'09 AZ State Fair

To bid THE Ms. Karen Campbell a fond farewell and celebrate her last weekend with us in the good ol' U. S. of A, we decided to treat her like royalty, to associate with the highest quality citizens that our country has to offer. What better to do this than the Arizona State Fair; the place where dreams come true. Where you can go to get your smell of livestock fix, your annual dose of Indian fry bread, the best people watching around and to let the kid out, the occasional fair ride.

Brannon and Amanda came with too. Amanda was set on winning a stuffed monkey coming out of a banana. Poor Brannon spent a good $20 trying to win her the thing. We found this game that looked simple enough. We thought for sure we could do it. All you had to do was throw a wiffle ball off this backboard thing into a laundry basket. Easy enough right? Uh, nope...impossible. We had fun trying anyway.

If you're at the fair, you've got to ride the rides. They were giving out free tickets to ride the ferris wheel, so we hit them up and tried it out. We couldn't JUST do the ferris wheel though. Where's the fun in that? So we had a little competition. Julie and I, Brannon and Amanda all went down the EuroSlide, the stratified monstrosity you see in the picture up above. Uh, that's Rick by the way, in the front, coming from behind to steal the victory from the hopeful Dr. Gunnell. YES!

Last but not least...fair food. I mean seriously, where else can you get cotton candy, Indian fry bread or a deep fried pickle on every other corner? By far the best story of the night when it came to food was Kate Orme's corn dogs. Apparently little Miss Orme wanted a corn dog, so she went to one of the corn dog concession stands to pick one up. As she walking around, enjoying said corn dog, another man, at another corn dog concession stand called her over and said: "hey, if you throw the rest of that corn dog you have in your hand away, I'll give you one of mine for free." Apparently Kate hadn't had enough for the night, so she threw the 3 inches that remained of her foot long corn dog to get yet another foot long corn dog. And did she finish it? By golly she sure did. Way to go Kate, you make us proud.