Friday, August 11, 2006
The State Fair
For those of you who were never in marching band... you'll never understand. For those of you who were... this may be a little nostalgic for you. Wednesday was State Fair Band day. Now, to be totally honest I haven't been to the State Fair in YEARS!!! But, my baby sister, Pop Tart, is going to be a freshman in the fall and therefore is marching with the Marching Highlanders. As if that's not exciting enough, she's also playing bagpipes!! (fyi ~ yours truly played pipes in high school too)
So Wednesday morning me and the fam made the trek down to the fair to support Pop Tart. We barely made it to the grandstands in time because traffic and parking were horrendous. We watch them perform a somewhat shaky show (it was obvious they were a bit nervous) and promptly ran across the infield to the buses to give hugs and try to pump them up for the night show. (It's possible that on the way to the buses we stopped for funnel cakes and lemon shake-ups.... that might have happened.... maybe....any evidence has been consumed... i mean destroyed... yeah destroyed)
Later that evening we returned for the night show. Traffic and parking were MUCH more manageable this time so we ended up getting there waaaaaaaay early. No worries... to the Swine barn! Seriously they had the world's largest and 2nd largest Boars there. Big Papa ~ 6 years old weighing in at 1089lbs. And Wilbur ~ 5 years old and weighing in at 1086lbs. (is it bad that all I could think was mmmmmmmm BACON mmmmmmmm?) We also visited the "Draft Horse" barn where we saw more donkeys and mules than horses. Did you know that a mule is not the same thing as a donkey? It's apparently a cross breed of a horse and a donkey. And somewhere in that whole cross breeding thing it turns out that most mules are sterile! (and you thought the State Fair was all about eating fried stuff.... it can be educational too!) More Mule trivia..... A male mule is called a John and a female mule is call a Mollie.
My favorite animal of the fair was what I refer to as the Llonkey. According to the (slightly mentally challenged) man that was standing in front of the Llonkey's stall this creature is a cross breed between a Donkey and a Llama ~ thus a Llonkey. Lucky for me I had my science teacher of a dad in tow who later explained to me that it was not a Llonkey, but actually one of the oldest breeds of donkeys around. It's real name is the Poitou and it seems that it came from France. Evidence below demonstrates why it would be easy to believe the Llonkey heritage.
After checking out the animals it was time for the first group of bands to start. Mom wanted to see all 16 bands (FREAK!!!!) so she and dad went to watch while Will and I started trolling toward the most important part of the State Fair...... FOOOOOOOOD!!!!! Will and I have been really good lately. We're both trying to lose weight and we're even working out regularly and everything. The fair comes once a year people!!! All rules were gone! Anything and everything was fair game for dinner. So between the two of us we had an orange Creamcicle, an elephant ear, 2 corn dogs, 2 pineapple whips (pineapple ice cream), 2 giant rootbeers, a lemon shake up and we took some cotton candy home to eat the next day. mmmmm the fair.So once we were both pretty sure we couldn't walk any more and that any minute we would slip into a diabetic coma... we decided to go watch the band! They were AWESOME! They obviously got the jitters out of their system and totally kick tail in the night show. Unfortunately they still came in 4th (same thing they placed in the morning) but they really were great. They looked fantastic too. They pulled out the doublets and Plaids for the night show. For those of you who aren't up on your Scottish garb check out this pick of the cutest little bagpiper ever!
2 Comments:
SOLID POSTING. I laughed. I cried. It moved me. Also, cutest. sis. ever!
Awww....Pop Tart!
Had I known that you guys were so serious about the amount of fair food you would consume, I would have come in a heartbeat! It would have been hilarious!
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