The Photojournalist's Soapbox!: It's Carnival Time again!!!!

I really love summer carnivals. I know the food is bad for me and they are overpriced, but they scream SUMMER to me! (And I absolutely love funnel cakes and homemade lemonade...once a year won't kill me!)

We always take the boys to the carnival when it stops here in our little town. This year, Shan ended up having an engagement session on the night that we do the carnival. (We always go when they are doing the fireworks!) So I decided to be brave and take the boys for awhile by myself and then Shan could catch up with us after his session.

It actually went really well. Ian was JUST tall enough to ride the big slide by himself. Which was a good thing because I don't ride the big slide anymore after cracking or bruising my tailbone on it one year! (That thing hurt for over a year!) He really liked it, but you could see that he was a bit scared at how fast it went when he was by himself.

Christian isn't much of a ride lover, but we talked him into trying the Crazy Bus ride. It is pretty contained and just goes up and around in a circle. He got on, we got buckled in...and then he panicked and wanted off. So Ian rode that by himself.

In the meantime, Christian spotted the kiddie roller coaster, Dragon Wagon. To him, it looked like a Dragon train, one of his favorites from Thomas and no matter what I said, he was convinced that he wanted to go on it. As you can see...that didn't turn out so well...but he stayed on the whole ride!

Ian played a little skeeball. He has a wicked side-arm throw that accomplishes very little...but don't bother trying to talk him into doing it right...he will just keep doing it his way! LOL

Then we found something that Christian LOVED....the playground! Both boys played on that for a long time, which was perfectly fine for me.

Christian enjoyed some of the lemonade that is one of my favorite treats. And Ian rode the small ferris wheel.

Now while we ate our snacks, this very interesting cloud formation kept rolling in over the carnival. I really hoped it would hold out and not rain because Shan wasn't back yet and I didn't have a car. Just the boys and the stroller....and our house is about a mile from the park. I grabbed this shot just minutes before the sky opened up. Luckily, Shan was about 3 minutes away at that point, so although we got wet, it could have been much worse!

We went home for a bit, but we were very lucky and the storm passed over quickly so we went back when it was over and were able to watch the fireworks.

Ian also got a chance to ride one of the BIG rides with Shan. Once again, he was JUST tall enough. I think he was scared and loved it at the same time!