Fair-ly Insane

So it's that time again. The fair is in town. And every year we're all excited, like, "Ooh! Let's take the kids to the fair!" ... Like it's our parental duty, like our children would be deprived and their childhood bleak if we didn't attend this annual festivity.

Honestly? I don't know why we even go. I mean, we schlep the kids out into the triple-digit heat index at one million percent humidity and pay exorbitant amounts of money just to get into the gates - then fork over even more scrilla so we can buy umpteen-thousand tickets for rides that go around and around for like two minutes while the kids sit on them looking bored and waving occasionally while we call their names and snap blurry pictures on their way by. Then we pay yet again (ka-ching! ka-ching!) for food that gives us a week's worth of calories in one sitting, which gets picked at and largely wasted by the boys, and then pay more for games like "pick a plastic duck out of a kiddie pool and win a cheap crappy prize," because heaven forbid the games take tickets like the rides do. And then we listen to the kids complain about his prize being bigger than miiiiiiiine and I wanted the bluuuuuuue one and threaten them that if they whine one more time we'll leave and then actually end up leaving because they whine again (usually about being thiiiiiiirsty and needing a driiiiiiiiink because it's hoooooottttt) and hello, we've got to make good on our threat. And as soon as we get in the car, the negotiations (okay, fighting) over the carnival prizes ensues, which doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things because twenty minutes after we get home the prizes will deflate/break/otherwise be rendered useless anyway.

And to add insult to injury? I've gotta give them a bath afterward. Not to mention ... my hair gets frizzy.

But oddly enough, every year Curtis and I think it's worth it to endure an hour or two of all this just for the ten minutes or so when the boys are actually enthusiastic and excited. It's like we get amnesia and forget how taxing the whole ordeal always seems to be.

I know. It makes virtually no sense.

I do sometimes get good pictures, though. Like the sign that I thought said "cooter."  And hey, if it's potential blog fodder, I'm all over it like dust on a carnival prize.