Dairy Days....which turned into the Idaho Aquarium

This week was Dairy Days, and Carter has been talking about that parade for weeks now! That kid LOVES parades. So we told him earlier in the week that we would head to the parade and then do the carnival rides afterwards.  Little did we know, the carnival would be shut down for failing to pass an electrical inspection. So we were in a bind........we didn't know the carnival would be shut down all weekend, so we told Carter we would come back Saturday when the rides were fixed. Fail. The carnival was, in fact, shut down all weekend. So I had to find something else fun for the kids. We opted for the Idaho Aquarium simply because we hadn't been there before, and it was inside with air conditioning.  Here are the pictures from the parade and the aquarium.

 Naturally, with any sort of fair/carnival, corn dogs are a must!

 This girl LOVES corn dogs.

 Vroom, vroom! My favorite part of the parade is the Corvette Club!

The Idaho Aquarium is actually pretty cool, though admission is overpriced. But it was really fun to explore with Carter!

 I ended up buying some fish so that Carter and Eric could feed the sting rays and baby sharks.

One of the sting rays was incredibly friendly - even trying to "climb" the wall so it could be pet by people. What a ham!

A Perfect Summer Evening

There's going to be too much going on this weekend to cram all of these pics into one weekend recap post, so there will be a couple of them.

Tonight, we spent the first part of the evening playing in the backyard. We BBQ'd some chicken and ate out on the patio. The weather was perfect.  For some reason, Carter thinks the little scooter thing he has operated in the grass.....which makes for a tough ride!!

And you know what all that hard work makes you have to do...........

Oh yes......the camera was already outside, and I had to take the picture.  I just had to.  Something about using it to mortify him when he reaches the tender age of ...... oh, say 14.  Or 17.  Or 25.  Any of those will do.  ;)

Then we packed up Carter and headed to Dairy Days in Meridian.  Let me tell ya - not having to push a stroller or lug around a diaper bag is just awesome!  Glad we are out of that...for the time being.

We debated whether or not to take Carter on some of the bigger rides this year....and we would have taken him on the little roller coaster, but it was closed while the parade was going.  So we stuck to the smaller rides, which he still loves.

He especially loved this jeep.  I'm not sure if it's because of the jeep, or the fact that he had a girl in the jeep with him.  Either way, he was thrilled!

We caught a couple more rides before heading over to the parade.

There were tons of kids handing out candy at the parade - Carter was in heaven.  He wasn't sure what to think about the parade.....until he figured out there was candy.  Then he was all for it.

We ended up using a little sandwich baggie to hold all of the candy!

We roamed through the vendors, decided on some snow-cones because they were amazingly refreshing, and picked up some battle sticks!  Carter loves these things and honestly, I could go get some at the dollar store, but he was beyond stoked to get one here.  He and Eric battled it out all the way back to the car.