Waaaay behind

Good heavens! When a girl goes on a five day trip and then has a busy weekend to follow, how is she supposed to keep up with her blog? Especially when she hasn't written anything since Thursday? It reminds me of journal entries from my youth where I would say "Dear Diary, I have so much to tell you! I need to talk about X, and X, and X, and X". Sometimes there would be follow up entries for all those Xs, and sometimes I would just give up in disgust. It's not that a lot happened to me, but I was a very thorough journaler. So bearing in mind I want to talk about my trip to Pennsylvania to see my Grandpa, and I may have to start doubling up on days, let's do part one of the more recent activities first. Ok? Ok!

Friday night we went to a local Fall Festival. Lilli was still scarred by Oktoberfest, and refused to ride everything except for a little fire truck. And I think that was only because she could clank the bell. There were some tears at first, but when she realized she was not dying they dried up.

Elizabeth, on the other hand, rode everything we would let her on, until we ran out of ride tickets and I refused to buy more.

Here she is at the top of the Ferris Wheel for the first time. She's desperately wanted to ride one for a long time, but it wasn't until this festival when I saw that the variety of wheel they had was in the Gondola style (to my mind, less flimsy than the other kind), that I went for it. Apparently It was everything she was hoping it would be.


I'll spare you most of the ride pictures, but below is one of the only shots I could catch of the "Himalaya". Looking at it we thought it was just another circular kiddie ride, and Elizabeth sprinted towards it. We'd been letting her ride by herself so it didn't occur to us to get on board with her. When it took off like a rocket, I worried that we had made a big mistake. The centrifugal force had thrown her into a corner of the ride carriage, and I could see her struggling to get upright, and she didn't look too happy. But as it continued to streak around you could visibly see her relax (not dying has a way of helping you do that) and soon she was waving to us:



After we did our yearly stop by the bake sale and got the required cotton candy, we started to head back to the car. That's when Elizabeth said "I want to play some games!" It hadn't occurred to us that she would want to. But we said they could play one. I remembered seeing one of those games where the kid picks ducks and whatever numbers are on the bottom reflect the prize they get. All they need at 2 and 4 is to be guaranteed some little trinket, which was the case at this booth, so we figured it was worth a shot. Elizabeth picked her ducks out and was allowed to choose a small prize. She happily chose a green ball (below), and then Lilli had a turn. Lilli got three 3's, and was handed this:

It's cheap and plastic, and probably radioactive, but it made her day. Her weekend, actually. Dora goes everywhere with us.

As we were leaving, Elizabeth sighed happily (clutching her ball) and said "That fair was awesome."

I have to agree