Sausage Fest Fun

Another September means another fun-filled time at Sausage Fest! To recap Sausage Fest is a Bavarian-styled festival that our local parish puts on to raise funds for the school and church each year. Think food booths, stage entertainment (of the kid's dancing and singing variety), game booths, Bingo (a Catholic must!), and a beer garden (another Catholic must!). This year we were blessed to have Nate's parents come up for the weekend to join in on the festivities.

Our first order of business upon arriving was to grab some yummy corn on the cob (fields of corn are actually planted solely for this event because so much corn is sold), a handful of sausage dogs, and some pop for a treat. It's always fun walking the grounds and running into people I know but haven't seen since last Sausage Fest. Plus, there's always that wonderful feeling of remembering years of Sausage Fest fun, both when I was attending the school and later when I was reminiscing about attending the school. This year promised the same as I ran into eleven groups of people that I knew from one avenue of life or another in the first fifteen minutes, and all while I was trying to get the various food items from the different booths. I was in meet-and-greet heaven!

Dinner with Abby was a hoot. We were close enough to the entertainment stage that she was easily able to see the dancers perform. She'd bring the sausage dog up to her lips and have it hover there as she became so enamored with what she was seeing on stage that she forgot to eat! A few times she'd glance back at Nate and notice that he was eating corn on the cob (her's long since demolished) and would dive in like a shark with her mouth wide open to snag a bite. The first time she did this it actually startled Nate as this random face came out of nowhere right above his shoulder. :-)

Once dinner was consumed we were off to play some games. I made the strategic error of thinking we were at an event similar to the prices of the Benton-Franklin Fair and Rodeo and bought WAY too many tickets. I was thinking each game was a minimum of four tickets when they were actually two tickets, so bought twice as much as I wanted. Oh, well.

Abby throwing a ball into goldfish bowls trying to win a prize. Thankfully they no longer give away actual bags of goldfish as the grand prize. I don't know how many fish my family and I personally killed (because let's be honest, the fish didn't survive much past the trauma of being driven home and held by sugar laden children), but add in all the other families and I think we killed lots and lots of fishy friends.

Picking out a consolation prize (which every booth offers to all participants if they don't win one of the bigger prizes). She ended up picking a butterfly tattoo that she lovingly pointed to every time she saw it on her hand. After bath, when it washed away, she'd point to her hand and tell me how butterfly had gone "night-night" which is why we couldn't see him. :-)

Putting in her tickets at the Fish Pond (This was always my favorite booth to volunteer at when I was younger. It always reminded me of the scene in Pollyanna where she "fished" and got her doll. Granted, I was giving away Oriental Trading company plastic junk, but I always tried to listen for the little kids and give them the extra cool junk!)

Holding the fishing pole so well!

We also hit up the Duck Pond where Abby grabbed a higher numbered duck and actually won a decent prize! A pack of crayons!

The Lollipop Tree was also another big hit. In fact I spent almost all of our leftover tickets (after Abby was done playing games) on getting her suckers knowing that she'd love them in the future. As we were gathering up our peoples to head out I thought it would be a fun treat to get Abby some cotton candy as she rarely gets it but loves eating it. What followed was comical.

First she goes in for the dive trying to eat the fluffy goodness. 

Then she starts ripping off chunks in an effort to eat as much as possible at once.

When that doesn't work she decides that shoving fist-fulls of the stuff might be the way to go.

Yep, she found her favored cotton candy delivery routine to get as much into her mouth as quickly as possible. 

And ended the adventure by daintily licking her fingers of the good stuff.

Another great year of family fun at Sausage Fest! This year we became members of the Kegger Club by donating funds to purchase a keg, but were unfortunately not able to make it into the Beer Garden to find our names on the sponsorship flags. Hopefully we'll get the opportunity to do so next year!