Mommy & Scout's last little road trip before "Gem"

Last Sunday, Daddy had a lot of work to do so Mommy & Clara took our last little road trip together before "Baby Gem" arrives. I am to the point in my pregnancy that I shouldn't really travel too far away from home and am realizing how much I need Kevin around for some of the physical aspects of my life like lifting Clara and getting our bags and her stroller in and out of the car. Luckily this trip I had a lot of help from my parents and one of my oldest and dearest friends, Christy.

In all honesty, Clara is getting to a great age to "help" me out with many little things, she runs in and gets my shoes (as long as I am willing to wear whatever pair she brings ;-), throws away her own snack wrappers, and is great at picking up all the MANY various things I seem to drop lately! She really is a great helper and hopefully all this help will continue when her baby sister arrives.

Clara's first corndog

On our little road trip we headed to Chehalis for a few days and since Grandma and Grandpa Stevens were busily painting their house, it was a great opportunity to spend some time with Christy and her boys who were also in Chehalis for the weekend. The SWW Fair seemed to be the best idea for a fun activity for us to do with the kiddos. While the SWW Fair was such an important part of my childhood as a 4-H member, it has been about nine years since I have been back to the fair. It was so nice to get to share my experiences with Clara and to reminisce with Christy, also a trusty 4-Her!

One important stop for me was visiting the rabbit barn, a place where my family spent so much time during the fair and made a lot of very special memories. This year there were not as many rabbits but I had the chance to see some cute bunnies and run into a few familiar faces.

Clara was curious about lots of the interesting things that she saw at the fair, like the cowboy on the chicken...

...and the rides, much larger in scale than what she rode on the previous weekend at Remlinger.

One highlight of the day was catching the JP Patches show. JP is such a Seattle icon and has entertained several generations. Apparently, Grandpa Mark was on the JP Patches show as a child with his boyscout troop. Scout was a little young to be brought up on stage, but Hayden and Logan got to.

Logan and JP even preformed a duet of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star - absolutely precious!

Next we headed over to the kids area where Logan and Hayden spotted the pump cars. Clara of course wanted to ride as well and Christy, who is always up for a thrill, jumped in an volunteered to take her - Somehow I couldn't imagine me with this pregnant belly trying to keep up with the kids, so I kept to photography duty!

Hayden

Logan

Clara then flocked to the craft area where she applied hand sanitizer on SEVERAL occasions. Our joke right now is that she is taking on some of Grandma Jan's cleanly obsessions and insists on washing her hands MANY times a day. I am assured by other mothers of tots that the excuse to play in the water is just another stage most kids go through. I sure hope so, because we can't go on too much longer washing our hands at every sink in sight (or arguing about why we can't)!

After checking out more animals and an essential trip to the wildlife building to see the fish, we indulged in more treats! Clara selected a ice cream bar dipped in sprinkles. We typically share treats whenever we go to an outing of this sort, but since it was late in the day and we had skipped a nap, when I took a bite out of "her" ice cream cone, Scout made a sound so obnoxious and horrifically loud it drowned out all of the commotion of the fair and everyone looked at us (me). Christy was way down the midway in the elephant ear line and was able to identify it as Clara! In order to calm her down, my 37 week pregnant self got down to her level and have a quiet discussion with her, juggling the ice cream cone she no longer wanted, lost my balance and fell a bit forward only to get my earring caught in her hair. I couldn't figure out a way to stand up and was quickly loosing my balance - Chaos!

It was not too much longer and Clara was willing to settle down and apologize in order to have some of her treat. That little meltdown aside, Christy and I deemed the day long outing with all three kids a success.

We hit the "footsie wootsie" chairs on the way out!

The next day we enjoyed spending time with Grandma Jan and went and picked up our bassinet from Matt & Danielle's before heading home. We are planning on spending the next few weeks close to home and getting everything ready for our precious lil' "Gem" to arrive.