Trust me, they're having fun.
Sep. 14th, 2003 12:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsSo, Saturday, we all wake up and hurtle out the door, heading for the Puyallup Fair. We're late getting up, but that's okay. As it turned out, Omaha and I timed everything rather well. We drove down SR99 one exit further than we had to, so that we could stop by the last donut shop in the area and snag breakfast for the four of us. Omaha and I bought milk for ourselves (we'd made spill-proof cups with drinks for the girls at home) but Omaha's was a little off, so we ended up sharing a half pint between the two of us. And they made the coconut flaked donut correctly; the last place dipped the donut in some kind of frosting and then sprinkled coconut on top. Yech.
Anyway, we got to the fair with no problem, found a place to park, and headed in. I passed by a car with the licence plate "K9LVR" and wondered if that was just a dog breeder or something more, um, salacious. We walked in and wrote our cell phone numbers on the girls' hands with a pen; it occurs to me now that I should write it on the upper arm with a felt-tip, since the girls have become scrupulous about handwashing when they're done in the bathroom. The woman at the counter asked us where we'd learned that, and I had to inform her that my wife and I had just come up with it some day after reading Mercer Mayer's Just Lost, which is about a little boy who gets lost at a shopping mall. She commented that four or five other families had done that, too, the past week, and she was wondering where it came from.
The wind was nice and cool, but the sun was high and clear all day, so we were careful about applying sunscreen to the girls as we wandered about the livestock exhibits. There were some very huge cows there. We passed by the pygmy goats and the llamas and alpacas, and the girls took it all in with the appropriate mix of fascination and boredom. They didn't seem all that upset with the notion that we were talking about what parts of the animal we would tear off and turn into hamburger. The petting farm was, well, unimpressive, but the girls were still thrilled to be able to pet the rabbits and the pigs. They had no interest in where their food comes from.
Neither girl was terribly avaricious, despite the constant temptation of children-ready toys and things being hawked from the midway. I was grateful for that.
Puyallup is predictably god-soaked: lots of religion-flavored t-shirts of the Christian variety. I noticed a slight change over previous years. It used to be that most of the t-shirts were about the crucifixition, y'know, where God was temporarily inconvenienced for your sins. Now, most of them were about creation, the beginning of the world, or confrontations such as "I'm no kin to a monkey." It seems that ID has gripped the fundamentalist imagination big time.
After a very greasy lunch of hot dogs and curly fries, we went to the rides. The first one was the kiddie roller-coaster, and the girls had a complete blast, as you can see.
Trust me: they're having fun. Actually, despite the picture, they both did come off of it saying they'd loved it and wanted to do it again. They also rode on a number of other things, including the kiddie octopus and the carousel. Afterwards, we went to "fitness for life" pavillion where they were hawking all manner of things-- legitimate items like the Discovery Channel's various exercise shows all the way to absurd things like magnetic wrist bracelets that would relieve any problem you might be having with your wrists. They had a Clifford The Big Red Dog thing going on there, but even the kids knew it was just a guy in a lame Clifford costume and it cost seven bucks per kid. Afterwards, we used the SkyRide cable car to get to the other end of the fair, where we met up with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fallenpegasus, who had been heading back through town on his way home from another skydiving class.
By the time we were ready to leave, the girls were completely ready to drop. They were exhausted. I drove them home while Omaha and Pegasus headed up to some event.
By the time we got home, it was nearly 7:30. I felt lazy, so I just defrosted some chicken tenders that had been in the freezer a touch too long, cooked them in the microwave, shredded them, and then let them simmer in a pot for ten minutes with some water. Also, turned on the oven at the same time. It took all of ten minutes to go from having nothing to having chicken burritos, the tortillas warmed nicely on the baking stone. Yamaarashi-chan took hers dry, but Kouryou-chan and I had ours with cheese and sour cream. And I got to use my Huy Fong Sriracha Sauce (on my burrito only), one of the finest hot sauces in the galaxy. Then I put them to bed. They were actually very good about going to bed on time. Great kids. Guess wearing them out was a good tactic.
Anyway, we got to the fair with no problem, found a place to park, and headed in. I passed by a car with the licence plate "K9LVR" and wondered if that was just a dog breeder or something more, um, salacious. We walked in and wrote our cell phone numbers on the girls' hands with a pen; it occurs to me now that I should write it on the upper arm with a felt-tip, since the girls have become scrupulous about handwashing when they're done in the bathroom. The woman at the counter asked us where we'd learned that, and I had to inform her that my wife and I had just come up with it some day after reading Mercer Mayer's Just Lost, which is about a little boy who gets lost at a shopping mall. She commented that four or five other families had done that, too, the past week, and she was wondering where it came from.
The wind was nice and cool, but the sun was high and clear all day, so we were careful about applying sunscreen to the girls as we wandered about the livestock exhibits. There were some very huge cows there. We passed by the pygmy goats and the llamas and alpacas, and the girls took it all in with the appropriate mix of fascination and boredom. They didn't seem all that upset with the notion that we were talking about what parts of the animal we would tear off and turn into hamburger. The petting farm was, well, unimpressive, but the girls were still thrilled to be able to pet the rabbits and the pigs. They had no interest in where their food comes from.
Neither girl was terribly avaricious, despite the constant temptation of children-ready toys and things being hawked from the midway. I was grateful for that.
Puyallup is predictably god-soaked: lots of religion-flavored t-shirts of the Christian variety. I noticed a slight change over previous years. It used to be that most of the t-shirts were about the crucifixition, y'know, where God was temporarily inconvenienced for your sins. Now, most of them were about creation, the beginning of the world, or confrontations such as "I'm no kin to a monkey." It seems that ID has gripped the fundamentalist imagination big time.
After a very greasy lunch of hot dogs and curly fries, we went to the rides. The first one was the kiddie roller-coaster, and the girls had a complete blast, as you can see.
Trust me: they're having fun.
fallenpegasus, who had been heading back through town on his way home from another skydiving class.By the time we were ready to leave, the girls were completely ready to drop. They were exhausted. I drove them home while Omaha and Pegasus headed up to some event.
By the time we got home, it was nearly 7:30. I felt lazy, so I just defrosted some chicken tenders that had been in the freezer a touch too long, cooked them in the microwave, shredded them, and then let them simmer in a pot for ten minutes with some water. Also, turned on the oven at the same time. It took all of ten minutes to go from having nothing to having chicken burritos, the tortillas warmed nicely on the baking stone. Yamaarashi-chan took hers dry, but Kouryou-chan and I had ours with cheese and sour cream. And I got to use my Huy Fong Sriracha Sauce (on my burrito only), one of the finest hot sauces in the galaxy. Then I put them to bed. They were actually very good about going to bed on time. Great kids. Guess wearing them out was a good tactic.
