do everything else alone with the three of them, why not the fair? That's a whole lot more entertaining and fun for them than, say, a trip to the grocery store!! And, they know how to behave and what will happen if they don't. I laid down the rules before we left the house, reviewed them in the car and really only had to give one reminder that if there was whining over certain things we would be done and going home. That did the trick. They know the expectations I have for them. They know that I mean business too. If they don't behave I have absolutely no issue with loading them back into the van and going right back home again.

Today we're doing just a little more shopping to be ready for the first tailgate tomorrow at the sold out Brewer game. Maybe Barry Bonds will play. Maybe something will happen. Maybe the boys will remember it when they're older.