I am a bad mother.
I deprive my children of things that would make them sick.
You know, things like excessive junk food, and soda, sugar, & Spongebob.
But I finally broke down......and took them to a fair, because they had never been on a ride in their life.
I know what you are thinking. "Those crazy unsocialized homeschoolers!"
I know.
So....my children were ages 16, 14 & 11, and they are walking into their very first fair, and their very first rides, and what does my eldest son get on first?
This monstrosity!!!!!

NO!!!!!
By all that is good and right in this world,
NO!!!!But he did.
You have to understand, this is the child who gets motion sick watching DVDs in the van. The child who, when he was little, caused me to carry plastic bags, paper towels and antacids in the van at all times...who had me on the side of the interstate because even interstates made him carsick.
And he picks this? THIS?!?!?!?
Yep.....There he goes, round and round and round and up and over and over and up and round and down and over and d......
Meanwhile, Mom is down below, trying not to lose her cookies just WATCHING the ride go round and round and round and up and ov....
Oy. I'm not feeling well, just typing this.
Here he is getting off the ride.

What is with the smile? You like torturing your mother like that?
(He admitted that the ride actually made him really ill....and he had to walk around a bit to soothe things down.)
But my youngest has better sense. He picked something safe for his first ride.
Classic bumper cars.

My elder son enjoyed them too a little later.
Look at Mr. Cool

Then they had to ruin it and go on this crazy thing.
Just look at my daughter! She went on this thing 35,000 times in a row!!!! Okay not really, but this is another one of those...Mom-learned-her-lesson-as-a-teen-and-will-never-make-that-mistake-again-ever-ever-ever-ever-ever rides.


Okay, so things were going great, so Mom decided to get in on the fun. I LOVED this ride when I was a kid. So I handed off the camera, and Mrs Q and I headed off....
"Hi KIDS! This is GREAT FUN!!!! YEEEE HAAWWWWWW!!!!"

Yes, that was me when the ride started, all fun and giggles.
This was me a mili-second later.
I said, "Oh......I'm too old for this."...

And two mili-seconds later.
...Mrs. Q laughed.......she thought I was kidding.
Then she looked at me.
And started trying to sway herself away from me so she wouldn't get puked on.

Yes....that is me. BREATHING. Hiding my eyes and literally PRAYING the ride would end or I would pass out. I just wanted it to end.
I spent the entire rest of the evening, BREATHING.
BREATHING and trying to avoid the smells of food. How do you avoid the smell of food at an OKTOBERFEST?????
So right as we were about to leave, we spotted this cool thing. You see, the Oktoberfest was held at the fairground on Fort Bragg, NC.....so of course they have to have a military zip-line!
JR was the only one that went, but he had a ball. It was too dark to get a picture of him actually going down the line, but I did get these two.


So all in all, the kids had a ball.
I got sick.
And I pondered all the benefits of being and utterly unsocialized homeschooling family.
Like avoiding giant swings that twirl your guts into a frenzy.