Fort Bend County Fair

This year we broke out the cowboy boots and hat to kicked off the Fort Bend County Fair.  The fair opens with a parade through downtown Richmond.  The schools even gives the kids a holiday for Fair Day, so Friday morning we met up with the Sanfords' and headed to the parade.  She was the cutest cowgirl out there in my opinion!

We had a front row seat, just at the beginning of the parade.  Overall the parade was average at best.  I don't know if that's because the last parade I went to I was a child and everything seems so much better as a child, or if this particular parade just stunk!  My memories of our fair parades and local Christmas parade were much more vivid and exciting, with lots of music, lots of candy, and lots of dancing.  This parade was rather subdued.  Not all the floats had music.  There were lots of political floats pushing different candidates.  They didn't throw candy.  Instead, if the float had a "give-away" people walked along beside it handing the items out along the street.  And sometimes, it wasn't even candy.  We got more paper advertisements than anything else.  There were what seemed like 100 marching bands, which I'm not opposed to since at least you were guaranteed to hear some music, but the flag cores, dance lines, cheerleaders, and pom squads never stopped to perform.  The last parade I marched in as dance line, we stopped and performed every quarter mile.  And it lasted forever!!!  Nearly 3 hours!  OMG!

Of course, none of this affected our kids, especially since this was Brenna's first parade and the whole thing was fabulous for her!  Once she caught on to the fact that people would give you something if you held your hand out as they passed, she quickly took off her hat and held it out with each passing float until it was filled to capacity!

Dancing with the Cheerleaders!

I see this car zipping up and down highway 99 all the time!

Big high five from the Shriners!

A match made in Texas!

Later the next week we hit the actual fair grounds.  I started off the afternoon with my traditional fried snicker and then enjoyed all the fun the fair has to offer with Brenna.  Trina and I actually got in on the fun and rode a new ride called The Freak Out!  The men were too chicken and claimed they would keep an eye on the kids.

After a quick dinner for everyone, we made our way over to the band stand where Brenna and Matt put on a show.  Once again I'll say, no stage freight from this one.  And she gets her dancing skills from her Dad, definitely not me!