Strawberry Days

I had always heard a lot of good things about the Strawberry Days Festival in Pleasant Grove. I found out when it was this year and made sure Miles knew that in no uncertain terms, we would be attending. We finally decided to go on Saturday morning. Little did we know when we arrived that there was a parade going on. It had only started about 20 min before we got there. So we parked ourselves on the sidewalk (in the sun) to watch. I'm glad we had the stroller for Owen so he didn't get burned like Miles and I did.

Miles was a trooper since I know he's not a fan of parades. I even got a smile out of him. :)

One thing I thought was kind of funny was after we'd been there for about 30 min, this woman showed up with her friends and stood near us. She asked how long the parade had been going on and what she had missed. I guess I'm not a parade aficionado because I was at a loss for what to say. Um...you missed some horses? And pageant winners? Maybe a float or two? And some cars and trucks?

Miles asked me to take a picture of this truck with baby contest winners. It's hard to see, but the little girl in the back in the red has a bow that's bigger than her head and she can't even hold her head up. Miles thought it was ridiculous (and it kind of was) and told me our daughter will not be wearing such monstrosities. :)

There were a lot of different horses. They were Owen's favorite part...well, besides all the candy that was being thrown out. And by the way, I would not want to have the job the young boys had to follow the horses with wheelbarrows scooping up poop. Yeah. Awesome.

We watched for over an hour and then there was a lull. We thought it was over, so we wandered into the carnival area. I guess it wasn't over, because rides didn't open up for a little while and a lot more parade participants went through. Ah well...we were done standing in the sun.

Our first stop was the main reason we came:

And they were quite delicious!

After that we bought some tickets to take Owen on some rides. Unfortunately, I bought too many. We first took him on the carousel, which (after a few, "Down, down, down!"'s) he was content and seemed to enjoy it. So we headed over to the cool Jeep ride.

Owen looked so cute sitting in the small Jeep, "driving" it around. He seemed totally fine, but as soon as he came down from the first round and saw us, he started to cry. They pulled his car over to let him out and let the girl in the back of the car go into a different one so she could finish her ride. I was bummed he didn't enjoy it as much as I thought he would have. 

Of course, not too much later, he was asking to go on this dragon ride. Yeah right. Pretty sure there would have been a lot of crying involved in that too.

So we decided to stick with the carousel where either Miles or I could be with him the whole time. After about 4 rounds of that, he seemed to be done. So we gave the rest of our tickets to the mom of the little girl who was in the Jeep when he started to cry.

Overall it was a fun outing and I'm glad we went. I know for next time to go small and buy less tickets than I think I'll need. Then if Owen doesn't have any fears, I can buy more. It really is fun to do these kinds of activities with kids though. It changes the way you look at everything. Strawberry Days = a win!