Fair Play

My cream pineapple sweater won a blue ribbon at the Puyallup fair!



And the little yellow sweater that I made for Kate got a red ribbon.

This is my third year entering.  (Some day I'd like to try a drawing or painting.  So far it's just been crochet.)



We went to the fair on Monday evening, after Kate got home from school.  I picked Monday because the rides were half price that day. Kate brought home a ticket from school, and I got two adult tickets at half price as a Groupon deal.  (Andy was free.)  We took along our own food.  We do the fair cheap!

We've usually gone in the Blue Gate, but this time we found a place to park for $5 that was about three blocks from the Green Gate, so we went in that way. (That's Green Gate One, for any Three Investigator fans.) It's kind of the back entrance. All the horse trailers are parked over there. So we had to walk all the way across the fair to get to the Art Hall to see how my sweaters did, and then the kids were all antsy and I didn't really get to look at anything else.  Next time I'll just go without the kids on opening day so I can check out all the other creations!



I spotted this dragon at the chainsaw carver.



Kate on the little dragon roller coaster.  I reminded her that she hadn't enjoyed it last time, but she insisted that she wanted to ride it.  She didn't enjoy it this time either. 



The canoe ride was well received by both kids. 




This was a fun house for smaller kids, and they let parents accompany the really little ones.



Big long slide!



Andy had such a great time he wanted to go again.  I took him through the second time, while Kate sat in Andy's stroller and groused about wanting a toy.




We didn't really want to spend any money on a toy for Kate, but we did spot this game that had cute dolphin-hammer prizes.  This being a special kids' game, you got a prize whether or not you managed to ring the bell, so we used some of our ride tickets on that. 



Kate had a little trouble with the heavy hammer, and got some help from Daddy.



Ding!



This car ride was also a big hit.  (They only had four cars going and the line was pretty long--Doug took Andy on something else while Kate and I held a spot.)




The last ride of the day was this Wally Gator thing that just went around in a circle and over some gentle bumps. 



Waiting for the ride to start.



Andy seemed quite fascinated by all the rides.  He likes watching roller coaster videos, but I don't think he'd ever been on any kind of ride before.



Kate with her dolphin-hammer thingy.  (It's pink!) It squeaks when you whack things with it. She has named it Kissy.

Kate wanted to get a slushie at a particular place that was back on the other side of the fair, so Doug took her to do that while Andy and I went to get the car.  (At this point we were expecting it to be a school night, so we wanted to get home at a reasonable time.)

We were only there for a couple of hours, but we had a good time.  I realized--it's not so much the crowds, it's the noise. Makes it hard to carry on any kind of conversation.  "Do you want to go on this ride?"  "WHAT?"  "WHAT?"  And then I walked out the gate into the quiet cool evening and just kind of went "Ahhhhhh!"



I knew that Monday was Chuseok but I didn't really think of it till Andy and I were walking back up the hill toward the lot where we parked, and we saw the moon all huge and round on the horizon. Not particularly bright, right then, as it was still getting dark and it was also pretty hazy on the horizon, but still impressive.  A fall harvest moon and family fun!  A good day.