Winning Smile at the Carnival - With a Wink and a Smile

Carnival Fun

This past weekend, our town held the annual Pony Express Days. It’s your typical small town carnival with music, food, tractor pulls, mud volleyball, rides…..”carny’s”……. I’ve relaxed (a little) over the years, but I still don’t like the grossness of the carnival ride area….. I dole out my thieves hand sanitizer like candy!!!

It’s always the weekend before or the weekend right after school starts. The last hurrah of summer, so to speak. This year it happened to fall on a weekend that our big kids were with their dad and mom…..sad, but I was able to grab my bigs for a couple of hours to take them….yay! I’m so thankful their dad allowed me that time. I hope someday, he and his wife will accept our invitation to join with us and share in these memorable experiences.

Little did we know, Creg’s youngest daughter was there with some friends (his oldest daughter was at a church event). It’s funny how things just work out! We always miss when we are short a child or two, but happy for the together time we do get! I’m treasuring these moments. They are growing so fast and soon won’t want parents hanging around the carnival!

You can see my instagram posts here and here about the night.

A few things learned……..

It’s impossible to take a selfie with a baby
Don’t forget to take a group shot while everyone is still there
When kids have images on their phones, you don’t get them
Snapchat images are gone if you don’t save them

Winning Smile

As with all small town carnivals, ours has the infamous pretty baby contest!!! It’s been several years since I’ve had the opportunity to participate and knowing (mommy goggles) that Dax is the most ~~beautiful~~ handsome 1 year old boy on the entire planet, we went for it! We dressed him as GQ (shirt and shoes) as we could and gave him a little faux hawk. He worked the stage like he knew what he was doing!!!! We have quite the little ham on our hands. I have NO IDEA where he gets it from……Mom…..Dad….GRAMMY!!!! We love you #DdoubleP Thanks for always making us laugh and smile!

He won first place!!!!! Is this kid mine?? That little face melts me! It’s nearly impossible to scold him. He flashes us that smile or those baby blues and all is perfectly fine. Creg took a ton of pictures while we were on the stage and this is all I have of the day. The CF card corrupted and I can’t retrieve the images……sad day! I’m still trying to figure out if there is some way to get them. I’m so happy that I took this one image on my camera while we were waiting.

And once again….those lessons learned above……I have this image below on my phone from the day because I was relying on Creg’s camera…..the kids had some on snapchat….. Maybe I can get the color copy from the newspaper.