A Trip To The County Fair

The third week of April was quite a busy week for all five of us. Possibly the busiest of us were Lorelai and Nathan, who set out on a five-day trip to California with the Great Expectations Academy jazz band. We'll write about this trip in more detail in a future post, but here are the basics:

The Fullerton College Jazz Festival is an annual event for our school's band. Mark, the director, has several connections at the college, and considers this festival a great opportunity for his young students. It's a chance for the band to perform competitively against several high school jazz bands. The band members also get "workshop" time, in which college/professional jazz musicians give the students a lot of helpful tips and suggestions to improve their performances.

This trip to Fullerton (not surprisingly) is also an opportunity for the kids to party and have lots of fun. Among other things, the band usually spends a day at Knotts Berry Farm, a famous amusement park. This would be Lorelai's first trip to Knott's, and she talked (sometimes bragged) about it at length to her siblings. This, of course, made them jealous. And to make things worse (for them), Nathan went along with the band as a chaperone this year; that meant that both Lorelai and Daddy would get to visit an amusement park. This did not sit well with Celeste and Aurora at all.

So what could possibly cheer them up? Well, I settled for the second-best(?) option; taking our two younger daughters to the Pima County Fair, which just so happened to be running that same weekend! If they couldn't go to a "real" amusement park, they could still have a lot of fun without going too far from home.

Our weekend without Lorelai and Nathan was still incredibly eventful, so fitting the county fair in was a bit of a tight squeeze. We went on a Friday afternoon; luckily, our school only had a half-day of school that day, so we were able to get a (slightly) earlier start. We grabbed a quick lunch and ate it in our neighborhood park (I had no desire to pay through the nose for a whole meal at the fair; such overpriced food!). Then it was off to the fair!

We'd been to the fair a couple of times before, the most recent trip being about three years ago. Now that the girls were so much older (and taller!), a lot more opportunities for fun opened themselves up. But we didn't go just for the rides; there was a lot of other cool stuff to see and do.

Celeste and Aurora had a lot of fun playing make-believe in the kids' area...whether it was riding in Cinderella's carriage...

...taking a turn in the stocks...

 

...sailing in a ship...

...or sitting in the throne, they really enjoyed themselves.

 

Since this was the county fair, there were also live animals galore to play with. An indoor exhibit featured a lot of cool reptiles.

The girls were also fascinated by this Egyptian hairless cat (I thought it was hideously ugly, but to each his own, right?).

NOTE: this animal wasn't real.

There were other live animals at various exhibits. There was a special sea lion show available (we didn't have time to watch it, so we hurried past); there was also a live "giant alligator" that the kids made me pay extra just for the privilege of seeing! It was indeed huge and terrifying, but a good picture was impossible, given the shaded viewing area. You'll just have to take my word that we saw it.

Not far past the giant alligator was a large, bustling petting zoo, which was almost overrun by excited children. My girls were eager to hop into the fray. There were lots of the "usual" petting zoo critters running around; a few chickens, a mini pot-bellied pig, a few llamas, and hordes of sheep and goats of all ages.

One young kid was extremely interested in my girls...that is, he was extremely interested in eating their clothing and nibbling their hair. By the end of our photo session, Celeste was shrieking and scrambling away from the diminutive goat in terror. It was terribly amusing.

But there was one surprising species on display at this petting zoo: we got to pet some wallabies! They are cousins to kangaroos; they are a little shorter and stockier, but completely adorable, and very willing to be petted.

 It was fun to see them! Later, as we were leaving the fair, we saw a full Australian animal exhibit, which featured many Australian birds & reptiles, but also a handful of full-sized kangaroos! Sadly, they weren't available for petting, but they were still very fun to see.

It wouldn't be a trip to the county fair without a visit to the stock show, and the multitudes of farm animals within all the barns. The girls loved every second of it, including the rabbit and guinea pig sections.

But they were equally mesmerized by the mother cows and pigs feeding their babies on-site.

 

It was noisy, smelly, and a little dirty, but still quite fun.

Then it was time to head over to the carnival portion of the fair; we'd all been eagerly awaiting this! Unfortunately, we soon discovered that although the girls were much bigger than they'd been on our last trip to the fair, they weren't quite big enough to ride whatever they wanted. Aurora was just two inches short of riding most of the "mid-intensity" adult rides, and she was heartbroken over it. Celeste rode on the elevated swings while Aurora wept bitterly the whole time. After that, we decided among the three of us to only use our tickets on rides that all three of us could ride.

Things improved greatly after that! No, we didn't go on the highest-intensity rides, but there were still a lot of fun options available for our family. We found a few kid coasters, a fun water ride, a few fun-houses, the bumper cars, and the GIANT SLIDE...

...which the girls loved! There was a "hang-glider" style thrill ride in the adult carnival section; unfortunately, Aurora was too short to ride it. But fortunately, we found an equivalent ride in the kiddee carnival section, so everyone ended up happy.

We concluded our carnival shenanigans with a ride on the giant Ferris wheel; it was thrilling (and a little scary) to be able to look over the whole fair!

Believe it or not, I had a Bunco night to attend with some girlfriends of mine, so our time at the fair was almost up. But we each grabbed a snack before we left:

The girls enjoyed their gigantic hot dogs; I tried out the fried zucchini.

Sadly, the zucchini was so big that it tasted bitter. Silly food vendors; bigger doesn't always mean better. Oh well, it was still decent. We didn't have too many hours at the fair this year, but they were certainly fun hours! We decided that going during the daytime was definitely preferable to going at night; it was hotter outside, true, but much less crowded, so we got a lot more done in a shorter amount of time.

After this, there was no more whining from Celeste and Aurora about Knott's Berry Farm; they'd had their own big night out! But the next day would also have a big activity as well; more on that in the next post!