A Fair Day

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As a County employee now, I have a few added perks, including 2 more holidays than I used to. Woohoo! Another is that I don't have to participate in the lame employee picnic the DA's office held each year at the park across the street. Instead, the County's employee picnic takes place at their annual fair. A much better deal! Food, prizes, and unlimited rides! Since Aunt Tin is always inviting Connor to go places, it was our turn to invite her. The days leading up to it, Connor kept talking about going to the "air." He would tell anyone willing to listen. Each morning that week, he would ask "go to the air today?" You can imagine his excitement when my answer was finally YES. All the anticipation must have worn him out. He fell asleep on the way there. Once we arrived and he stirred awake from his catnap, he decided he wanted to be a big boy and not use the stroller. So of course I left it in the car. I should have known better. Once we got through the gates, we made our way to a booth that let Connor try his hand at fishing. He was fascinated for a short time, then seemed to get bored with it. So we moved on to the petting zoo. As much as Connor LOVES the zoo and always says "I want to touch it" when he sees an animal he likes, I would have thought he'd really enjoy being able to finally touch some animals. Boy was I wrong! He made it known pretty quickly that he didn't like being on their level. Aunt Tin came to his rescue and petted the animals on his behalf.
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When we were done with the petting zoo, Connor made his infamous "hold you" request. With the temperature hitting about 100, there was no way Tin or I could continue holding him and walking around in the heat. Aunt Tin took him to get a fruit smoothie while I trudged back out to the car to get the stroller. It was about that time that lunch started being served. So we headed over to the lunch tent and turned in our meal tickets. In exchange, we got to throw our names into a raffle for various prizes. About two bites into my sandwich, my name was called out for an Ipod shuffle. I never win anything! After lunch, we decided to check out a BMX stunt bike demo. He enjoyed it for about 3 minutes.
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With it being his nap time, plus the heat, Connor's patience was wearing thin. But I was determined to make him have fun. They had quite a few rides for kids his age, and he rode them all - the carousel (of course), a motorcycle, a train, a fire truck, and a boat.



























But would he smile or act like he was having fun on a single one of them? No. He would do everything in his power to not even make eye contact in fear that it might actually provoke a smile. He managed to get out a wave or two, but no smiles. He has the best poker face of anyone I know. He could beat out the pros. That is, until the ferris wheel . . . Technically, he wasn't supposed to ride it because he wasn't tall enough. But the attendant let him ride anyway. At first he wasn't impressed, but that was before it started moving. Aunt Tin had her camera ready and got the perfect shot of his face when we started going up.
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He couldn't contain his smile on that one. Or the one we found afterwards. He was very interested in going on the Super Slide. I was afraid they wouldn't let him because of his height. However, they gave the go-ahead as long I went down with him, which is what I was planning on doing anyway. He's gone down slides before, but nothing like this. We went faster than Dash! On the last bump, we caught some major air and landed hard. Before we came to a complete stop, he was jumping off my lap and said, "Again!" So of course, I obliged. (Sorry about the video. Aunt Tin is getting used to her new camera and didn't realize she couldn't rotate the picture to view the video. It's okay. We've all done it at some point.)
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Besides the rides, we saw a "walking tree," got Connor a "tattoo" (or, as he put it, a "picture like Dada's"), ate some ice cream, bought him a souvenir shirt with a picture of a bull that says "It ain't no bull, I'm settlin' in at the County Fair," checked out the Plaster Man ("he's scary!" according to Connor), and wolfed down a funnel cake before deciding it was finally time to head out.
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On the way out, Connor had to show us how strong he is ("like Mr. Incredible") and won himself a blue dolphin (his choice over a blow up baseball bat - go figure!). Aunt Tin and I made a bet about how long before Connor would fall asleep once in the car. She said before we hit the highway. I said before we left the parking lot. I won.