My hometown of Independence, KS is the home of The Little House on the Prairie, William Inge, the first monkey sent into space, the first night baseball game, and Neewollah (http://www.neewollah.com/.)
Neewollah is the longest running and largest festival in Kansas. It's a ten-day celebration with a musical, three parades, a beauty pageant, a carnival, tons of food stands, a bandstand, a 10k run, a fun run for the kiddies, and a band competition, just to name a few.
While in college, I was not able to attend Neewollah since most years, it fell during homecoming week. For those of you involved in Greek life in college, you know that Homecoming Week and Greek Week are the most important two weeks in your life. Then, after I graduated college, I only got to come back one year. It was until I had Koko Bean, that I realized I needed to make the trip back to Neewollah. This year was even more fun for us, because Koko Bean is just three months shy of turning three. That means she's a big kid now.
First on our list of Neewollah fun was the Doo Dah parade. The Doo Dah parade is for the adults. They dress up in outrageous costumes and make even more ridiculous floats to ride on, and strut their stuff down the main drag in Indy. This year, the Neewollah theme is "How Sweet It Is," and the musical was Willy Wonka and Chocolate Factory, so there were many costumes representing candy and Wonka. Grammy was one of the parade participants this year, representing Relay For Life. She and her team wore Western attire as their theme.
There's even a Doo Dah parade King and Queen.
(These men were bras in support of the "tatas.")
As we watched some adults wearing long capes, some wearing next to nothing, and some wearing opposite sex clothing, Koko Bean enjoyed her first funnel cake.
She loved dipping the doughy substance into the powdered sugar and then licking her fingers after each sweet gooey bite. When she was done, we finished watching the parade and headed to find Grammy so we could ride the rides.
This year is the first year Koko Bean can ride all of the kiddie rides. First up was the Ferris Wheel though. Mommy and Daddy got to ride with her while Grammy watched our stuff.
I watched as Koko Bean's eyes lit up when we started to ascend. The ferris wheel went round and round. Finally, it stopped at the top to let some riders off and Koko Bean wasn't sure about sitting at the very top.
After the ferris wheel, we headed over to the kiddie rides. Boy, was this fun?! Koko Bean got to ride fish...
and trucks....
and a dragon that flew high into the sky....
and a bear with Daddy....
and finally an alligator roller coaster that jerked her around each time it hit a turn. She even met a new friend on the "Go Go Gator," who helped her in and out of the ride, and let her ride beside her.
Koko Bean went from ride to ride. The more rides she rode, the more excited she was to ride the next. I knew it was going to be rough trying to get her to go home. We ended up heading home with less of a fuss than we thought. Daddy just pretended her stroller was a car and we raced to the finish line- our car.
We only spent a mere $30 tonight on food and rides. It was probably the most fun I've had in a long time. I think Daddy and I had more fun watching Koko Bean have fun than she had herself. It just makes me wonder how this little girl isn't scared to try anything...except veggies.
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