Fair!

Yesterday, we did the fair!  ALL day.  It was so much fun!  Andrew brought his friend Ethan, so the two boys took off on rides all day, and I followed the girls around from ride to ride, with Adam in his stroller.  The girls prefer the "Sillyville" rides which are geared more toward kids, while the boys hung out in "Midway" where the hard core riders go.  With all the rides available, the favorite for the girls is still the carousel....a classic.  I think they literally went about 30 times.  The one at the gate was the favorite, and they would go on it 4 or 5 or 6 times in a row, and visit it frequently, and then there were 2 or 3 other carousels that they went on several times.

We were able to get the "dizzy pass" bracelets, which means unlimited rides, so they could go on them again and again.  It was great early in the day when kids were in school, but once late afternoon hit, it got really crowded and the lines got long.  We got there at about 11 am and stayed until 8 pm.  Adam did great!

I totally meant to take pictures of the boys (the bigger ones), but I hardly saw them all day so that didn't happen.  Everyone rode rides, the girls played one game and made a craft (a candle at one of those sand art places), and everyone ate some fair food.  Trying to find food for me and Annamarie to eat was nearly impossible.  Not as hard for Annamarie, who was happy living off of cotton candy and ice cream, but I wanted a real meal.  That did NOT happen.  I managed to eat a burger patty, with no bun, but other than that I got an ice cream bar and a caramel apple.  The biggest frustration was with the taco places.  Normally, mexican food saves me because there are often plenty of gluten free options.  Well, I kept stopping by these places to get a taco, and then would be told that there were only soft tacos.  Those I can't have because tortillas are made out of wheat; I need the hard corn shells.  Eventually I gave up, until the very end of the day when I saw someone walk by with a taco salad, and spotted another taco place nearby.  I ran over and was thrilled to see that there were hard tacos so stood in line to get something for both Annamarie and myself.  After a long wait in line, I got up there and ordered, and then asked if they could tell me what was in the taco meat.  After all of that I was told that there was oats AND wheat in the meat.....they then asked me if I needed to avoid gluten, to which I replied yes...they responded that they had nothing other than chips and cheese.  BIG SIGH.  We were just leaving anyway and I'd had enough, so we headed home.  Anyway, over all it was a good day, and I will close this with some more pictures.

This is the one game they played, and they were the only players so competed against each other.  Annamarie won and got a little stuffed monkey!