Mom Fail to Memories...
Do you ever get what feels like a BRILLIANT Mom plan!?!? I'm sure you have, and trust me, it feels absolutely amazing when this happens... until... it turns out it wasn't as brilliant of a plan as you thought it was...
Here is how the Homies Saturday started, and I thought it was going to be such a brilliant plan! Our kitchen counters were full and I mean FULL of dishes and lunch boxes and just about everything you could think of, dishes also needed to be done, and truly it could have just been a weekend of house cleaning, but instead... I shuffled through the mess and backed the diaper bag full of water, juice, snacks, diapers, wipes & sunscreen. I got the kiddos up and dressed and then it was time to wake the husband because it was time to go to the FAIR! Who doesn't love the fair, I mean animals, deep fried amazingness everywhere you look, rides, games and things for the big boys (aka husband/parents) and things for ALL the littles, how couldn't you have fun!? The worst part of the fair, literally the heat and ALL of the people, so here was my BRILLIANT idea... get the kids ready (which I had) and go when they open in the morning; you 1. Beat the Heat 2. Beat the people 3. EVERYONE has a great time, how isn't that a brilliant plan!?!?
Gates opened at 9am (central time), we were a little behind, which is only a given with 3 kids (Rhett, Evalie and of course Shane too, all of the Homies pack). So, we were in the truck around 9:45am, still pretty early and I was feeling pretty good, we headed to the fair grounds and when we got there, we saw people rolling in but not too many. In my mind I was a genius mom we were going to get in and out before all of the people and the heat really set in. We parked the truck unloaded the kids and got the wagon stroller ready to go and we started walking towards the gate, got our tickets and Rhett was just going, "Mama where are the animals!?!?!". Luckily, we had parked at the gate closest to all of the animals AND it was show time for them. He was in complete awe, he saw the horses, the lambs, the cows, "look mama its a baby cow, how cute!", he just couldn't contain his excitement! We made it all the way through the animals, and had he been able to curl up in the pens with all of them we could have left Rhett there all day with them and he would have been happy.
We continued our trek into the fair; up next games, rides and food vendors... or so I thought... we went from tons of people by the animals to a complete, and I mean a completely isolated desert. I am pretty sure that I saw a tumbleweed going through the place. There was not a carnival worker to see... not a single one. No life at all. "Mama, where are all the people at!?!?", that was quite a good question and I felt not so smart anymore. We walked all the way through the rides and games and there was not a soul to be found. I had to open google and see what I missed. Low and behold, had I read closely I would have seen that the rides opened at NOON; this was 2 hours away from the time that was on our watches... goodness... nice plan mama. So we wandered over to the expo centers to see if there were vendors there and they were slowly starting to open up but not enough to even spend any time looking. Shane and I mumbled to each other about coming back and then told Rhett that we would come back to the fair later in the day. As I was telling him of the complete Mom Fail Rhett goes, "Mama I'm hungry". Dun Dun Dunnnnn well what the heck are we going to do, the food vendors aren't open, which Mama here was planning on funnel cakes and mini donuts and deep fried cheesecake for breakfast... what kid wouldn't LOVE that kind of breakfast!?
Both Mama and Daddy's Homeboy were completely disappointed in Mama's brilliant plan... but on our way back to the truck, the Mini Donut Man was open and we got the FRESHEST donuts around, not to mention delicious so things were starting to look up! Much like the heat, the sun had decided to come out and it was HOT. We were sweating and it was bad, but we were sucking it up because we had donuts and we were trying to make the best of this Mom Fail. Evalie ate a bag of donuts all on her own pretty much, that girl sees or smells food and she eats it and Rhett shared his bag with his Sissy too! After our mini donut break, we kept on to the truck, and got stopped by Rhett's love for petting animals. We spent about 30 minutes trying to catch Rhett because he wanted to crawl into the petting zoo with the animals, he pet goats, alpaca's, cows you name it he was petting it, and also asking if we could steal one of the baby goats... I thought about it because they were cute but we came home with something else instead!
Our Mom fail of a morning concluded and we went home to take naps... we were tuckered out by the heat. When we all woke up, we headed right back out to the fair, this time hoping everything was opened that the kids could actually enjoy all the things!
This arrival at the fair was met with sweat rolling, loads of people, friends and tummy's full of fresh lemonade and deep fried food along with maybe a beer or two. The kiddos met up with their best friends; ran obstacles courses, rode motorcycles, and even some horses; although these were the fake ones on the LONGEST CAROUSEL RIDE EVER! Who knew a single carousel ride lasted 10 minutes on its own...
Rhett had to get some fresh Lemon Juice aka Lemonade, along with fries and cheese curds, who doesn't love the deep fried everything?? While Rhett ate a little, Evalie ate a lot, give that girl a fry in one hand and a cheese curd in another and she is happy has a clam and a true Wisconsin girl, the BIG boys, went to the beer garden to enjoy and that is where we lost them. They eventually came back... after a call or two... but they cannot be trusted.
It was time to end the evening, and Rhett's way to conclude was to spend all the money on all the games. First, we had to try to win some fish... who doesn't remember playing this when they were little!?!? I was a winner, winner at the fair when I was little, so why couldn't Rhett be? We bought 100 balls, here I was again with another Mom Fail, I was really hoping and thinking that we wouldn't get any balls into the fish bowls. Rhett kept missing and kept going "oh man I missed", he asked Mama and Homeboy for help. So... of course we helped... Homeboy was missing everything trying for a stuff animal... Mama on the other hand... I got the first one in... "WOOOHOOO MAMA YOU GOT ONE IN WOOHOOO" the joy on his face, we could be done now or at least I thought we could be. "Mama keep going, you're doing good"... well how could I say no to that!?!? I throw another ball it bounces, thank goodness... and then another and then another, and then another "WOOHOOO MAMA YOU GOT ANOTHER ONE!!!" Well darn it... there are two fish tickets now, right after that I got another one but played it off and pretended it wasn't ours! Is that wrong? If you think this is wrong of me I am sorry, but we have had about 10 fish in the last few months and they have all died.... so I threw one more ball and I got it in AGAIN... we are now up to three... yes THREE fish tickets, Rhett chucked the rest and said "Good Job Mama" but looked all sad so I asked him what was wrong, "I didn't get any fish but you did", I followed that up with "no these are your fish homeboy you did that!". The workers wouldn't let us get our fish until we were ready to leave, and Rhett had to play one more game, he tried to ring the ducks with Homeboy, but due to the rules of that game unfortunately Homeboy didn't win a giant stuff animal.
At this point we were all done with the day we had been out in the heat for 4 hours, I was sweating in places I wasn't sure were even supposed to sweat, Rhett was sweating and letting us all know about it and Sissy was CRYING and I mean CRYING because it was WAAAAAAAAYYY past her bedtime. BUT we couldn't leave without picking up those darn fish, Rhett happily took his fish tickets back to the game counter and the lady handed him a bag with three fish in it, he only dropped the bag on the ground once on the way back to the truck. We set up the fish tank, after having it boxed up after losing the last 10 fish, and put these three, still nameless, fish in the tank.
So to recap, our Saturday was filled with lots of Homies, Brilliant Mom Fail Plans, deep fried food, fresh squeezed lemon juice and 3 new family members in which Rhett concluded our Saturday with...
"Mama are we gunna kill these three fishies too?"
We're just keepin' it real.
-Mama