There's nothing like the smell of livestock in the morning

Sis and I took Kady, Chandler and Cute Baby to the fair this morning.

We unloaded from the van, settled Cute Baby into the stroller where he promptly slid down to almost laying, threw one arm over the side of the stroller and gave us a look of contempt that said, "I am so much cooler than this stroller makes me look." Then we walked over to the barns. The dairy barn was the closest and we just headed for it. I kept hearing this clinking noise. We'd take a few steps and I'd hear the clinking. It was unusual, but I really didn't think much of it. Then Sis, out of the side of her mouth mumbled "That. Is. An. Inmate. An inmate is over there in chains picking up trash." Ahh...that's where the clinking was coming from - his ankles. She started walking faster, dragging poor Kady and Chandler behind her and I had to jog with the stroller to keep up. I guess she thought maybe Fitty might be out to visit his incarcerated homeboys or something.

Now, it was widely advertised that today was Kids' Day at the fair. Why on earth would you bring out a chain gang to pick up trash when you know that virtually every daycare in town, lots of local elementary schools and both Christian schools in town would be bringing buttloads of kids into the grounds?

So we hid in the dairy barn checking out the bottle/bucket calves and stepping in a lot of cow poo. Btw, Mrs. Coach's kids' posters look awesome. That Mrs. Coach is quite talented with her glitter. When the inmates were loaded back into their bus, chains a clinking as they went, we ventured back out into the fresh air. We went about 2 feet into the barn where the big cows were, but when we discovered that they were blowing water on the cows we opted to just skip that one. I had no desire to be sprayed with essence of cow.

Chandler has some chickens entered and we headed to the poultry barn to check them out. Thing was, he's three. He has no idea which chickens are his. He kept saying "I think that one might be mine. But it might not be. I dunno what it looks like, Kiki - it's a chicken!" He did have a point. I kept gagging at the smell of superheated poultry flavored air and finally I said, "Chan, dude, I'm sure the chickens are gorgeous and I'm proud of your ribbons and all, but if we don't leave Kiki is going to puke on a chicken and quite possibly that duck over there."

We skipped the hog barn. Superheated swine flavored air didn't really appeal to me either. We did check out the sheep, and the total highlight of that barn was the two goats who were headbutting. One backed the other into the corner of the pen and hit him real hard the goat pooed everywhere. You should've seen the look on Kady's face. Chandler jumped about 12 feet in the air.

We took the kids over to the mobile dairy and watched a guy milk a cow. Now, Papa had a dairy farm when we were kids, so I have seen more than my fair share of cows milked, but the kids hadn't and they were mesmerized by it.

Then we hit the exhibition building where the kids got a popsicle, we got a bag of goodies from our friend, Melissa, and her bank, the kids got their picture taken with the bank's "free bee", I got a free thermos thing just for having my electric with REC (I don't think she would've given me a cooler if she'd known that I'm late on my bill), I picked up a couple of gun locks in hopes that Paul will actually put them on the guns, the kids got a sheriff's badge sticker and then we left the building. By that time it was freakin' hot anyway.

I took some pictures and I'll post them tomorrow. Right now I have to load up two very hyper boys and take them to karate. Paul is staying home with the girls. Somehow I think I got the short end of this deal.