This year we got to go to the State Fair two times. Once as a family and then again when Cailee performed at the 2018 NC State Folk Festival. Before this year, I honestly didn’t know the Folk Festival existed – it was every weekend of the NC State Fair and boasted all kinds of talent, mostly of the very, very country variety – ie. clogging, banjoing (is that a word?), strumming the laundry board + strong twang singing, and then there was Cailee’s gymnastics routine. They tried their best to blend in with a very patriotic routine but I’m pretty certain most of the folks (70+ in age was the median if I had to guess) in the audience just didn’t know what to make of them. The event was judged and I’m also not quite sure the judges knew what to make of it but the girls had a good time. In order to participate, Cailee needed to get her back tuck, that was a stipulation of the routine. She didn’t have it initially when the performance and criteria were announced, but worked really hard to get it – it seemed to be just the motivation she needed. In the end, the team did really well and ended up placing third in their category (it’s still unknown exactly how they categorized them). The best part of all of this is that we ended up being at the fair even before it was opened and it was a slightly overcast/rainy kinda day which means we basically got run of the place – they kids did more rides in an hour than they’d probably done in total in all their visits to the fair.

https://photos.amidewar.com/2018/October-20-2018/