the great minnesota get together

it's state fair time in our great state of minnesota! did you know we have the second biggest state fair in the u.s. after texas? i'm a city girl through and through, but i absolutely love the state fair. some people complain it's the same thing year after year, but when the same thing includes deep-fried anything you can imagine on a stick, farm animals, and top-notch people watching, what more could you ever want? my sister-in-law agrees :) last year i was 9 weeks pregnant when we went.

so of course we had to introduce azalea to this minnesota institution this year! daycare was closed last monday, so thatcher took the day off (and i switched my day off) and we headed to the fair. i thought we would avoid massive crowds going on a monday, but that wasn't the case. oh well. we always do the park and ride (for free!) at the university of mn. it's so much easier than driving and paying for parking. they even had coach buses with storage underneath for our stroller. 

here we are on our way!

the first thing we did was visit the miracle of birth center,which as you may guess, houses all of the new baby animals that are born. it's always super crowded, but we did get to peek at some cute little piglets. after that it was pronto pup (corn dog) time for me!

azalea wanted one, but i didn't let her. i didn't think her first food after cereal should be a deep fried hot dog. :) 

other food indulgences included a giant meat stick (this was thatcher's, but i had a few bites), french fries (from the fresh french fries stand), roasted corn (which i pretend is healthy), and a chocolate malt from the dairy building (always a long line for this, but so worth it!). i could have eaten more, but i restrained myself. 

taking along a baby was definitely a change from our norm. while she was mostly content to sit in her stroller and watch the world go by, that wasn't always the case. we had to take many bottle and diaper changing breaks, which was ok. we also tried to get her to nap, which wasn't a huge success, but she did get a short snooze in.

her new favorite thing is to put her feet on the tray of her stroller...she's a classy lady!

other highlights of the day included the horticulture and 4h buildings and many stinky animal barns. i'm not going to lie...the only reason i set foot in the swine barn was so azalea could get one of these: 

our little piglet...not a huge fan

as much as i love the fair, four hours there is pretty much when i start longing for air conditioning, a couch to lay on, not hanging out with thousands of other people, etc. i know, you can laugh, i'm so hardcore. but i got my fill for the year. i think next year will be even more fun with azalea when she can help us devour all of the state fair delicacies :)