{ fair day }

The State Fair - an iconic fall outing!




This year, I tried very hard to keep it within a budget. Our tickets were free through the Texas State Fair Homeschool Ticket program - woohoo! I packed our lunches and put them in my backpack with bottled water. I never took the girls through the midway, we were so busy the whole time that they never noticed we didn't get to it.

There are so many activites, shows, and educational demonstrations at the Texas State fair that don't require extra money. We treated it like a trip to a museum (learning!) and we had a marvelous time!


Here's "Big Tex" - he truly is huge, see the tree down in the right bottom corner of the photo (that is not a bush!)




In the huge pavilion where they show all the fair contest entries, we saw so much talent, including paintings, quilting, woodworking, and knitting (like the American Girl sweater below, that my girls are hoping Gramma can figure out how to replicate **wink**) We were also reminded that there are still people who make and can jellies and vegetables and beans in hopes of winning a blue ribbon!




Also in that pavillion, the enormous annual butter sculpure... this year, it was an entire saloon scene made of butter!







We saw a cow milking machine demonstration,
the junior competition for Brahmas,
a dog talent show,
a bee colony with honey tasting,
(my personal favorite) The Birds of the World Show,
and the ever-popular petting zoo:





Yes, a baby giraffe at the petting zoo!




After 6 hours of walking around, the girls spent some time sitting on the Footsie Wootsie foot massagers... it didn't seem to matter to them that the machines weren't on!




When all was seen and done, we spent $15: $10 for parking, $5 for a funnel cake we shared. Proof that you don't have to spend a lot to have a lot of fun at the state fair!