state fair

I was scheduled for shotgun practice on Sunday. I need practice shooting the gun, but I hate going on my day off at 2pm because it takes forever to drive to and from the firing range so it feels like my whole day off is wasted. I definitely can't plan anything during the afternoon. Anyway, long story short, my practice was cancelled! Wooooohooooooooooo!!!

I found out about the cancellation just before I left work on Saturday and then promptly forgot about it because we went to a birthday party at my grandma's. Short side story- At Grandma's I was playing Superhero with Logan and my cousin's two boys who are 5 and almost 3. I was the bad guy and they captured me to put me in jail. I'd go along with their restraint and follow their orders for a couple minutes and then break away and run until they caught me again. One time after I broke away I was standing still, catching my breath. I was watching the 5-yr-olds but paying no attention to the 2-yr-old because duh, he's 2! Mistake. I saw Little Guy coming at me but didn't care. Mistake. Little Guy took me down! Dunno what his daddy's teaching him, but the kid actually tackled me to the ground! Hilarious! I want another round where I'm paying attention and defending myself. Yeah, he'll probably get me anyway...

I was tired when we left Grandma's and still wasn't thinking about my newly free Sunday. When I woke up Sunday morning I decided we MUST do something as a family on one of the last weekends before school starts. The number one thing "I" wanted to do was go see the baby tigers at St. Louis Zoo. There are five of them but they are only on display a couple hours a day. We'd be lucky to make the trip in time to see them. I then remembered the state fair is this week. Yeah! The kids will love that and I can see lots of animals. We got ready and left.

I found on the fair's website that many businesses around Springfield were selling tickets redeemable for ride armbands. The $22 ticket was good for unlimited rides AND benefitted Children's Miracle Network! We stopped at the Wal-Mart in Lincoln and I wrote a $44 check directly to Children's Miracle Network! The kids got unlimited rides between 10am and 5pm for a donation to a great charity! Cool!

I knew the kids were mainly interested in rides, rides, rides. I was mainly interested in animals. Gene didn't care about animals and kindly agreed to stay with the kids so I could check out the animals. It was soooo fun to wander through the swine, sheep, cattle and horse barns BY MYSELF with no one whining about going back to the rides :) I caught a little bit of the draught horse mare/foal show which was adorable. Meanwhile, the kids went on tons of rides and ran through the many funhouses over and over. We met up for lunch and then took in a couple of the wild animal shows. There was a show with tigers immediately followed by a separate show with a young male lion and two liger cubs. This family's lion and tiger "accidentally" got together. Uh huh. I'm sure the "accidental" mating had NOTHING to do with ligers being made ridiculously popular by the Napolean Dynamite movie! I came "this close" to having my pic taken with one of the liger cubs (just to show off for my zoo friends) but decided against it :)

We stayed at the rides until the armbands expired at 5 and then Kaylin went on one of those bungee trampoline things. She had a blast jumping high and flipping. We took the kids to the FFA farm animal petting area and they got to pet baby ducks (Kaylin's favorite.) We left just before 6pm. It was a long day, but everyone had fun. Gene was shocked when I requested we stop at Cracker Barrel on the way home. I usually can't stand the place, but wanted to sit and be served and NOT eat fast food. It turned out to be a good thing. We got to relax and unwind. I still think the food is less than mediocre. (How can a place like Cracker Barrel have such AWFUL biscuits and corn muffins??? McDonald's has better biscuits!!!)

We got home about 8:30pm. Bwa ha ha ha. Too late for the neighbor kids. I think it was my first Sunday of the summer without neighbor kids :D Well, we did wave to the little girl standing in her doorway on our way out. See ya!