The Courageous Mommy: The Courageous Fair Mommy

I just survived the toughest two weeks of my year, County Fair followed immediately by State Fair. I love fair time, both Johnson County Fair and the Wyoming State Fair; so many of my memories are wrapped up in these events. Mike and I even spent our honeymoon at State Fair his first year as an Ag Teacher! But fair time is not for the faint of heart, it really does require a whole lot of courage for us fair parents! I have to say that since Hannah has been in 4-H I have learned something new each year, but I always manage to forget whatever I’ve learned by the time fair rolls around the next year! This year was especially full of adventure with the addition of one busy little boy; I decided that we have either made Kade “fair tough” or “fair sour”!

Here are my top 10 secrets to surviving as a Fair Mom:

1.) We all have the potential of being a “fair mom” (including yours truly); as in the mom who is normally calm and level headed, but the minute her child enters the show ring she becomes a raving, ultra-competitive woman who can scare the most seasoned of judges w/ just a look. We would all enjoy fair much more if we’d just cool it & support our kids, it’s about them and not us after all!

2.) A fair mom should have a well stocked cooler full of drinks and healthy snacks, otherwise her kids will break her as they consume an innumerable amount of hamburgers, Indian tacos, funnel cakes, deep fried Snickers Bars & oreos (yes, they really do exist), lemonades and pops.

3.) I have learned the importance of daily naps during fair in order to get adequate rest; this year this only involved Kade and I as Hannah has reached that age where she refuses to leave the fairgrounds for fear that she will miss something.

4.) A Fair Mom w/ a younger child should have really good shoes and a heavy duty stroller that she doesn’t mind getting covered in dust and manure (I wore the tread off of the tires on my stroller this year!), and one w/ plenty of storage room at the bottom to carry all important fair essentials

5.) A fair mom must remain calm when various problems arise, such as an empty pigpen w/ a wide-open gate on the morning of the pig show (we soon found “Choco Roco” in a pen at the wash rack, thank you to whoever found him!)

6.) We must always remember that whatever show supplies we have invested in and taken to State Fair will almost certainly NOT make it back home with us!

7.) It’s impossible to keep up w/ all of the laundry that a family can go through during a week of fair, so to make it easier, just let them wear the one pair of pants and t-shirt that they insist on wearing everyday, because as Hannah informed me, they’re just going to get dirty anyway.

8.) For her own sanity, a fair mom needs to just accept the fact that her house, her vehicle and her camper is going to look and smell like a pig pen (or sheep or steer barn) until fair is over.

9.) Little boys need to get down and crawl around, whether it be in the dirt, in the sawdust or in the pig pen. And an experienced fair mom will know that whatever he puts into his mouth probably won’t kill him, it’ll just make for interesting diapers - it may have been my imagination, but Kade’s dirty diapers soon began to smell like pig manure, it could have been that I was just in the pig barn for far too long, but it also could have been what I caught him putting in his mouth several times, eeewwww!!!

10.) No matter how many years we have livestock projects in 4-H, the night of the fat stock sale will always bring a flood of tears as we say goodbye, always.

So, I’ve learned and I’ve relearned several lessons in being a fair parent; hopefully next year I’ll actually remember what all I’ve discovered. All in all it was a successful fair season; Hannah did really well w/ her pigs and the photos that she entered in the open class. She won her first buckle and is already talking about whether or not she’s taking pigs or steers to fair next year; I for one am looking forward to not having chores for a little while and trying to get rid of the stench of pig poop that is almost impossible to remove from the bottoms of shoes!!!