County Fair

One Saturday while Shad went out to mow the lawn...the kids pinned me to the couch in a sweaty nap.  I enjoyed the cuddles, but it was a bit too hot for me.

The last week of July in Norton always means the County Fair.  Shad had to run one of the kiddy rides Wednesday night as an assignment from work.  Each ride or attraction is assigned to a business in the county, and that business is responsible for having employees signed up for shifts to operate the rides.  I took Tom and Katie to see what we might be able to do while Shad worked and we waited for Pris, Ruth and Levi to arrive from Utah.  I rode the spinning buckets with Tom and Katie, and then Tommy discovered the tractor ride.  All it does is run in circles, but Tom has this new obsession with tractors.  I couldn't pull him away from the ride for half an hour.  He showed off by lifting both hands in the air, or yelling "boo!" at me a couple times as his tractor came around to where I was standing.  When Nana, Ruth and Levi arrived, they came and joined me to watch Tommy.  The double take he did was precious.  He was so surprised to see them suddenly standing with me (I didn't tell him they were coming), that he started standing up (still buckled), and immediately began frantically signing "all done."

Then he rode the buckets with Levi,

and the merry-go-round with Ruth.

He didn't like the moving horse so much, so he and Ruth moved to the stationary ones on the floor of the merry-go-round.

Then he wanted a rest and sat on the bench, motioned to Shad and said, "Dada seat."

We went again the next night and Tommy rode the tractor again for 20 minutes while Shad, Katie and I shared a funnel cake.  Tommy didn't want anything to do with it, given the option of the tractors.  He and I rode the merry-go-round again, and he got tired of me standing next to him, so he pointed to a horse and told me it was my turn to ride.  He's a nice boy.  When we ran out of tickets, we went to play on the playground.  Tommy ran away from us THREE TIMES to book it as fast as he could back to the tractors, just 50 yards away.  He was sneaky about it, too.  He'd wait until we were distracted pushing Katie on the swing, or he'd casually walk to the edge of the playground, act innocent like he wasn't doing anything, then run as fast as he could.  He even discovered that looking behind him to see if we were chasing him slowed him down, so he stopped looking and just kept running.  Maybe Forrest Gump should be the next movie we seriously introduce him to.  Currently he's enjoying Harry Potter (there's glasses, snakes, and owls), and A League of Their Own (he loves baseball).