Iowa State Fair - 2009

Heather loves the Iowa State Fair. She loves it so much we now have a house rule that says "We must attend at least one day of the Iowa State Fair" I have amended the rule to say "We must attend at least one day of the Iowa State Fair, during the week." So we took Thursday off of work and headed to the fair for a day of fun! We got to the fair around 8:30am and I was able to squeeze into a rock star parking spot...for free! As you can see in the picture, there isn't a lot of room between us and the telephone poll, good thing we have a smaller (feminine) SUV!
Chad, Shay, Nathan and Aaron were also coming to the fair that day. They were about 30 minutes behind us, so we parked it on a bench and did some people watching to pass the time. Generally you expect to see all types of people at the fair...and we did! This year though I saw more motorized scooters than I have ever seen. I thought there must have been a motorized scooter convention going on at the fair...there were that many! I took a picture of one such scooter as he was motoring around.

We saw a horse drawn wagon going down the street so Heather and I headed over to the horse barn to watch them closer. Those horses are huge!

As the Pella V.L.'s got to the fair so did the award winning Summit Farms horse team. These guys roll in style. This huge semi-truck pulling an air-conditioned trailer rolls in, this ramp/draw bridge goes down and out marches these horses...impressive!

...and all the horses were wearing their leg warmers.

We quickly found the Pella crew and then we found some breakfast...jr. donuts!

Nathan was super excited to be at the fair and even more excited to be at his grill!

We made our way through several different buildings, at the varied industries building we found the IPTV booth and we made it just in time for "story time"!

Since Shay needed to feed Aaron, it was a perfect break for Nathan and Chad.

Nathan even got to meet Clifford, the big red dog!

...then Chad got to meet "Super Dog", his foot long corn dog!
After lunch, we found some huge pumpkins!

Then we climbed up the hill to see what we could see. All hands on deck, as we all try and push the stroller up the big hill!

In the cattle barn, Nathan checks out a calf with Auntie Heather.

...you have to be careful in the cow barn or you might get "Mooo-ned" as Heather found out.

...and here is what I would look like as a cow.

As we were heading home, we saw these big clydesdale's out for a walk.

2009 was another great year at the fair. We had a lot of fun with Chad, Shay, Nathan and Aaron, thanks for joining us and letting us tag along with you! We saw a ton and got plenty of S.W.A.G.!