Westerner Day fun

I was going to post about our day last night, but by the time we got back to my parent's we were all too pooped to do much.

In one of my earlier posts I mentioned that one of the family's goals is to visit many of the amusement parks around North America as we travel.  The kids are totally on board with this plan.  Me, I'm ambivalent, but do enjoy watching the rest of the family have fun.
We spent Wed afternoon at Westerner Days, which is Red Deer's Fair and Exhibition. We arrived after lunch and the kids & Bob headed straight for the rides. We had stopped at Macs on Tuesday eve and picked up Ride All Day passes for the three of them, which gave both admission and unlimited rides (and a slurpee!) for a good price.

They moved through the kiddie rides, and then headed on to the bigger kid rides.  I swear my children are fearless when it comes to amusement rides. They certainly didn't get it from me! That's definitely a Bob thing.  I didn't go on any rides, (which is just fine by me). Both Morgan & Lily kept asking me to come on the slides and through the funhouses with them, which I'm sure I could have done, but didn't really want to pay for extra tickets.

I kept myself entertained while the rest rode by watching them and by reading about the rides. Many of them have an information plaque near the entrance which details when & where the ride was invented, a bit about it's physical or motion characteristics and it's history at the fairs. It was quite interesting and some of the rides have been around for a surprisingly long time.

We had the usual greasy fair food for supper and then discovered the wobbly ball pool.  Both the kids went in and had a blast.  Basically they put you inside an inflatable ball, fill it up with air, and then set you loose in a pool. Now that's an experience I should have done!  Frankly, it didn't even cross my mind until later. My focus was all about the kids and I was just along to facilitate.

Morgan getting into the pool

Whoops!

And he's okay! (look at his expression)

The kids both wanted to do it again, but at $ 15 a pop, that was going to be a one time deal.  Bob says some of the pools in Calgary have them.  I wonder if a lake somewhere would have something like it?






It was evening by then and we were all starting to slow down.  A few more rides (Lily wanted to go on the big one that goes upside down!  I think I'm glad she's too little still for those rides.), and then we wandered over to the petting zoo & animal exhibit.  Lily enjoys looking at the animals -she even tried her hand at putting the milking apparatus on a (fake) cow!  Morgan, not so much. He was tired and complained his knees were hurting. Bob took him out and found him some coconut milk ice-cream (yay!)and watched the last couple of chuckwagon races. Lily & I joined them, got our own treats and then we caught the people mover back to the car.

Everyone was pretty tired by that point, but I count it as a good day.  Most of us slept in this morning, (except Morgan who wakes up at the same time, like clockwork) and we don't have anything too exciting planned for today. It's time to rest up and take it a bit slower.