Our State Fair is a Great State Fair!

Tuesday was a beautiful day to spend at the state fair. Each year since we've moved to Des Moines, we've received free tickets for admission, food and rides through Dakota's company. But this year, due to the recession, no one got any freebies. But that didn't stop us from going. The free tickets in the past were enough to get us hooked and keep us going, even if we had to pay for ourselves.

One of Emma's and my favorite things that they had this year and last, is the butterfly house. It's filled with hundreds of butterflies--all different colors and sizes--and you can carefully pick them up, or just sit still and let them land on you. Our favorite were the blue ones, if you can't tell by the pictures.


After the butterfly house, we headed to the Little Hands on the Farm exhibit. It's an interactive exhibit where kids get a hat, apron and bucket, and then follow a path around a farm, completing tasks or picking things up along the way. At the end, they turn in their "harvest" and earn a dollar to spend in the general store. Emma has done this for several years now, so I don't think she was as impressed as Ashlyn, who carried her own basket most of the time and fully believed all the pretend food and animals were real.


We did go see some real animals after that. Next to the Little Hands exhibit was a building with lots of baby animals and their mamas. Many of the baby animals were born there at the fair, some just the day before. Some of the animals were pregnant and ready to give birth any day. No live births happened while we were visiting, but the girls did get to pet a 2 day old goat.


After that, we started the hunt for lunch. The fair has over 50 things on a stick, including fried Twinkies, candy bars, corn dogs, chicken, and new this year--chocolate covered bacon. We're not quite that adventurous when it comes to food, so we settled for a corn dog, mac and cheese, fried raviolis, a gyro and some ice cream. (Only the corn dog was on a stick.)

After lunch we met up with Dakota's mom, dad and sister. They walked around with us and we rode a few rides together. Dakota and Lindsey took turns with Emma on the Giant Slide. And then Emma, Lindsey, Dakota and I rode on the sky glider, while Grandma and Grandpa pushed Ashlyn across the fair grounds to meet up with us.




All that was enough excitement for Ashlyn, as she promptly crashed in her stroller for a quick snooze.


After a little more walking and some more exhibit visiting, we sought out some ponies to ride. First in line and with ticket in hand, Emma developed a sudden case of equine-phobia and melted into tears, refusing to ride a pony. So... that's when it's nice to have a younger sister who doesn't know the meaning of the word phobia (or most words for that matter) and who was more than willing to use the big sister's ticket.... after she woke up from her nap. Ashlyn thought the ponies were great.


Maybe ponies trotting around in a circle just wasn't exciting enough for Emma. (doubtful) But whatever the case, Emma was very eager to ride a few midway rides before we left the fair. She picked one of the biggest little kid rides, and was stuffed into an airplane seat with several other kids. Then the plane spent what seemed like the next 15 minutes flying up and down in giant circles. The heights and spinning didn't bother her, as the second and final ride she picked was another airplane ride that spun in circles high in the air.


Hmmm... random thought... I bet if the ponies had been sparkly, pink flying ponies, Emma would have spent the whole afternoon riding them!

And that was our day at the fair. Thanks go out to our friends who live 4 blocks from the fair and graciously allowed our tired legs to climb one monster of a hill (pushing our 300 lb stroller all the way up) to get to our van, parked at their house. That enabled us to save $7 in parking, and get a crazy work out that many people shovel out big bucks in gym memberships for! Sweet. All that fun and free exercise too! What a day!