The Circleville Pumpkin Show

I can’t believe it has taken me almost a week to get this post up! Then again, it has taken me almost as long to recover from the day we spent at the Circleville Pumpkin Show! What a crazy day!

A week or so prior Jan and Sonja Ostendorf (Jan is a fellow colleague of Ben’s) mentioned they wanted to take their children (Tori and Ehron) to the Pumpkin Show as none of them had ever been. I was interested as I had a friend in college who was from Circleville and was nearly fanatical about their Pumpkin Show. I had never been but I was definitely curious! The Loyd’s are always up for a new adventure so they were in too! The Mullins were interested but we were hoping to go on Thursday or Friday which made them ineligible to come as Jen, Lauren and Tyler all had school.

The reason we wanted to go on Thursday or Friday was to beat the weekend crowd. That turned out to be a joke! We went on Friday and as we arrived at noon we were already having difficulty finding a parking place! We had no idea what was in store. Apparently the whole south central part of Ohio didn’t have school on Friday and decided to go to the Pumpkin Show as well! I don’t do well with crowds and “crowded” really isn’t the right word to describe the number of people at this festival. There were times that we literally couldn’t move the pedestrian traffic was so heavy! And DON’T even think about getting near the kiddie rides if you want to keep your sanity!

Of course, we had Evan so we couldn’t completely stay away from kiddie rides (and this is how I know getting too close to the kiddie rides can be insanity)! And there was a ride with, of all things, a motorcycle! Most of you may not know that Ben has created a motorcycle lover out of Evan. Whenever Evan sees a motorcycle he either says “vrrmmm, vrrmmm” or “Ben!” I am not sure who was more excited that Evan was going to get to ride a motorcycle, Ben or Evan. At any rate, you can see the picture, do you think he liked it? Check out Evan’s website for more pictures.

At any rate, we walked around and tried to enjoy the festival as much as possible. It really was amazing! I have to say that was, by far, the biggest and most well attended festival I have ever had the privilege of attending. It was blocks and blocks of booths and food and fun! And they have at least one parade and sometimes 2 parades a day – CRAZY! While we were there we got to see the Pet Parade. I particularly love this shot of the little girl on the right pushing her Shih Tzu in a baby doll stroller! Too cute! My sister (an adult) would have LOVED this. I could see Tilly and Derby being entered in this parade next year for sure!

It was an extremely cold day as well. I don’t know if it felt so cold because of the temperature or the fact that just the day before it had been almost 80 degrees. Whatever the reason, we didn’t have the right clothing for Isaac so he stayed swaddled sleeping in the stroller or attached to Ben all day long. This whole sleeping all day thing has taken us about 5 days to iron out. It is amazing how one day “off” schedule with a baby can send your whole world out of orbit for an entire week!

All in all it was a fabulously fun day. We saw the giant pumpkin pie. We hung out with friends. We ate some pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin fried onion, and pumpkin fudge. We rode some rides. And we can now claim to have been to the Circleville Pumpkin Show. If you have never gone I highly recommend marking your calendar for the third week in October (and plan on going on Wednesday)!

For more pictures check out the Pumpkin Show 2008 Photo Gallery!