OC Fair date

The kids and I go to the OC Fair every summer and always have a great time. It's the perfect size for us to see all the rides, exhibits and FOOD!!

Hector joined in on the fun twice this year and we pigged out. It's even better if we have more friends to share the huge portions. We tried to arrange an outing with friends but something came up so it didn't work out. 

The kids take off to explore which is nice so they don't get totally bored while we go looking at the Parade of Products. I bought my supply of pink jewelry cleaner and had my ring and Hector's ring cleaned and polished.

I caught pokemon at the fair too.I can't wait till next year's fair!

Heat Wave

Summer is really here for SoCal and we are feeling it. The last couple of summers have been mild and barely warm so this heat is unusual to us. The valleys are a total different story though.

Anyway, my friend Kat and I had tickets to see Strangelove, a Depeche Mode tribute band for several months and of course, it is smack dab in the middle of the heatwave. Luckily the OC Fair is located about 4 miles from the ocean so a nice breeze comes through to cool everything down. We had loads of fun rocking to Strangelove and eating the most awesomest maple bacon donut. It was HUGE, a glazed donut with shaved bacon loaded on top with maple sauce slathered all over it. It was so delicious. :) I hope it will be back next year!!

Ready to rock!

This week is still warm but the cool breeze at night helps a lot. A couple of night though, I opened the doors and windows to let the hot air out and cool air in when a strong, awful smell of skunk comes in that has me running to shut everything back up again. Darn skunks!!!

This afternoon we went to our local beach with Glenn and Laura to get some relief. It was so nice and pretty today. The water was warm and pleasant to swim in. We had to top off our day with some ice cream which hit the spot. Yum!!

I was also busy taking pictures with my Yashica SLR (film) so it is being processed tonight so we shall see if the photos came out and how they look.

They spent a lot of time chatting about their favorite games.

Tyler is in the distance with his boogie board.

Fun times with friends.

OC Fair

Thursday is the kids and my special outing day for the summer. It happened to coincide with the special the OC Fair has that kids 12 & younger get in free and unlimited rided wristbands (until 8pm) were sold for $25. Yeah, double rewards.


Le Grand Wheel.

I did plan on staying for a while so we ate lunch before the fair and spent $ mostly on snacks/drinks like the standard cotton candy and popcorn.

We did a lot more walking around this time and started at the Kid Zone but this year we noticed that Tyler was a tad too tall/big to go on some of the kiddy rides. Luckily they were kind of cheesy so Josh had no problem going on them in a short time. The kids were good about checking things that I wanted to see or they'd sit in the shade with a cold drink & talk. :)

Slide

We then went to the bigger rides and Josh won't do anything extreme so they were content to do the house of mirrors, funhouse etc until their wristbands ran out. We kept zigzagging back n forth and finally ended back at the kidzone where lots of cool insects were displayed along with several snakes. We even got to see the handler feeding the scorpion. Pretty cool.

While we were there, we heard the announcement for the eating contest and Tyler wanted to do it. He managed to squeak into the last spot and eat some strawberry shortcake.  Tyler didn't win the contest but he was thrilled to have an extra dessert  plus eat it with his hand. :)

Feeding Frenzy

All gone, just remnants of whipped cream left.

Overall, we had a super fun time at the fair. Hopefully, Kat's knee will be better when we go next time!! This time I shot in RAW and so far Lightroom imports it so I can view, tweak it if necessary and save as jpeg so I can upload to Flickr/blog. That's the kind of workflow I was looking for! It does take me longer than before but I'm still learning the ins and outs of Lightroom. :)

Strangelove

Last night, Kat and I headed to the OC Fair to check out the fair and see Strangelove, the Depeche Mode tribute band. For some reason unknown to us at the time, the fair and parking lot was PACKED! No handicap parking to be found for Kat's lameness so I ended up dropping her off and circling around for 20 minutes trying to find a spot. I didn't have Hector's parking karma with me and ended up parking on the end of the aisle like many other cars on the wrong side of the fire lane.



Back to the show...it was held in The Hangar which is a nice-sized venue approx. 500 seats (?) and we were in the center section row I so we had a great view. The band came on and proceeded to kill it with awesome songs/performances. The 2 guys portraying Dave and Martin were spot on with their voices and looks. Lots of fun that kept the crowd dancing. Unfortunately, the girls behind us talked (yelled) amongst each other during the songs which was extremely annoying when we wanted to enjoy the music and sing along.
:(





Strangelove played a variety of DM songs ranging from the early years to the most recent. It was a fantastic show since DM has sooo many songs to cover and the concert went on for about 90 minutes non-stop. :)



We didn't want it to end but it did and the band said they would meet with fans after the show. Aww, that's nice of them. What a night and my car was fine where it was. :)

Full set of Strangelove photos.

OC Fair

Fine day for the OC Fair.

Kathy and I usually take the kids to the OC Fair every summer to experience the junk food, games and rides. Those are our priorities. Usually the weather is pretty warm but we are having a fairly cool summer so far and that was a huge plus was all of us.

Friday features dollar food samples and $1 rides and games until 7pm. I bought each of the boys a card with $20 which they could use on any ride or game they wanted but they had to pace themselves so it would last during our time there. Overall, they did pretty good.

Best deal of dollar days. Churros!

Kathy is a whiz at the games involving aiming your water pistol at a target. I lost count of the number of stuffed animals she won and added to the kids win pile. I'll have to take a picture of all their loot. :)

Of course, some of those games look so deceptively easy. You know the ones. Throwing darts at ballons or bouncing a ball off backboard into laundry basket or throwing a ball at cans. Tyler and Josh tried these and discovered how hard it was to win. Later on in the day they tried some of them again and won consolation prizes so that softened the blow.

Mmmm, ice cream!

Nice big chair.

We spent about 4 hours at the fair and we had enough. It was great to eat junk food but it wasn't substantial enough plus who can eat all that fried, greasy sugary stuff.
We switched gears and went to the Block for some real food/dinner then to the movies to see Despicable Me (again).

super slide

More video goodness at the OC Fair.

OC Fair

The OC Fair is now here!! Opening day was July 10th and as a promotion, the 1st hour (12 noon to 1:00) was free (entrance and parking). We arrived with Kat at 12 sharp, parked and waited in line which moved pretty fast so from start to finish it only took 30 minutes. We saved about $30 so that was very cool.

I brought my Flip so lots of little videos to show.



I bought the kids their $30 unlimited ride wristbands and they took full advantage of it. For 7 hours they rode rides and attractions MANY times over. Josh really likes the bumper cars so they rode it about 4 times.

Josh was a little bouncy energetic boy running from ride ride so I knew he would CRASH once we started driving home. Sure enough, he did. Overall, the whole day was a total success. Both kids won a stuffed animal at the balloon dart game and Tyler won an extra stuffed chicken at the ping pong ball toss. Fun times!