a peek inside the fishbowl

… of the classy night out at the NAC is Erica, commenter #2 over at the original post! Congratulations Erica! I’ll send you an email and hook you up with my contact at the NAC.

As for the rest of you, tickets are still available for this performance. Regular ticket prices run from $16.50 to $85.00 and are available here at Ticketmaster Canada.  And if you’re a student, definitely take advantage of the NAC’s LiveRush program and snag a ticket for $11 before the show.

I’ll be there with my own bloggy date, so if you’re planning on attending, please find us and say hello!

I haven’t been to every fair around Ottawa (there are lots), but I think it’s safe to say that the Carp Fair is one of the best ones around. It has certainly become our new favourite.

We skipped the Ex this year and went here instead. And I’m glad we did. The Carp Fair is a great way to see where we came from.

After we do something as a family we often discuss what we each liked best. (We often do this at the dinner table too: “What was the best part of your day today? What was the worst part?”) And I think we all agreed that we liked absolutely everything about the Carp Fair.

I particularly love the animals. In the 4-H building I saw a gaggle of adolescents lying in a pen, leaning on their similarly-aged calf as if it was a giant living bean bag and the pen was their family room. They were all texting, phones aglow. I truly regret not taking a photo.

We watched a bit of the jumping competition:

… and there was a lot of wagon show riding:

I find the funky chickens hilarious. And the roosters. I waited forever to get a cock-a-doodle-doo out of one of them:

And check out this hairdo! She looks like a noblewoman right after a visit to a fancy hair salon:

You can’t come to the Carp Fair without checking out the winners of the home crafts competitions. Best pickles, tomatoes, longest zucchini, bouquets in boots and much much more:

We checked out the miniature train sets:

Antique cars:

… and tractors:

And of course, the midway. I can take it or leave it (in fact, unless it’s a roller coaster I almost never go on the rides, they make me nauseous) but I do like to watch others having fun:

Sarah discovered she really liked the old-skool Ride of Centrifugal Force:

Me, I always make exception for the ferris wheel. It is a thing of beauty:

… and I like the view:

I’m not the only one who loves it:

And then there’s the food. Oh, it is delicious.  We ate candy floss, kettle corn (MY FAVE), real corn dogs (totally authentic, not like Pogos at all!), and – the best thing of all, mini-doughnuts with icing sugar:

This was my first time eating fresh doughnuts. Oh my god where they ever good… hot out of the fryer. Now I understand the LURE OF THE HOT BITS OF FRIED DOUGH.

I wish I could have captured the smell of the fair, but I did manage to capture the sound of the fair. This clip is only about a minute long. Take a look at this pic while you listen and then tell me what you love about the fair. :)

[audio:http://www.quietfish.com/notebook/voice/carpfair.mp3]

I am enjoying the photography side of things more than I had ever hoped. I can’t tell you how much I LOVE meeting people and taking their family photos. Every person is different. Everyone has a different story to tell. Everyone (so far) has been totally amazing and fun.

I had the pleasure of taking photos of two local families this week. Both families had two little girls who were absolutely adorable.

I had a tough time picking photos for this post – the girls were just too cute and it was hard to narrow it down to just two!

Here is the youngest daughter from Family #1:

Here is her big sis!