Taken to pieces: It's showtime

If you have children you may be familiar with the feeling I have quite often that I have turned into my parents. Not just that phrases come out of my mouth that I remember being said to me and that I thought I would never say, but also that what my children are putting me through, is exactly what I did to my parents. I can imagine my mother having a quiet chuckle over this....payback.

Growing up in Sydney we were able to visit the mother of all country shows, the Royal Easter Show. We couldn't really complain that there was nothing to do there, it was huge, but complain I did none the less. I don't remember what my brothers thought of it. Typically for a child, other people's feelings were of little consequence, but I do remember what I thought about it. I enjoyed the fruit and vegetable display where they made pictures out of thousands of pieces of fruit, vegetables and other crops. I tolerated looking at the cakes, though looking is not nearly as good as eating, but I resented being dragged through the smelly animal displays and anything else my parents wanted to look at. All I really wanted to do was buy showbags. The showbag pavillion was where I agonised over which choices would yield the most chocolate and would be the best to tease my brothers with when they had finished all of theirs. In the end, if I remember correctly, we used to skip the show all together and just sent Dad in with our showbag orders - how sad is that?!

The Easter Show still doesn't hold great appeal for me. It is so expensive and crowded and I don't like spending lots of money on things that are hard work and not a lot of fun for me - I'm very selfish that way. Andrew has taken Jossie and Toby twice. The first year I took Bethany on the train into the city to see the Harbour (and Haigh's) but this year she and I stayed home and didn't even come to Sydney with the others. This ended up being a big mistake as the pumpkin was born then and we didn't get to see her in the hospital.

This year, however, the Junee Show caught my fancy. I think it was a combination of the fact that our church is helping out the much smaller Junee church and that Kristy had great success with her baked goods last year. I missed the boat with entering baked goods (next year!) but most enthusiastically drove the kids out to Junee to experience the show. (For those who aren't familiar with Junee (!) it is a little town of around 6000 people around 25 minutes from Wagga which has around 60, ooo).

After something of a slow morning we arrived at the showground, parked and texted Kristy and Simon to come and find us. It didn't take long for show people to try and convince us to try our luck at their stalls but I wanted to see Kristy's winning entries first. She won first prize with all three of her sewing entries! This is her quilt and, as you can see, they don't make it easy to photograph them.

Sadly, Kristy's cake didn't win but the method of judging is quite bizarre. They don't taste the cakes! You could use vegemite instead of chocolate but if it looked great, it could win! What a waste of cake....

We had only been in the pavillion for a few minutes when it began. Toby and Bethany wanted to go on some rides, badly. I tried to interest them in the vegetable sculptures that children had made but, um, they look a little unappealing a day or so after they were made. That animal's legs and head were originally carrot.

I couldn't make fun of the roses, though, they looked and smelt beautiful. I could have spent much longer in there but was a bit worried the kids might do some damage so we went in search of rides. Bethany and Jack were willing to try the bungy-style trampoline until I baulked at the cost of $10 - for one child! We went for the dodgems instead and even I had a go. You'll have to go to Kristy's blog for the pictures. They were lots of fun except for the children who had major collisions on purpose - they hurt!

The kids put balls into old-fashioned Mickey Mouse's mouth (not the scary clowns next door).

Kristy, Simon and I succumbed to the lure of sausage and onion while the kids enjoyed their icecreams. The sangers had two sausages each! I juggled my bag, the showbags and my sandwich and camera to get a shot. We were joking that Lorraine from Not Quite Nigella might get jealous! Yes, jealous of us for getting to eat this and of me for my fabulous food photography ;)

Smelly animal time was next and we visited the nursery where they had the typical baby cow, horse, cats and dogs as well as these ferrets. Don't they look thrilled to be in a cage in a hot, corrugated iron shed?

Simon, Kristy and Jack departed as Jack was a bit tired but my kids were still keen on rides. Kristy gave us a ticket for the Aladdin ride.

And, keen to get out of the sun, I decided to finish our show experience with the slide that had been a bit big for Jack. Bethany was cautious at first.