A Day at the Fair

Friday was our day at the "Great Minnesota Get-Together"! We made the most of it too. We arrived at around 11am and didn't leave until the fireworks went off at 10:15pm. The kids did awesome! Ground rules were laid that began with the whole "stick together" and of course, we had to touch on the most important topic: "ALL food will be shared. We will get to your favorite eventually."

Surprisingly we have the rare outbreak of tempers in the sharing department. But, Mike will eventually learn patience.

Kidding.

For those that have never been to the fair, here's a glimpse of how the streets look:

We did manage to get in a few rides, though I'm not a fan of the midway. We hit the standards for us, "Ye Old Mill" being one ride. This "boat" goes through a tunnel of darkness with some cheesy little cartoon set-ups throughout. Mike kept telling Jake to make sure we didn't crash and asked repeatedly, "which way are we going?" to which Jake would YELL, "We are going this way!" Duh.

We also went down the "Giant Slide". Mike didn't. Not a fan. He sits at the bottom and takes pictures. I don't know why he doesn't like this ride but the kids and I run for it every year.

This year we also went on the sky ride (to which my mom can see these pictures and look at the view she missed while riding it - she kept her eyes closed due to a fear of heights). We also went on the Space Needle at night and got to see the lights of the fair. Two new favorites.

We went in only a few buildings. But we did hit the Kemps Truck. We didn't win one of the blow-up cows. Such a shame...I can only imagine how much dust that would have collected sitting in someone's room.

And one of the all-time favorite things for the kids:

...Mike isn't a fan of this. He hates going through this every year. This year I turned around to ask him a question and realized he had disappeared. For the 15 minutes it took to get through this, Mike vanished and looked at the surrounding exhibits of tractors and boats.

We also had other farm experiences; mainly animals and tractors. We saw a calf that was 10 minutes old. Kind of glad we missed that actual action. It wasn't a conversation I was in the mood for. We watched an English Riding Competition and Percheron Competition. Honestly, we were surprisingly impressed with how interesting this was. Or else it was the fact that it offered us an opportunity to actually sit down and rest our feet.

But let's get to the important stuff.

Food.

There's tons to be had and we had tons.

We had some favorites we couldn't miss: Pronto Pups, Mini Donuts, Cinnie Smith's, and of course Fried Cheese Curds. My mouth is watering thinking about that last one. So good, we had a second helping right before leaving for the day.

We tried some new items: Pancake-and-Sausage-on-a-stick, and Texas Twisters which were not something we'd have again.

There were interesting moments in eating. This is what Jake normally looked like after sampling the fare:

Then we would say, "Jake - clean off your face" and he would do this:

I love the corn.

Jake loved it as well. But, missing two front teeth made eating it difficult. However, it provided a good comedy for the rest of us watching him.

And I did hop to the front of the line next to Mike to hear him order these:

Chocolate covered bacon. We met up with the Runchey's here and Tracy and Madison tried the first sampling. The bacon was actually cold, which surprised me. We decided it was a hit, but we weren't sure we could finish a hole cone of them without sharing.

And Maddie finally got her favorite as well: Funnel Cake. She shared with the rest of us, but we just weren't all that interested. So she ate three-quarters of this treat herself. Jake hounded in on the powdered sugar. Maddie saved some of the powdered sugar for later - on her clothing.

And there was some food we missed: All-You-Can-Drink-Milk (they were closed by the time we got there with our cone of cookies) and ice cream from the dairy barn to name a few.

I guess there's always next year.

We headed near the grandstand to hear Jason Aldean finish his set with a remake of a Chicago song and "The Summer of '69" originally sung by Bryan Adams. Mike and I decided he should stick to his own stuff.

But it was followed by a huge round of fireworks that we all enjoyed.

And with that our day was finished. Looking back I can't believe how much we missed. But more surprised that after all of that we got home and realized we were still hunry.