Iowa State Fair

We were ambitious and drove the 2 hours to the Iowa State Fair with Tori and James (of course we had to stop by Costco while we were there). We all had a great time. It wasn't near as hot as it usually is in August so it was a lot more pleasant walking around. Every year it seems like the vendors at the fair try to out do each other by creating the craziest (and incredibly fattening) food. Last year it was the deep-fried oreos and snickers bars (we tried the deep-fried snickers, not too bad). This year we heard the craze was chocolate-covered bacon, though when we were there we couldn't find some to try (our hearts and blood vessels are thankful).

Above is a picture of Tori and John in a large building where they have all kinds of baby animals. You can even watch baby chicks hatching from eggs. Tori loved all the little babies and I thought the baby ostriches were really cute (pictured below).

Below are a few pictures of our little baby animal at the fair.

They had a little place where kids could pretend to be a farmer (i.e. plant a seed, collect produce, ride a little John Deer, sell their produce and buy a little treat - a Popsicle - with their pretend money). Tori thought this was great, especially the Popsicle part.

Just like at the county fair, the rides were her favorite thing.

She even remembered riding the strawberries from past years and if you asked her what her favorite part about the fair was she would say riding the strawberries with dad.

I thought the picture of all the kids on the little train was quite funny. It's a train full of some very tired kids.

Iowa State Fair

I have been meaning to post pictures of our trip to the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines in August. It is suppose to be one of the nation's best state fairs (I don't really have many to compare it to, but we had fun). The amount and size of the livestock was pretty impressive.

Here are pictures of Tori in front of a huge bull (the pictures don't do it justice) and below is her in front of some pigs. She kept saying that the pigs were taking "binky naps" :). It was also amazing to see how much some of the prize winning animals were sold for - some for over $20,000!

I think our favorite part of the fair (besides the deep-fried snickers bar) was the ride in the spinning strawberry. Tori absolutely loved it and even tried to turn us around faster with the wheel that was inside the strawberry.

Another big part of the state fair are the butter sculptures. They had a life-size cow made out of butter and in honor of the 7th book coming out this summer they also had a butter Harry Potter and some other things from the Harry Potter books made out of butter. We had a blast, but as you can tell from the pictures it was one of the hottest and most humid days of the year. After a few hours we were very happy to get back into the car with A/C.