Garfield Park's County Fair

At the end of September, I took AJ to the County Fair at the Garfield Park Conservatory. I had rained a lot beforehand, so I wasn't sure we were going until the last minute but I'm so glad we did. AJ had so much fun! We saw a huge pumpkin being carved by one of the professional carvers, visited chickens, ate yummy food, and jumped around in the requisite moon walks. OK, maybe only AJ jumped around in the moon walk. But we both had a great time!

One of the big deal attractions for AJ was the pony rides. I think this was his first time ever riding a pony, so he actually stood relatively still and waited with me on the line. Anyone who has ever seen me trying to get him to wait on a line before can attest that this was no small miracle. He named his pony Pepper and was VERY happy and proud to be riding Pepper around. And around. And around. :)

Isn't he cute? (Pepper's cute too, I guess...)

This was the coolest thing. Inside a little mobile home, a whole "3 Little Pigs" environment was there to interact with.

They had an area to build a straw house, build a house with sticks (below) and then a whole brick house to play in.

There were also bellows with wolf faces that the kids could pump to try to blow down small maquettes of each type of house, a face painting area that AJ loved (another first!)...

...and this really neat conveyor belt that held AJ's attention for a LONG time. There was a tree off to the right that you could stick the apples on, then pick them and put them in a basket, and then unload the basket onto the conveyor belt and crank them off into another basket to bring them back to the tree. All these jobs kept a bunch of kids busy and working together until one little girl decided she would not put them back on the tree...so we finally left the mobile home and went back out to eat lunch from the Wishbone booth with our friends the Byerly's and head home. For a nap. Whew!