A fun day! (And a HUGE shock!!!) - Edited

We had a great day at the NC State Fair today.  For the first time since we started taking Katie two years ago, we decided to go early(ish) and forgo the nap (regular naps are still pretty important for her to not be cranky later).  So, we headed out the morning (a little later than Jim wanted) and arrived at the fair about 10am when the rides opened.  By sheer luck, we parked (FOR FREE!) on the same side of the fair as Kiddieland.  Yay!  Going in the gate directly to Kiddieland was awesome.  In the past, by the time we walk from the car to the fairgrounds and then from the gate around the fair to Kiddieland, it's practically time to go home!  This year, direct entrance to Kiddieland and arriving right as the rides opened was AWESOME!  We didn't have to wait for many rides and used most of our ride tickets in the morning.

Ready to go to the fair!

The first ride we started off with was what I would call a "transition" ride.  It was definitely a Kiddieland ride, small and not super fast but definitely faster than many of the kid rides.  This surprised (and terrified) my rather timid child at first.  Fortunately, riding with Mommy makes everything better and by the 5th time around we were having fun with a slightly more relaxed white knuckle grip on the safety bar. 

We had a great time riding the other rides, too.  Katie was big into rides this year.  She wanted to go on everything...well, everything that wasn't too scary.  We had a great time on many of the Kiddieland rides.

Ignore the boy.  He doesn't belong to me. :)

We had to pause to get her face painted.  This would be the princess design.

 After all those rides, we had worked up an appetite.  One family rule that we have for the state fair is that we can mostly get whatever we want to eat.  That includes Katie.  So, we all indulged in corn dogs, kebabs, corn on the cob, ice cream, and pizza.  Katie, as usual, wanted to eat a WHOLE bag of cotton candy.  We managed to convince her to pace herself so that she ate it over a couple of hours rather than all in one sitting.

(Apologies ahead of time for the shouting.)
The food brings me to the SHOCKING incident midday.  By SHOCKING I mean COMPLETELY, TOTALLY UNEXPECTED and CRAZY.  Katie had eaten her corn dog and some of her cotton candy already when I looked at her during the magic show.  That's when I noticed something odd about her mouth.  I asked her to come closer and show me her teeth.  Sure enough, THIS is what I saw:

YES!  THAT is a GAPPY grin you see.  My not quite 4.5 year old child has just lost her first tooth AND WE DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO IT!  I can only imagine where it might be right now...To say the least, the tooth fairy was TOTALLY unprepared and had to scramble a bit.  We wrote a nice note to leave under Katie's pillow for the tooth fairy so she knows Katie really did lose a tooth. We went to show Daddy after the magic show was over and he was as confounded as I was. 

We rode the Ferris wheel, did an obstacle course, went down a cool slide and rode some more rides.  We also watched a juggling act and a magic show that were both pretty cool.  At the end of the day we managed to check out the State Fair Ark of neat animals, watch cows get milked and catch a few minutes of a ventriloquist.  Overall, it was an awesome family fun day at the state fair.  Can't wait to go back next year!

The last ride of the day: The Dragon Wagon!