National Peanut Festival

Dothan Alabama

Saturday morning we drove up to Dothan, Alabama for the Peanut Festival. It was a lot of fun. It was a lot like our fairs in Washington except they were celebrating peanuts and there were a lot of venders selling "boiled peanuts."

Later in the day it became more and more crowded but we still enjoyed it. The following pictures are from our day. Some were taken by me and some were taken by Sam.

I'll try to explain what you're seeing in the picture as it pertained to our afternoon activities.

Here is Lola playing around while she and daddy are waiting for Amelia to finish her afternoon "snack" in the comfort tent. We didn't get any pictures of the "comfort tent" but it was a large tent with a partition down the middle. One side for changing babes and the other side for feeding the babes.

Miss Amelia happy to be in the carrier with mommy and a little over stimulated by all the commotion.

Why is Lola making this face?

Because she decided to pick this up and put it into her mouth before her daddy realized what she was doing and could stop her. (Mommy was in the comfort tent with Amelia. If I knew this was going on outside I would not have been so comfortable).

GROSS!!! I don't even want to imagine which carny left these butts here.

After the gross butt incident we did a little exploring of the exhibits and there were some pretty interesting things. I'm now in serious "covetousness" of a new Rainbow vacuum. The new ones are so cool and you don't even have to put them away. They double as an air filter so you just leave them out and leave them running (quietly) and they clean the air as they sit there looking like R2D2. They are also a wet vac so they clean up all kinds of gross messes. Nuff said.

So back to the festival.

On our way in Lola spotted these motorcycles and was asking to ride on them.

As you can see she looks like a natural "motorcyclist" but it turns out she isn't. She sat on the yellow bike for about 10 seconds but before the ride started she'd had enough and wanted off. That was great for us because the carney gave us our tickets back so we could use them on a different ride.

Here she is giving the motorcycle riders her best "are you kids crazy" glare as she watches the ride begin without her.

She is our auditory sensitive child and the sound of the ride was more than her delicate ears could take.

This is pretty cute!

(Imagine trying to get her to use the restroom in any public place. It's impossible because someone just might flush a toilet and it's going to be loud.)

We did manage to find a ride that she could go on with mommy and even if her face is telling you different she really enjoyed this slide. Maybe more after it was over but she did ask to go again. As you can tell my by face, I was laughing the whole way and then even afterwards my face hurt from smiling. I hadn't been on a slide like that in a long time and it brought back some great memories. Anyone from Washington remember that super long slide at Enchanted Village? Or the sparkly helicopter ride?

Of course you have to throw in a little bit of country style and what said classy better than a nice demolition derby. That is right, we took the girls to see some auto carnage.

This demolition derby was pretty entertaining and alarming at the same time. I enjoyed the sight as I covered Amelia's ears (because the "Grocery Getter" was so loud) and couldn't stop fretting over all the fumes we were breathing. It was pretty gross but short lived because after about 5 minutes it was over.

Sam took some great shots of the action.

This is "Grocery Getter" who we thought would be the winner but ended up backing himself up over the barrier and got stuck (with his exhaust pointing right towards us).

more carnage action shots

Amelia doesn't know what to think.

After the derby we stopped in to view some antique tractors. Sam found a great spot with some nice light for this shot of Lola. This light came from the sidewall of a rear tractor tire.

After all the commotion it was time to sit down and enjoy a treat.

Amelia had banana flavored bananas.

She was feeling a little left out because we all enjoyed TCBY.

Lola had Strawberry shortcake flavored yogurt and really liked it.

After the frozen yogurt we headed back to the car. Lola was cold so I let her snuggle inside my sweatshirt.

We had a great time and I think we just might go back next year.