NC State Fair

My sister has been staying with us all week.  I feel bad that I don't have time during the day to do fun things with her, so she's been pretty bored.  Except on Monday and today when I made her help me spread mulch.  Fun times!  Woohoo!  So anyway, our big plan all week was to head to the State Fair on Thursday evening.  It's right up the road from us and Thursday was the first day (it goes for 2 weeks).  Doug, Lynette, Ada, and Harper were going to go too.  But then they called for 80% chance of severe thunderstorms.  We decided to wait and see and then in the afternoon decided not to go (the percentage kept fluctuating between 30% and 80%).  Basically nobody had any freaking clue.  But my track record at amusement parks in the past several years has been pretty bad (rained every time).  So we decided not to go.  Then at about 4 or 4:30 the chance of thunderstorms went away.  By then Doug had already planned to stay at work, but I knew Laura really wanted to go, so Laura and I took the kids and then Braden met us there later.

In all my years growing up near Charlotte and then the 5 Octobers I spent in Raleigh while I was in college here, I never went to the State Fair.  I was pretty shocked at how big it is.  We probably saw maybe 20% of it.    And wow, you can spend money like water there.  Especially with 3 kids.  $6 on ice cream...gone.  $33 on ride tickets...gone.  $12 on admission tickets....gone (thank goodness kids 5 and under get in free).  $16 on games trying to win a REALLY crappy stuffed animal....gone. But everyone had a good time.  Blythe's favorite thing was the free fall ride.  No one would ride it with her, so we had to wait for Braden to get there because we knew he would ride it with Blythe.  Ethan said his favorite ride was the monster trucks.  Brynn rode the carousel and altered between kind of fun and deathly afraid.  In the end, she decided on deathly afraid.  Laura and Blythe rode a caterpillar roller coaster that they both loved.  What Brynn really did like though was the petting zoo.  The goats and the camels were very amusing to her.

The place really is gigantic though.  We didn't see any shows, rode only kiddie rides, and only ate 1 elephant ear and ice cream out of ALL the food there to offer (we opted against the fried oreos).  You could probably spend several days there, but then we would be broke.  So, especially since it's 1 mile from our house, we will opt for once per year.     \