Yesterday we took the girls to the Sun Prairie Corn Fest. They had so much fun! We had our doubts, as we left at about 2:30, which is prime tired time for Lauren. She was a bear! She was little miss crabby until we saw a guy with a giant baseball for a head - this just cracked her up, and she was fine after that.
There was a kiddie roller coaster that Megan wanted to go on, so of course Lauren wanted to go, too. Originally Scott and I were going to ride with them, but then we decided it would be ok if they rode together. However, we were still a bit nervous about Lauren. Scott thought she would freak out and want to get out; I thought she would let go and get tossed out going around one of the corners. As it turns out, neither of us was even remotely close.
She absolutely loved it - held on tight with a look of pure joy on her face. It was so much fun to watch. Megan loved it too. I think they would have ridden it all day if they could have.
The girls (Mommy, Megan, and Lauren) all went on the Tilt-A-Whirl (Mommy's favorite ride). They loved that one, too. They wanted to go on a "ride" where it is a fun-house where the floor moves in different directions. The attendant said it was all metal inside so if they fell they would definitely get hurt. They didn't seem all that interested in it after that (thank you ex-con attendant guy!).
After the amusement park we went to get a tote of sweet corn. Mommy and Megan headed for the designer purse knock-off booth, and Daddy and Lauren went in to get sweet corn. Megan found us a nice shady spot on the hill and we sat down to eat some corn. Megan had said that she didn't like corn anymore (after previously being a 2-ear-minimum girl) but we said she had to have at least one bite. Once she had one bite, she proclaimed that she "likes corn again now".
On the way in, they had a ride where they strap you in to a harness and then you jump on a trampoline. The harness is attached to giant rubber bands, which they stretch once you are strapped in, so that when you jump, you jump really high. Megan really wanted to do it, so we told her we could do it before we left (secretly hoping they would have closed down by then since it was 7 bucks a person). Of course Megan had not forgotten about it, so we had to go do that on the way out.
Lauren also really wanted to do it, so they both got in line and we bought tickets. Megan had fun jumping, but poor little Lauren just hung there since she didn't weigh enough to stretch the rubber bands out! The operator (a young guy) said that they have to have two bands, and each band is rated for 25 lbs. That means that she had 50 lbs pulling her up, and only 30 lbs (her weight) pulling her down! He ended up manually pulling her down so that she would pop back up.
She went so high! And she laughed and laughed. She had such a great time. At one time, she exclaimed, "I'm jumping, I'm jumping!" and the guy said, "No you're not! *I'm* doing the jumping for you!", as he sweated profusely from doing the labor-intensive work of catapulting her in the heat. I think Megan was a little miffed that she didn't get catapulted as well, but she still had fun ("Mommy, look at how high I'm jumping!"). At the end of the ride, I thanked the guy for doing that for Lauren, as it really made a big difference for her, and he said he felt like we paid 7 bucks for the ticket, we ought to get our money's worth. I thought that was so kind of him. I wish we could have done something for him in return. I would have given him a tip but I had spent the last of my cash buying Lauren's ticket! (does that qualify as irony?)
On the way home we drove through Dairy Queen. Megan got her usual Reese's Blizzard, and Scott got his usual Butterfinger Blizzard. I decided to push the envelope and get a
waffle cone instead of a regular one. Bad idea. First of all, the waffle cone's one side extends up so you can't properly lick the top of the cone (they do give you a spoon, but half the fun of a cone is that you don't use a spoon!), and the waffle doesn't even taste good when you eat it. We got Lauren a twist cone in a bowl to try to minimize the mess, but she insisted on licking it anyway. At least the bowl caught most of the drips.
The girls were pretty tired when we got home and were both sound asleep by 8:30. Mommy was also tired, and was in bed shortly after they were! All in all, it was a fun day. Megan is already planning ahead for next year. She told me that we have to save all our money for tickets for next year so she can ride all the rides over and over. I told her she should save
her money (not that she gets any, but she still resolved to do so)!
They actually have unlimited rides for $20 Thursday and Friday nights (it runs Thurs-Sun) but the mosquitoes are so bad this year that we just couldn't subject the girls to running around a big field at dusk. Poor Lauren gets bit up in bright sunshine (at one point this summer she had no fewer than 25 mosquito bites in various stages of healing despite wearing layers of bug spray) so we could only imagine the feast the mosquitoes would have at that time of the evening! Hopefully next year they won't be so bad and we can take them for one of those days.
It's interesting as a parent how you can have so much fun, yet not really do anything yourself. The things I did at the Corn Fest were few and far between, but it was so much fun to see the girls having fun that I didn't even care that I wasn't doing anything. It is more fun to give someone else joy than it is to create it for yourself.
