The Benton-Franklin Fair and Rodeo '07

It's that time of year again. We are suckers for the fair. I think we have gone every year since Jeromy and I were dating. We decided to forgo the overly expensive rides for the kids this year since they got to go on some when we were in Minnesota at the Mall of America. Instead, we opted for the overly expensive but not very good fair food, looking/petting the livestock, the rodeo and something called an Elephant Ear. My favorite fair treat is a funnel cake, but we were appalled to find out they were charging $6.50 for a regular size funnel cake. Are these people mad? That is ridiculous even by fair standards! Instead we got an elephant ear which is an enormous piece of deep fried dough covered with cinnamon and sugar. It was good but not funnel cake good. So sad!


Rachel was really scared of the animals unless Jeromy carried her. Actually, she wasn't scared of the chickens, bunnies and bird building, but just of the noisy animals.... pigs, sheep and cows.


That cow in the background was the biggest bull Jeromy or I have ever seen. He must have weighed a good 1200-1500 pounds. He was pretty intimidating.


One of the girls let Bennett feed her pig a treat. Did you know that pigs like red vine licorice? They don't like the cheaper Twizzler variety of licorice (who does?) but they really like red vines.


Me! I still haven't gotten a good hair picture yet. You can't even tell I have any bangs in this shot. I think I need a more head on picture to see all the layers. I can't believe I survived walking around the fair. I wore my belly belt which is a lifesaver on my back and my Dansko clogs which my back can't live without either. By 9:30pm I was done and ready to head home!


A picture of a cool horse-drawn carriage at the rodeo. We didn't get very many good rodeo pictures because we weren't up high enough to get any shots without the fence in front of us. We saw mutton riding (too cute!), steer roping (I couldn't believe how hard you can snap a cows neck without it breaking!), bareback bronco riding, steer wrestling (I am not sure of the correct rodeo term for this, forgive me), and we missed the bull riding because we left early.

It was a fun night for all!