Fall Festival...

It's once again that time of year. On Saturday, October 1, 2011 we took Dakota out to our local Relay for Life/The Sharing Bucket Fall Festival. It is a pretty inexpensive, nearby, family fun event that raises money for a great cause. We took him out to it last year, but last year he was still too little to do very much. We thought he would enjoy it much more this year.

Dakota & I left home that morning and stopped in town to pick dad up from his Saturday job at the livestock market, so that he could go along with us. We got dad & headed out of town (not far, it's only about 5 miles out). We got there and purchased our tickets (50¢ a ticket - every event ranges from 1-5 tickets). We thought he would dive right into the festivities, but we were wrong.

We started off with the petting zoo. They had (2) bunnies, (2) calves, (3) goats & (1) pony. Dakota didn't want anything to do with any of them.

We decided we would try that again later and headed over to the loop. At the loop we came across the duck pond (standard pick a duck - win a prize). We couldn't even get him to pick up a duck, so James picked his first duck for him. He won a box of crayons.

 

We decided to walk around a little bit and let him get more awake & aware of what all was going on. This method actually worked. By the time we'd made one complete lap, he was ready to get into the swing of things.

We ended up back at the duck pond, where we picked three more ducks (that became our favorite game); he ended up with a coloring book, a box of crayons, a bottle of bubbles & a Halloween Flashing Safety Light.

Next, James & Dakota rode the wagon ride. Dakota seemed to like that.

 

 

Then we did four little kids games (didn't matter how well they did, they got to pick a prize when they were done). We had ring toss, witches brew, blinko & ghost toss. Dakota seemed to enjoy all of these. For his efforts he received a Halloween stamp & a bag of Skittles.

 

Next, James & Dakota decided they needed to buy some trail mix, so we bought two bags of that to take home with us. Then we moved back to the petting zoo. This time Dakota would at least get up close to the cages & look at the animals, but he still wouldn't pet any of them.

 

We decided we'd just about seen it all, so we moved on out to the pumpkin patch (no a real patch, they just set several hundred pumpkins out in an open field). We took a few pictures, then James & Dakota set out to pick our four pumpkins we paid for.

Needless to say, it took us a little while to get Dakota interested, but we all ended up having a pretty good time. I'm sure we'll hit it again next year, as it's become an annual event for our family.