Doin' the Puyallup!

For Family Night, we “Did the Puyallup!” I’m referring to the annual fall fair in Puyallup, WA. We had so much fun. We started out by taking the shuttle bus from the Sumner train station. The kids had as much fun riding in the back of the bus as they did on the rides at the fair.



We had initially told the kids that we would not be riding any rides. We started out by walking through all of the exhibit buildings. Rachel’s favorite exhibit was a lady bug collection from an 11-year-old girl. Steve’s favorite part was listening to the live accordion music. My favorite part was people watching (and all of the food, of course!) Sophia’s favorite part (I guess) was watching the clowns do their magic show onstage.


I made the kids walk through the livestock barns with me. They couldn’t believe that their own mom had taken a heifer (baby cow) to show for 4-H when she was Ben’s age. I explained that I had to hang out in the barn the 3-4 days that fair was going on to watch Violet, my heifer. They gagged and held their noses because of the “cow poop” smell that permeated the building!


After the wonderful aroma of the livestock building, we moved on to the food areas. The boys wanted the Walla Walla Burgers—huge hamburgers with grilled onions—and curly fries. Steve and Rachel split a Soba Noodle plate. We all split an elephant ear. I had a scone (fresh, hot biscuits filled with jam ) for dinner—no nutritional value, whatsoever, but yummy—plus bites of the boys’ hamburgers!


We reluctantly told the kids they could each ride one ride before we left to go home. When we got to the ticket counter, we realized that it was “cheap ride night at the fair!” All rides were just $1 each. We splurged and bought 6 tickets so each kid could go on 2 rides. (We had to hurry and catch the shuttle back, so they couldn’t go on more—darn!) The kids were pretty bummed. We heard a lot of “No fair! You mean we walked through a bunch of boring buildings and smelled smelly cows when we could have been riding more rides?!?” We told them they should be thankful they got to ride any rides at all because we’d told them we were just going there for dinner and the free entertainment.


On the way out of the park, Steven bought a fake wooden snake with his allowance money. He had fun freaking people out while we were waiting for the shuttle bus. In the dark the snake looked very realistic. (I'll post a picture of Steven and his snake when I take one!) Until then, look at how much fun Sophie had riding on Daddy's shoulders!