9 hours at the fair!

Yes, you read that correctly! We arrived at the Dixie Classic Fair at 12:00PM on Friday and stayed until 9:00PM! We had such a wonderful time, and this particular family event is something that we look forward to every year. This was the first year that JD jr was old enough and big enough to actually get to ride some rides, and boy did he ever!! I can't tell you how much fun JD Sr and I had watching JD get so excited about climbing aboard ride after ride and simply beaming with excitement and waving to us each time he passed by on whatever it was he was riding at the time.

He rode mini-roller coasters (COMPLETELY ALONE!), went down large inflatable slides, jumped in the jumping-house, and tried a variety of rides that just went around a small track. All of this was perfectly fine with me, but when he said he wanted to try the swings (yes, the kind that swing the children up and out in the air), I almost had a heart attack. I wasn't about to discourage him if it was something he really wanted to do, and he was surprisingly the right height to be allowed to get on. I just held my breath and actually felt a little nauseated as the swings began to take off. Would you believe that he LOVED it?? Each time he passed by, he was grinning with a wide-open mouth and saying, "Whoooooo Hooooo!"

Once the sun went down, we made our way over to watch the Demolition Derby. JD was fascinated by all of the smoke, roaring engines, and cheering crowd. You can see in a couple of the pictures just how captivated he was by the show. Later that night as I was tucking him into bed, he said, "Mama, those cars weren't being very nice!" At least he knows that that's NOT how we're supposed to act when we're behind the wheel of a car!

We wrapped up the night by taking a ride on the enormous ferris wheel, and although I had looked forward to it all day (I've always enjoyed riding ferris wheels at night), I have to admit that I panicked when it reached the top! My palms were sweating and I had to close my eyes until we began to descend. That has never happened to me before...could it have anything to do with being 30?

We packed food, the camera, chapstick, and of course, anything else we could think of that would allow us to stay for as long as we did. Being almost 7 mos pregnant resulted in my feet and tailbone throbbing by the end of the day, but it was so worth it!