State Fair 2018

Last Saturday we went to our annual State Fair. My work gives out one free ticket but I had limited choices as far as dates go. Since Isaac is in school and it starts before labor day we were stuck with going September 1st. I think next year we were forego the free ticket and try to go one of the two week days before his school starts. It's just so crowded on Saturdays! over 200,000 people!

Our goal was to get there at 7:30am... well we got there early but more like 8:30. First stop was breakfast burrito then coffee. 

And since there were no lines for cookies yet we decided to get that out of the way.

Then we rode the Ye Old Mill ride for the first time. The kids really liked it! I had never even knew about it until this year when a friend had told us how much her family loved it.

 

Next was the Giant Slide. The girls are too small to go by themselves so Mary sat with Isaac and Emma sat with Kyle. I stood in line next door for the cheese curds, so I missed actually seeing them go down.

Speaking of food, I'll just cover all the food we had in this photo: 

Going clockwise from the top left. That was our Breakfast Burrito from El Sol. Then Martha's bucket of cookies and Anchor coffee. Then four different flavor of cheese curds: Original, ranch, jalapeno, and garlic. Then of course the staple of a corn dog. Then a beef sandwich called a Gizmo.. not worth it, don't recommend. We had chocolate and strawberry malts, but ate them so fast I didn't get a picture of them. Kyle got a beer with the Irish Tater Kegs (which are big tater tots with sauerkraut and bits of corned beef), then Isaac wanted a root beer float and lastly is the Rainbow Cloud Roll. This was a layer of cotton candy filled with Thai rolled ice cream and fruity pebbles then rolled up like a sushi roll. 

The kids enjoyed that sticky mess: 

You can see above that I had written my phone number on their arms. It came in handy cuz once Mary wondered off, of course it's usually Mary. I did get the call but Kyle reunited with her before I was able to answer my phone. 

The girls wanted to ride the carousel. 

Then we spent some time in the shade to let Thomas roam a little bit. The girls were dancing up on this stage.

Next we hit the animal barns and saw the horses.

The kids got to pet one:

Then they wanted to wait in the long line to sit on this fake horse...

We went through the cow barn as well and trudged through the crowds over to the miracle of birth barn. It was so crowded we didn't really get a good view of much. Washed hands and decided to keep moving.

We stopped in the dairy barn to peek at the butter sculptures but it was PACKED!

Then we found a shady open area east of the space needle ride. So we took a  minute to hang out.

Kyle took Isaac to the restroom then came back with the Irish Tater Kegs and a beer. Then we walked up to Alphabet Forest. We spent a good while here, which was fun. I was glad the kids enjoyed it so much. 

Isaac loves playing games.

There were little crafts

And worksheets

Next we got to watch the parade! The girls were really into it and Thomas loved the marching bands! Isaac and I went over to the Math forest for the end of the parade.

Then we made our way into the Eco Building. Isaac had remembered playing bingo last year and really wanted to again.

Stumbled upon the official selfie spot and had to capture our selfie

Lastly we hit the pet barn and Kyle walked them through the crowd to see the dogs. We had run out of money, our feet were tired, and we had hit our max. It had been 7.5 hours anyway so we called it a day.

Of course there was a playground on our walk back to the van and for some reason walking for 7 straight hours wasn't enough of an energy burn for them so they played at the playground while Kyle walked to the van to bring it back to us. He actually got a ride from someone that wanted his parking spot.