Katie Meets Dora (or The Puyallup Fair, part 1)

I'm not a fair person. Don't have anything against them, but there's a lot of people there and we're really not people people. Small groups are more our style. But when we saw that Dora was going to be at the Puyallup Fair I figured this was our chance to become Parents of the Year. To say that Katie loves Dora is a huge understatement. So we put aside our fair aversion and headed south.

We were on a time thing cuz we had a birthday party in the afternoon so we'd planned an in-and-out fair experience. Yeah, right. We'd planned to be on the road 2 hours before we actually were, but hey...we're going to meet Dora. It's all good. Well, traffic wasn't. And for all the complaining I do about our traffic and the grief I get from B about my traffic complaints...let me just say it's nothing compared to how HE gets in traffic. Yikes!!!

I could parody the MasterCard commerical for this story...

$20 for parking across the street from the fair
$20 for entrance to the fair - we were there about 2.5 hours total
$20 for ride tickets
20 minutes of standing in line while Dora was on a break
$15 for Pictures with Dora
Becoming Parent of the Year....priceless

But you know it's not that easy. As soon as we got in line Dora took a break. 20 minutes. They assured me we'd be in the next group if I waited, and thankfully they were right. We were the next to last to meet Dora, but at least we got there. So it was actually about 40 minutes of waiting all totaled. Katie was getting excited to meet her, but grew nervous as her turn got closer. In a seriously dumb twist, B and I decide that I'll take her up to meet Dora and he'll take pictures. We ALWAYS do it the other way around. ALWAYS. He's going to juggle both the video and the stills. (Impossible, I think to myself, as I tried it in Boise while they were riding the horse. You can't do both. You end up monkey'ing around with both and get nothing useful on either. But, in a second dumb twist, I don't say anything to him about it.) It's Katie's turn and we walk up. As excited as K is, she gets completely nervous. She won't talk to Dora, but she did sit near her. Don't ask her to smile, folks, it's just NOT going to happen. So I try to get her to smile, nope. I finally get her to hold Dora's hand and say cheese. Good enough, so we tell Dora, "bye!" and walk off. B greets us by saying he has no video of the meeting - too busy juggling the cameras and parents in the way. He did get a couple of stills though, but they're at a weird angle and some of the characters are cut off. No worries, I think. I'll just go ahead and buy the official pictures - it's only another $15 bucks right. Pocket change to become Parent of the Year. But the photographer never took Katie's picture. Ugh! I think B and I wanted to launch into an adult-language tirade on the spot, but with so many youngsters around it wasn't possible. They did offer to pop her back up with Dora and snap a shot, but we just wanted to move on. We'll save $15 and make due with our pictures. Tell me what you think...and tell me I'm nuts for even considering doing this all over next weekend to meet Diego and Baby Jaguar. But that will seriously make me Parent of the Year!