Goin' to New York City! But not too fast.

This past summer, we drove to New York City to visit my friend Vickie. Athough the trip was somewhat traumatic for me, the kids (and Ed, I believe) had a ball. Since then, Helen regularly packs a bag and tells me she's "Headin' to New York City!" and then she takes her pretend vacation.

Over Columbus Day, Ed's dad came to visit and we took him to a dairy farm. Because if there's one thing Ed and I know about, it's how to have a good time.

As a side note, we learned from our trip that the life of a dairy cow is really, really crappy. Seriously. Bummed me out, although apparently I was the only one because Connor actually wanted to live there forever and become a dairy farmer. Also, sniff, sniff...see that bottle in Helen's hands? Among the last.

Besides walking around the farm and seeing cows eat and get milked, we also took a hike

and went to the fair. And because were were in a sparsely populated farming community, this fair was the real deal. Complete with hay ride and  John Deere tractors.

Helen immediately noticed the child sized tractor and Connor and her hopped right on in. And Helen announced, in classic Helen style "we're goin' to New York City" and then she stepped on the gas. Only clearly someone had not thought this out well for many reasons - chief among them:

1. The car had a battery.
2. The car was about six inches from a metal post.

In the span of about ten seconds, Helen made her gleeful announcement and then ran head into the post, which totally ruined her fun. And, then the lady staffing the John Deere tractor (if that is, in fact, what you call sitting in a lawn chair ignoring everything going on until a three year old bothers to crash your car) started telling me how Helen shouldn't have done that. And when I told her Helen didn't realize what was going to happen, she started in on how I should've known Helen couldn't sit in the car and of course, I wanted to tell her that the information she was giving to me rudely now would've been a lot more helpful a few minutes before the fun-ending car crash, but instead I just told Connor and Helen we needed to leave because that woman was carrying around a lot of negative energy.

But man, the glee Helen had for those two seconds before the car crashed is something I hope I never forget.

And note to people running a fair: if you don't want a child to sit on a child sized object, you ought to put a sign up, or a rope around it, or for goodness sake, at least remove the battery! Or, you know, be prepared to politely tell parents that children aren't allowed on the object before there is a car crash.

Elaine