corn on the cob, popcorn, canned corn, tortilla chips, corn nuts

we, along with 95% of the residents of the areas around merrymead farms, went to the fall festival yesterday. after 8 days of rain and one day of sunny, which we spent antique shopping with brett in skippack (I know, seriously, can you believe it? for stuff for his house), it was the "it" thing to do for all the families in the land.

we wanted to get a head start on the crowd, so I made sean and trent get up early and we all left the house before 10am. of course, a drive past the (barren) parking lot at merrymead showed us that doing that was really quite dumb, as of course all the churchy people would have been at mass at that time, and the festival didn't start until 12.

because we are getting bella's one year old picture done today at jcpenney's, courtesy of bella's daycare, who fucked up our "school" picture of bella by NOT TAKING ANY and therefore giving us a free pass for jacques, we had to scramble around this weekend to find something that she could be respectfully wearing. something befitting a 1 year old picture. so we were headed to the mall after the festival, but because of god, we figured we'd go to the mall first.

the mall doesn't open till 11. it's 10:25. but the doors are open. so you can actually get into the mall, just not into any stores. presumably it's for the mall-walkers, but I didn't see any of those. I just saw other impatient people milling around waiting for the stores to open. bella loved crawling around on the floors that I rationalized to myself were recently cleaned, and stood up next to the railing looking down on the first floor. she danced around and acted like she was in prison.

finally, after lollygagging around for over a half hour (to the starbucks, which was open, and to the coin-operated ride thingies which oddly didn't impress bella) we were able to get into the stores. we found a stupid dress after going to 3 stores, and we bought it out of desperation. it was one of those velvet dresses for christmas that normally we'd never put bella in. we kept the receipt.

I went into gap kids thinking that even if I found something, it would be 5 billion dollars, but I found a $30 dress (seriously. $30? for an INFANT? amazing that looking at $60 infant dresses makes $30 dresses seem reasonable) that was much better suited to the occasion, as it's fall colors and actually cute.

a stop to the shoe store for bella's first real shoe fitting told us that the boots she was wearing (and sweating in - I thought we'd be outside all day) are too small. she's a 4 1/2. who knew? we bought her black dress shoes (not patent leather, much to my mother's chagrin, I'm sure - that would be assuming I ever talked to my mother and/or saw her) and hightailed it out of there. I still wanted to be early for the festival.

we got to merrymead at like 12:06. PACKED. fucking packed. bella was sleeping, and she hadn't napped yet, so I stayed in the car with her while she slept and sean and trent scoped out the fest. they came back talking about chicken fries and cider donuts and I was like....GO GET ME SOME, NOW. of course, bells woke up before they got back and we almost missed each other in the field/parking lot.

we went through the corn maze, finding and answering all 8 questions, one of which was "name 5 foods with corn in them". you have to find all 8 questions and answer them on your map so you can be entered to win a free christmas tree, and if you've ever bought a christmas tree you know they're like $60. however, it just now occurred to me that we have an artificial tree since last year. oh well. maybe we can ebay it. so anyways, the MUD in the corn maze was astounding. sean lost his shoe once. it was gross. bella loved the corn, though. she somehow grabbed onto a stalk and pulled off a piece that was probably 2 foot long, and carried that all through the maze. she waved it around and even gnawed on it for a minute, until sean stopped her and took away the stalk and she bawled. I said "sean, let her have the stalk. LET HER BE A DAMN STALKER. I just don't want to hear her cry."

so we got all 8 questions, blah blah blah, and when we got out, they didn't even look at our sheet. just gave us the entry. am I surprised? should I have even been incensed over this? I doubt it.

we then got pumpkins, and stood in line with about 30 other people to purchase them, then bought some pumpkin paint and fresh ice cream and fresh whole milk minus that recombinated human growth hormone stuff they have in commercial milk. (for bella - even if it were the best milk on earth, I would still never ever drink milk. it is breast milk for calfs.) and then finally called it a day. it was only 4pm when we got home, but it felt like we were out for days.

I made dinner of chicken that I could not eat and pasta, we watched some of vh1's one hit wonders countdown for some reason, we all watched a movie together, and then we went to bed. the most validating part of the weekend was when sean looked at me in the car on the way from the mall to the festival and said, "now I know why you're glad I'm home weekends. I can't imagine trying to do this by myself."

we even took pictures, but you know the drill. maybe I'll download them tonight.