State Fair

 We love the State Fair at our house!  And having Paul off work during the State Fair this year was an added bonus! As we traditionally do, we went as a family on the first day of the fair (August 25th).  A bonus for this year, was that Paul and I took a day and went a full day as a date (September 1st)!  (Thank you Grandma and Grandpa Kirkwood for babysitting!).  The weather was beautiful both days.  It was fun to do all the kid friendly things the first day, and to experience the fair through the eyes of the kids.  And it was also fun to do the fair on a second day with my favorite date, with not a care in the world, and doing whatever we felt like doing!  We ate SO MUCH good food, loved people watching ;), watched a bunch of great shows, and had a blast.  I am already looking forward to next year!

Family Day at the State Fair: Thursday August 25th

We always do the "Little Farm Hands" Exhibit first

The kids don aprons and buckets and go through the stages of farming....riding tractors, planting seeds, harvesting, feeding animals, milking cows, getting wool from sheep, picking apples, etc and putting their goods in their bucket.  Then they "sell" their goods at market and get "money" to pick out a snack of choice.

All three kids picked out ice cream sandwiches :)

The girls loved the dogs in the pet area!

The GIANT sandbox.   These two play so well together and immediately set off to build something together.

Larkyn did her own thing :)

Mommy and Daddy watched!

And then Larkyn and Mommy took selfies while the older kids finished up!

Monkey cheeks!

While we finished off at the giant sandbox we heard music starting at the stage near us.  AWESOME break dancers put on one of the coolest shows I've seen at the state fair, including a guy spinning while standing on his head for 15 seconds at least!

Larkyn watched the show with Daddy

While the older two joined the kids on stage for the last song.

Both kids really got into it! 

 Here are two videos of the kids dancing on stage!  Sorry, one of them is sideways!

The older two loved it and wanted to take a picture with the dancers afterwards!

One highlight (especially for Paul), was meeting Jamie Watson, midfielder for Minnesota United, MN soccer team.  He was so personable and sweet with the kids, asking them about their playing soccer, etc!

Family Pic with Jamie Watson, MN United Soccer Player

Paul and the giant turkey leg!

The kids loved the miracle of life building and all the baby animals.

Wow this Ducky is HUGE!

The farm magic show was fun and very informative!  I learned things!

The skateboard/bike show was also really cool.  Colton especially loved it.

We always end our day with Paul's favorite, the giant bucket of sweet martha's cookies!

We ALL enjoy the warm amazing goodness of fresh baked chocolate chip cookies!

 Date Day at the State Fair: Thursday, September 1st

I was super excited to go back to the state fair with this handsome dude!  One of our first stops was the corn on the cob, which proved to be as delicious as ever!!  We continued trying various foods, people watching, enjoying the trampoline show and a talent show, watching a glass blowing demo, and walking in all the buildings we wouldn't normally take kids in like the shopping areas, history areas, and any area that had lots to look at but you move slowly through it!

Both wearing our MN United Soccer shirts with the Loon Mascot :)

Our goal was to walk EVERY SINGLE street of the fair that had something on it, and with Paul mapping it out, we DID!  At the end of the day, our feet were tired, our bellies full, and our hearts happy!  Love dates with this guy!

At the Kemps booth they had a spot where you could take a picture with a photo bomb by the Kemps cow.  Paul obliged my request to do so ;)

Grandma and Grandpa K took great care of our three kiddos back home!

They also took the kids to their last makeup swimming lesson for the summer, but I'll do a separate post on wrapping up swimming lessons next  and will include some of her pictures/videos there :).