Everybody Loves a Good Sandwich

Joe here. . .
Today we went to the Sandwich Fair in Sandwich, Illinois. This is by far the best county fair that I have ever been to. We go to a lot of fairs including the Lake County Fair, McHenry County Fair, Kenosha County Fair, Walworth County Fair and even the Boone County Fair. Of all those fairs, none of them can compete with the Sandwich Fair. I believe the Sandwich Fair is actually the Dekalb County Fair (correct me if I'm wrong), but everybody knows it as the Sandwich Fair. It is so big that you need to plan your attack on the fair. Which, of course, we did not do today.

We started out by eating. All kinds of food all over the place. Michael opted for the footlong corn dog while Jacob had a normal corn dog. Trina and I had giant pork tenderloin sandwiches. Grandpa Metz had a two pork chop meal. Grandma Metz wasn't hungry so she just had a funnel cake (deserts don't count as a meal says Grandma). It was all good and we figured this was a good idea to start with this so we'd have the energy to continue through the fair. Boy were we wrong!

The way we should have done it would have been to go see some attractions, then sit down and eat, and then finish strong. We didn't and by the time we got through about half the fair we were exhausted. Our feet were killing us. Luckily we brought the stroller for Jacob so we didn't have to listen to him complain about all the walking. Michael was a trooper and never complained once about the walking. Instead he found something else to complain about.

Michael had asked early in our day if we could buy a new Wii game if we had enough money left over after the fair. I said yes knowing full well that we would not. Bad idea. From that moment on anytime we bought something it was followed with "Do we still have enough money to buy a game?" Michael has this crazy idea that we are made of money and that all we have to do is go to the bank and they'll just give us money. I wish it was that easy. He doesn't realize you have to have money in the bank before they'll give you any. His desire for a game came to a head after we had spent just about all of our alotted funds. He began whining and crying and carrying on saying that it was his worst day. I, being the diplomatic, calm person that I am, became furious. It all but ruined our entire trip to the fair. Luckily, however, Michael and I did finally talk on our way out (after about 30 minutes of me not wanting to hear a word from him) and smoothed things out. Thank heavens.

Ugh, what a day. We did enjoy the fair, but trips like this really do test you as a parent.