Texas State Fair

The kids had the day off school for Columbus day, so we took advantage of the opportunity to spend some quality time with the Morphy.

The State Fair of Texas is open right now, and I have never been to an American Fair. It was quite the experience. Fairs are expensive! They like to milk you for all you're worth. I took the cheap skate way. Parking ranged from $10 - $20. After driving through a mud pit parking lot, where they wanted $10, we found a spot on the street. I had 2 free tickets for Winter and Sterling. Katie negotiated a free ticket for Ginger and Sabina, and we got $4 off for our adult tickets. We enjoyed all the free entertainment, didn't go any rides, and definitely didn't buy any food, and managed to spend $11 (for my discounted adult ticket)

A big surprise: Oprah was there, and Martina McBride was performing on the big stage. Unfortunately I was vetoed for watching them, because the kids all voted for the petting zoo. This petting zoo had a huge variety. From regular goats and pigs, to zebras, ostrich, giraffe, water buffalo etc. It was nice to have endless bottles of hand sanitizer lined up by each exit.

The Texas State Fair is famous for crazy food.

Just in case your arteries weren't clogged enough. Or you could go for a healthier option, and buy corn on the cob for a mere $5...

Another fun activity especially for the kids, was the "farm to market". Here, kids learned about the process of farming, taking care of animals, getting animal products, and selling their products to the market for money. The kids then got to use their earned money to buy a snack. It was interesting for the kids, although I think it's more of a unique experience for city kids, rather than my kids who are around animals all the time. I'm not going to spend $1 for 1/4 cup of feed. If my kids want to feed animals, they can wait till we get home, and feed our pig, or goat, or cow, or chicken.

There was also a great African acrobat group. The guys were so funny. They were all ripped, dancing around, and one of them even put his dreadlocks in a pony tail. The kids were absolutely spellbound by their tricks.

After the acrobat show, Winter asked: "Why were all those men brown?" I explained to her that they are from Africa, and that most people from there are black. She very confidently replies: "Yeah, they have to be very strong, because they always have to fight the kangaroos!"

Probably the funnest thing we did, was the Pee Wee rodeo. Kids between the age of 3 and 6, could participated in a special rodeo. Each kid got a stick horse, hat, and some even chaps. Kids were assigned races, according to their age. Ginger did steer wrestling

"This event involves a cowboy on horseback, whose aim is to throw the steer onto his side so that all four of its feet are off the ground".

Sterling rode an insanely wild Bull. He almost won the price for the best bull ride, but came away with a ribbon instead.

Birds shows usually don't interest me at all. They're just not that exciting to me, and when there's a whole bunch of other things to do, I prefer to skip that. Grace was really excited about the bird show though, so we went. It actually wasn't too bad. They had the famous parrot "grouchy" singing some songs, birds flying right over our heads. They also tricked me with their 'girl falls in the water' trick. They asked for a volunteer, and when a particularly large bird came right towards her, she stumbled backwards into a little pond. I totally believed it was real! What a sucker I am.

After the bird show, all the kids were getting thirsty. We only brought 4 drinks, and in order to minimize the backwashing, the kids lined up with open mouths like little birds. We strolled off, and after about 6 minutes, I realized we didn't have enough kids anymore. You know, we had enough kids to get a comment from a total stranger: "look, they brought a gaggle". So Max wasn't with us. Panic set in, and I sprinted back to the last location we saw him at (the bird show entrance). Luckily, he had made the best decision, and stayed in the exact same spot.

We finished off the day with a BMX show, and a cow milking demonstration. It was a wonderful, interesting, and tiring day. At the end, Winter shared her bag with Big Tex (who is 52 feet tall), which made him happy.