Lauren Claire's New Shoes, only $1, Lauren's smiles because of those shoes, Priceless

Colette went to some garage sales on Thursday. She bought Lauren some new shoes. When Lauren saw them, she immediately knew they were shoes for her. Lauren has had shoes in the past, but they were just Robies, leather shoes with a soft leather sole. Not much fun for a little girl.

These shoes were little brown leather "dancing" shoes, I really don't know how else to describe them. One thing is for sure, she knew they were for her. She would go grab them, and attempt to put them on.

I put them on her before going to Costco on Friday night. She was so thrilled to be wearing them. She just kicked her legs while sitting in the cart going around the store. She kept looking at them, and touching them.

Today, after playing in the water table for a bit, we came in and I took Lauren out of her swimming suit and just put her in a diaper. She immediately crawled over to her shoes, picked them up, touched them to her toes and said "on!". I said do you want your shoes on? She said "On!". So I put them on and the attached picture is the result.

I tried to get a little film of Lauren and her new shoes, but shortly after I snapped this picture Brayton came over and started teasing her and all my opportunity for a short film quickly evaporated into fighting children.

Nonetheless, this picture is worth a thousand words.

Riding the slide at the fair...

As I just wrote about, here's a little video clip of Brayton and Colette going down the giant slide at the fair. I still can't believe how expensive this silly ride was. But I guess it's not about the cost, it's about having a good time and getting some film to publish for all to see.

Fun at the state fair...

I've not been very good about posting the past ten days. I have been wanting to put up some clips from the state fair, but have been sort of lazy and just didn't get this done like I wanted to. I blame the Olympics being on TV. We've been watching pretty fervently since one of the Olympians (Shawn Johnson in gymnastics) is practically our next door neighbor. Consequently we have been glued to the TV and staying up past our normal bedtimes.

So, about 10 days ago, it was Wells Fargo day at the State Fair. All employees get in for free and we get vouchers for $20 worth of food. We probably wouldn't go to the fair if it wasn't free, the crowds are insane, it's usually extrememly hot, and the kids don't last more than an couple of hours there before they are cranky.

Sunday, August 8th, we made the trip out to the fairgrounds. We walked around and saw all the cattle, horses, sheep, goats, chickens, pigs, and every other animal there. We saw the biggest bull of the fair 3000+ lbs of him. We took some time to eat cotton candy and carmel corn. We wanted to try a funnel cake, but no vendors could tell us if their cakes had eggs or not. So we didn't get any funnel cake.

We also took a little bit of time to try out some rides. We put Brayton on a little motorcycle ride. The first couple times around he was okay, but as you'll see in the video, about the third or fourth time around he decided he didn't like it at all. We tried to get on the ride with him, but the operator wouldn't allow adults to get on. So, we had to stop the ride early and get him off. It was good there wasn't any other kids on the ride.

The second (and last) ride we tried was the giant slide. Colette took B all the way to the top of the slide and B had a great time going down. This wasn't nearly as scary as the motorcycles, probably because Mommy was right there. Once he was to the bottom, Bratyon immediatly wanted to go again. I would probably have let him, but it was $12 for one trip down the slide. I believe this has to be the most profitable ride at the fair.