Finish the summer carnival season with a blowout!

That's what Colts Neck Country Fair is. Usually. This year, about the only thing that got blown out was my wallet, $80 in food and fun. And I want to go back tonight for more! A fool and her money ...

No, really, it was a good time last night.

I rounded up some of Kenny's soon-to-be former classmates and we met there around 6ish.

Shortly after we arrived, a friend confessed to me that he had already gone through $50 worth of tickets in the 30 minutes prior to us hooking up. Whew!

I had my kids using the $10 wrist bands for the inflatables. He got his kid one and when others arrived, they did the same. Our kids played on the inflatables with those pay-one-price wrist bands for 2 1/2 hours! It was great. We adults stood around and gabbed. I found out a bunch of things about the first grade school supply list in the Manalapan public school and at St. Rose in Freehold. They need tons more stuff than my kids, and not all of it is directly academic: wipes, paper towels, incidentals like that. Does the school provide anything beyond a chair and desk?! Seriously. What's next, BYO toilet paper? And would boys have an unfair advantage in that?

Another thing that we adults did was eat. One of our party came back to our area with cheese fries. Those were one of my favorite foods way back when but they don't make them very good around here, too soggy. These looked good, however, and I was going to try some but decided against it even without my husband's watchful eye. My friend was encouraging me otherwise, "Go on, you're pregnant, you can eat whatever you like." Eh, after three or four kids, that mentality starts to backfire.

All of the vendors' offerings looked good. The Colts Neck Reformed Church was serving up both kinds of clam chowder. I've been to enough Lunch & Learn programs at Reformed Churches to know that those ladies know how to cook! If Kenny had been with me, I would have bought a bowl because he loves the NE style, but I couldn't pull him away from the inflatables, so I sadly took a pass. Instead, I got fresh fried ravioli which I love to make myself. It was very good. I'm really craving it now and I need to check whether I have any cheese ravioli on hand to make my own ... for lunch?!

All evening, I waited for Jeff to join us. He had a late meeting in Newark which he tried to move up. He teased that he might arrive by the time of the fireworks (9:30PM!) and I said, "I hope you aren't that late!"

He called around 8pm (I had his phone because mine is kaput) to say that he was still at work and would probably just go home. I was ready to go home too, having stood in virtually one place for 2 hours. But the kids wanted to "ride rides". So, I bought 20 ride tickets.

There was a close call at one point: Kenny went on some kind of boat ride with his friends while Tim took to the super trucks. I gave Tim his two tickets, then dashed over to the boat to give Kenny his three tickets. The baby in the stroller threw a fit. Kenny's ride started up but Tim's was being double-checked by the operator. I could not calm Chris down, so I unbuckled him and saw that the seat next to Tim was open.

I dashed inside the ride area to the caution of the operator who was checking belts (she had not reached Tim yet but was making her way around to him), so I said, "Look, he wants to ride, he's tall enough, here's two tickets, he can sit next to his brother." I'm usually not so pushy and she was nice about it but I knew that I would not get another chance ... I mean, everything was in place except that I was just a little slow in making up my mind. And, of course, Chris had the biggest smile on his face during the ride ... he was so loving it. What a silly kid.

So, we ran through the tickets and people in our party gradually left. I tried to catch the eye of an acquaintance whom I half-expected to see there because of her husband's involvement in the Colts Neck FD but she looked tired and had her hands full with more kids than usual (cousins? neighbors?), so we never made eye-contact.

On our way out, Kenny wanted cotton candy. I picked up some cinnamon almonds for Jeff, his favorite. I loaded the kids into the car just as the fireworks were getting started. We watched them for about fifteen minutes ... theirs is consistently one of the best displays I have ever seen. The kids hate the loud noise of fireworks, so they watched from the car with the windows up. Tim even covered his ears while inside the car! But I stood outside the car to enjoy them; the muffled sound of fireworks heard from inside the car is just not right, you know?

I got them to bed and even though Jeff slammed closed the front door as I was kissing Kenny goodnight, neither boy had enough energy to notice that Daddy was home. Both fell asleep almost instantly.