"Howdy Folks!"

As most of you know, Matt is in his 3rd year of medical school. This year he will complete a series of 2 month rotations in various specialties, each culminating in a national board exam. To say he is busy would be an understatement--the poor guy hasn't even had a weekend off in 3 months! So you can see why we were both pretty excited for his fall break . . .

As soon as he finished his test we hopped in the car and headed to Dallas for the Texas State Fair! You guys. I have been wanting to go to this fair for years. I saw a Food Network special on all of their crazy fried food inventions and I've been thinking about it ever since.

Being Californians at heart, our first major stop was In-N-Out. Jonathan was très impressed.

But the next day we were Texans through and through. For anyone unfamiliar with this fair, one of the main attractions is this creepy guy standing behind us. Big Tex! A giant automated cowboy (because everything really is bigger in Texas) who waves his arm and welcomes you to the fair. "Howdy folks!"

We were there on the last weekend so we weren't able to see a ton of livestock. We did, however, enjoy a nice long visit with the bunnies (at my insistence). They were so cute and creepy at the same time! But mostly cute. I couldn't get enough--Matt basically had to drag me out of there.

Our tour of the animals also included Boris, the 1500 lb giant boar, a surprisingly impressive dog show, and  some sheep. A couple of other fun surprises were the 3,000+ lb butter sculptures and the coolest train set I have ever seen.

But let's be honest we were really just there for the food. And as you can see, I was pretty excited about it.

With so many delicious rarities to choose from (fried butter and fried coke??), we decided to stick to the award winners. Fried Cuban, Texas Bluebonnet--fried blueberry muffin stuffed with cream cheesy goodness and topped with blueberries and whipped cream, the ORIGINAL corn dog--they were invented here, Fried Spinach Artichoke Dip Bites, and this year's winner, Fried Gulf Shrimp Boil Balls. Whew!