Friday, October 14, 2011

Topsfield Fair

Last week really was a fun week!  Not only did we go to the Traveling Barnyard at school, but we also went to the Topsfield Fair after work on Thursday - yay!  I love a good fair, and Topsfield is always a fun time. Since we had to fit in the fair between work and bedtime, we only got to be there for a little over 2 hours but we tried to see as much as we could anyway.  Dash and Rick rode on the Super Slide and the carousel (I later found out that we missed a whole section of the fair that had kids' rides, but thankfully D didn't know that), learned all about bees, saw gigantic vegetables, and visited many animals.  And we got to eat in a big tent!  Whee!

Here are Dashiell and Rick about to enjoy the carousel ride.  It was a lot faster than the other carousel's we've been on so I couldn't get a good action shot this time:

 
Dashiell LOVED seeing the baby chicks hatching!





He even got to hold one of the chicks that had been born earlier, which was super exciting!  Unfortunately I didn't get a picture, but it was really neat!

He also had an obsession with these "take your picture being X animal" things.  Note that he got to be a bee in an earlier photo (sorry for the red-eye on that one - I tried to get rid of it but it looked much freakier after the fix).  He found this one to be particularly amusing:



Fun was had by all!  Now if only there were a fair to go to every week...

Preschool fun - the Traveling Barnyard!

Though the school year just started a mere month ago, already Dashiell's preschool has been busily scheduling fun activities for the kiddos!  Unfortunately the apple picking field trip was rained out (3 times!), but the Traveling Barnyard was a huge success!  It was set up in the parking lot on a day that D didn't have school, so I was able to take him on our own time and be a part of the fun.  As you can see, the kids got to get up close and personal with the animals.  I didn't know if Dashiell would like it - he's been pretty unenthusiastic about petting zoos lately, and in fact it took a lot of convincing to get him there. 

Once he got there he was so excited!  I think the facts that a) he got to be in the pen with the animals and b) a lot of his school friends were there too made it much more fun!  In fact, he could barely stop jumping up and down long enough to let me take pictures. 

I don't know what he's doing with his pants in the above picture, but I love how you can see how he's trying to explain something obviously important to me (do I remember what that was?  No, but I'm guessing it had something to do with the animal poop on the hay).





The Barnyard also had this cool spinning wheel that the kids could try out.  Thankfully there were other kids waiting their turn otherwise Dashiell may have never stopped using this.  It fascinated him that he was part of the machinery!

A fun time was had by all!  And it just so happened to be Dashiell's half birthday, too - what a great day!