Uintah County Fair

Ahhh, the county fair, many a song has paid a fond tribute, so we went with high hopes of a magical experience. Only to find out that along with everything else in this crazy world of ours, it has been totally commercialized. There were no animals to be seen (except some oddballs of the human variety), and the rides were $2+ each. We let the kids each choose 3 rides and no snack or 2 rides and 1 snack. They all chose 3 rides. It worked out pretty good because inside there was a 4H activity where the kids got to pretend to be farmers. They planted and harvested veggies, got corn, bailed hay, fed the corn to chickens and the cow and them milked it. They then went to the market and "sold" all of their veggies, hay, eggs, milk and got a dollar to buy a snack. It was really fun and so cute. It was definitely the best part of the fair until...we found out we were just in time for the candy drop. "The what?" you say. Yes the candy drop. It is the coolest thing since trick-or-treating. There is an empty parking lot across the street from the fair grounds that has been "caution" taped off. The kids are grouped by age. The 9-12 year olds, 6-8 years, and 3-5 years. So a local radio station is there DJing the thing and giving everyone the low down of the FAA procedure and such. A helicopter flies into the center of the parking lot, hovers about 6 feet from the ground and dumps like 500 candy bars on the ground. The chopper flies off and the older group of kids run out to the lot and it's a free-for-all grabbing all the candy. Next for the younger two groups the kids go out to the lot and a fire truck extends its ladder with the bucket on the end with two guys in it out to the center of the lot and drops candy attached to plastic bag parachutes on the kids. There had to have been another 500 per group. So with the youngest group the DJ was saying, "No parents out there with the kids." "Let the kids pick it up on their own." Good, right? But when it actually happens there are all these parents out there grabbing the candy and putting it in their kids bag. So the guys in the bucket stop dropping candy and the parents are told to get out but then they send in the older siblings to get the candy for the little kids. Why are people such selfish idiots. What are you teaching your child? Certainly not to be kind and thoughtful. Just me, me, me. Here is my 3 year old out there getting pushed and shoved by all these adults, totally disoriented and no candy to show for it. Lucky for him he has a great older brothers that were both willing to share with him. All-in-all a fun trip to the fair. Hopefully next year we'll research a little more and actually "plan" our fair trip instead of last minuting it so we can get the cheap rides and see the animals and stuff. That was always my favorite thing to do, look at the chickens and rabbits, cows and pigs. Check out the butter sculptures and art show. But I don't think the kids would last too long. Man if Gary and I could find a good babysitter, maybe we could do that sort of thing on a date. Imagine that. Well, enough babbling, if you haven't gone to your local county fair, try it, you'll like it.