Why I love the Fair.

I was talking to Dan tonight about how excited I am that the fair is this week, and I was going on and on about reasons why I love the fair, so I decided to share it in a blog entry.

We started volunteering at the Montgomery County Agricultural Fair at a young age- I think I was 9. Lindsey and Devon's Aunt Bea was in charge of the Home Arts department, and we were the gophers. I remember feeling that our job was so important because we got to carry the really delicate and important items from the registration tables to their destinations inside. We also volunteered at least one summer at Joe's Place, the burger joint.

Fast forward a few years and here we are - only now Lindsey is the head honcho (for all intents and purposes) and we are registrars instead of gophers. I look forward to it all year. The people come with their quilts, their baked goods, their crochet, their needlepoint, their cross-stitch (I still don't know how to tell those apart...are they the same thing?), their dolls, their canned goods...the list goes on and on. We sit and faithfully document each item they bring us, then pass it to the gophers who gingerly carry it inside, just like we used to do.

Here are a few of my favorite things about it:

The people who come with two boxes of stuff, then just when you think you're done with them, call out to their spouse: "Ok honey, bring the next boxes!"

The little kids who genuinely enter stuff (not the ones whose moms make them) The hope in their eyes and the things they come up with are SO CUTE.

The dolls people make

The smells (freshly baked pie, fabric smell, other smells of the fair wafting under the tent on the breeze)

The decorated cakes with moving parts

All the personalities (especially the ones who take it VERY SERIOUSLY)

The canned goods people who are very particular

The little tags we put on the items

Seeing everything put together when it's all finished.