Waving the white flag of surrender.

Last blog post on Sunday October 16th, was the last time I felt calm, cool and collected.  Since the 16th it's been a steady onslaught of life.  Relentless and in-your-face.  No time to stop, blog or assess.  Finally, with this weekend coming to a close and November 1st on the near horizon, I feel like I can almost breath again.  Almost.

To be fair, the past two weeks have been full of momentous fun.  We visited the NC State Fair! Henry turned 12!  The little sisters came for a visit!  The Primary hosted the ward Trunk-or-Treat!  The kids celebrated Halloween at school! Throw in sewing a couple of costumes, having my last two very longest marathon training runs, a whole handful of subbing days, a book club, and I wondered, can life get any funner?!

Let's look back at the State Fair:

We missed the fair last year.  I have a sneaking suspicion that last October was almost as awesome as this October, and so I was eliminating non-essential events.  But this year, with Henry on the brink of his 12th birthday, he picked "State Fair" as his family birthday outing.  He had heard about the Krispy Kreme Bacon Cheese Burger, that he missed last year, and he was NOT going to miss it again for a second year in a row.  So we took him to the State Fair!

The Krispy Kreme Bacon Cheese Burger.

We bought one, and passed it around:

The verdict was that it was mysteriously delicious!  All encouraged me to partake.  Unfortunately, my very forceful aversion to hamburgers prepared in public place prohibited me from partaking.  But these pictures almost make me feel like I know what it tasted like, no?

Next up on our fried food agenda was to try the fried Twinkie:

Hopefully you know us better than to think that we stopped there. We still had the fried Oreos, fried cookie dough, and fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich (and of course corn dogs and cheese fries hardly count as special fair food, right?)...

Henry's 12-inches of fried cookie dough.  His special birthday treat selection.

Lest you think we only attended the Fair to eat fried stuff, Ruby's particular wish of seeing the pig races was also fulfilled,

And even somehow we convinced the girls that they should see the World's Smallest Woman.

Rounding out this amazing cultural event with a bit of cow milking and a sidewalk magic show.

Wrapping the evening up before anyone could even talk us into the Fried Kool Aid.

Henry's stomach was so upset the next morning that he needed a full day off of school to recover from his ordeal!  Leading me to wonder, if the NC State Fair will ever see us again?!

Long Live October!