Festival

'Round these parts, each fall brings a rather large festival. Most of the locals go nuts for it. T and I, being transplants, aren't quite as crazy about it. There's everything from livestock to roller coasters and ferris wheels, not to mention all manner of fried things on a stick.

We'd talked about going, but weren't set on it. It's rather expensive and quite frankly, I cringe at the thought of spending that much money on something like that.

It also tends to attract some pretty scary people.

However, after a friend begged us to go with her and her children, we decided to bite the bullet and do it.

(my fav pic of the night.)

BUT, we hadn't budgeted for it. And we did NOT want to re-figure our spending for October/November to factor in that added cost. (We're Dave Ramsey freaks.)

Sooo...I didn't go to the grocery store last week.

Yep. You got it.

We didn't buy any groceries last week.

We saved the money and spent it on going to the festival.

And we survived.

Quite well, I might add.

We even had a little bit of $ left over!

We were very creative with the meals and we cleaned out the freezer.

I rationed milk from the week before and it lasted until Saturday. Little man shed a few tears over this, but I think getting to have his own Dr. Pepper more than made up for it. (That was a first!)

And it was really fun going to the festival and knowing we weren't going to have to cut back in another area.

We told the kids we'd treat them to two rides each, but if they wanted to ride a third, they'd have to earn the money by doing some specified chores, or "jobs."

They wanted that third ride and did their jobs and earned it.

We made it by the petting zoo. The kids cracked me up!

Reaching in and petting...

feeding and giggling...

and even grabbing the hairs of that goat's chiney chin chin. (That's a boy for ya!)

MW picked the swings. Unfortunately, I don't think that's a happy face. She was glad to put her feet back on the ground.

We saw a small circus where the animals danced and did all sorts of neat things and the kids got to ride an elephant. (T rode, too...just in case Little Man freaked out. He didn't.)

And I wish, wish, wish I had a picture of Little Man feeding the elephant. The trainer gave each child a slice of carrot. First Little Man took a bite of his, but soon enough realized it wasn't for him. The elephant came by and literally engulfed each child's hand in the tip of her trunk. Little man looked a bit scared when she took his. Once she let go of his hand, he lowered it, eyeballed his thumb, wiped it on his pants, and popped it right back in his mouth.

Little bit did great. She's so content in my arms. I love that.