Poteet Strawberry Festival

Every year we've lived here, we've heard about the Poteet Strawberry Festival. Since this is our last year here, we decided we needed to finally go. Now, being a festival, I imagined food stands, craft stands, musical guests, and other stuff. I was a bit surprised when we arrived and it was just like a county fair with carnival rides, games, and carnival food. It was still fun, but definitely not what I expected. Now I'd been warned that even though it was a strawberry festival, we wouldn't be able to find strawberries on the grounds of the festival, only in the booths on the street as you drove to the festival. Sure enough that was true. In fact, Tom got a funnel cake and was excited to get a strawberry topping for it, but they didn't have any. Funny huh?

Anyways, our friends the Chappells came to our house and then we caravaned to Poteet, Texas - about 16 miles south of San Antonio. As we entered the town of Poteet, we saw their water tower.


Fortunately, Tom and Joel were both able to be home in time for us to get there right when it opened. Since admissions was free for the first night, I figured it was going to be packed, but we fortunately got there before the huge crowds came. Amen! Once we finally parked, we headed in. The first ride the kids just had to go on was the Merry-Go-Round.





This is the third or fourth time within the past year that they've gotten to ride a merry-go-round and they just love it. After that was over, we started walking around. There were game booths everywhere. Since we were among the first there, the game booth people kept trying to get us to come play. Apparently, their policy is that kids always get a prize, which they tried to use on us. We did stop at a dart-throwing, balloon-popping game and let the kids get a toy. It took Payden awhile to get the concept. The game guy eventually picked her up and let her poke the balloon with the dart so she could win. It was cute.

Since they'd each gotten a toy, we definitely weren't persuaded to stop and play any more games. When we passed this basketball game, Tom egged Joel to go ahead and play (Joel LOVES playing basketball).


Of course, the hoop was way too small, making it virtually impossible to make any of the hoops, but we all enjoyed watching. A bit after this Tom found a funnel cake vendor . . . so of course we stopped. Then we continued on to find more rides for the kids to ride. They got to go on a ferris wheel for the first time, which they loved.

They did a couple of the ones where you sit and get spun around. On this one, Shelby ended up with a stranger sitting next to her. At one point in the ride, I noticed he had his arm around her. I'm grateful she's really chill and had no problem riding with him.

I'd been on a similar ride like this with Payden earlier, and she didn't seem to like it very much. When she got up with Taylor, I asked Taylor to give her hugs if she needed them. I think Taylor hugged and kissed her throughout the whole ride. She did an awesome job at being a big sister!!!

As they were spinning, I suddenly remembered that on spinning ones, you're supposed to put the biggest kid on the outside (because the centrifugal force pushes everyone to the end, so the end person gets squished). I sure hope Payden wasn't too squished. I remember going on a really fast one with my sister Lori when we were kids and she did not like me squishing her so I tried the whole time to keep myself from squishing her . . . which was SOOOOO hard.



Then they saw this roller coaster, or "train" as Payden called it. Payden BARELY was tall enough (or maybe she was barely too short and Tom told the guy she was tall enough), but I was worried how she'd do. She didn't freak at all. She didn't look like she liked it too much, but she was calm the whole time and just held on tight. It was weird watching her because she looked like a big girl and not my baby girl anymore.




Throughout our time at the festival, Shelby kept complaining about her ear hurting. By the time we got to this next game, she was in a lot of pain, but really wanted to go on it. (In hindsight, a spinning game probably wasn't the best for her ear.)


I loved this next picture. As Tom put it, this is the ride from Dallin's perspective. You can spin the cars around as you're being spun around, so Dallin was sitting there spinning the kids' car while the girls just sat there.


Taylor had a blast, but you can see poor Shelby didn't like it too much. She had her head ducked down the whole time.


By the time the ride was over, she was done. Her ear was in so much pain she was in tears. We decided that I would take Declan, Payden, and Shelby back to the car while Tom and Taylor tried to get rid of the rest of our tickets.



Shelby was so sad that I had her sit in the stroller while I pushed her and held Declan on my side in the sling. As we got to the exit, Payden started whining that she was tired and wanted to go in the stroller. By the time we got to the car, I was huffing and puffing from pushing Shelby AND Payden in the stroller (uphill part of the way) and carrying Declan in the sling as well. Since it stopped a lot of the whining . . . it was worth it. We then had to wait for Tom and Taylor to get back. Poor Shelby was just crying and crying. They finally returned with an ice cream that they'd gotten with the remaining tickets. We then headed back through Poteet where fortunately we found an open grocery store. We got medicine for Shelby and then got some gas along with some of the food from the vendors along the street.

We had a fun night, but felt bad that Shelby had to get a random ear infection. The odd thing was that by morning it wasn't hurting any more. So strange, but we were glad to be able to enjoy most of the night together.