Imagine!

 There's a local festival that we really like because of the tons of artistic activities available for kids.  This year Chris was out of town camping with college friends when it happened so Aunt Marissa helped me take the kids.  It was a beautiful, sunny, not sweltering hot day and we found parking close by in a garage for only $4.  Oh yeah, and the crafts, music, and activities were pretty cool too :-)

I was SO impressed with this mermaid!! The face paint lady had skills!!

I was planning to use the stroller but Marissa insisted she wanted to "be a mom for a day" and carry Sadie in the baby Bjorn.  I warned her it would be hot and heavy but she did it!  I was totally impressed.  18lbs in that thing is ROUGH!

Potting her own plant

She made a cupcake out of clay.  It was actually a really cool idea that I intend to steal and reproduce :-)

Thanks Aunt Marissa!

Street Fair!

We've been to a lot of fairs, carnivals, festivals etcetera in our 3+ years of parenting. It's usually a fun way to spend an afternoon and great family time. Well, this past Saturday we intentionally had nothing planned with friends/family just to get some time together. Chris randomly searched the internet to see if anything cool was going on and we ended up at THE MOST FUN FAIR we've been to! There was really good food: I had Indian food for $3 a plate-where can you get that?, Chris had his fave: pizza, and Ella was extremely happy to have vanilla ice cream. By the way-how am I, the queen of condiments and a lover of BOLD flavors raising a kid who wants something as plain as vanilla? I practically begged her to try something else and read the list of flavors twice, but I digress...Anyway, super fun day and here are the pics to prove it!

We got a kick out of this lion statue and decided to growl back

Checking out the fountain

My master gardeners

At least she was looking at the camera, that's rare. Maybe next year she'll smile at it.

Glitter Art! (I thought of you Erin O)

Mid-snack kiss

There was a steel drum band on stage in this pic, after that we watched a jazz/ballet troupe of little girls and a Persian Dance group (they were really good!)

Heading home with hands full of sand art, plants, puppets, animal footprints, a handmade fan, full tummy's and ready for bed!

Jazz & Wine Festival

This weekend we went to a Jazz & Wine Festival about 30 minutes from here and had a lot of fun and took a lot of pictures! Here are some of the good ones :-)


Grandpa, Aunt Stacy and 2 of the cousins


Ella spent most of the time running and dancing to the live jazz band

She spent some of the time doing this because the music was too loud (or bad)

chillin' post-running around like a wild girl

Christopher, my nephew, posing with a fish flag-he kept calling people over and saying "Whoa! Look in it's mouth!!! There's fish guts!"

Ella and Aunt Stacy relaxing

Headed home a couple hours later. The kids were not very cooperative so it soon looked like...

this :-)

And finally a family pic before we left.

Just for comparison, this is us exactly two years ago at the same festival!

Rennaissance Festival 2008

The Ren Fest has become an annual event for us. The first time I went was with Chris' family before we were even dating! That was 10 years ago! This is Ella's 3rd time and she enjoys it more each year. This time our Life Group from church decided to go together and half of them had never been so it was fun to see them experience it for the first time. We had a great day :-)


Uncle Dave, Ella, and me checking out our favorite show-Jonny Fox the sword swallower. He's SO funny and he really swallows swords (among other things). We were laughing about how he has the exact same scripted jokes every year and I still laugh! And I still cringe when the swords drop into his throat...fascinating but gross!

We had a very upclose view of the tightrope walked (close enough that he had us move when he started juggling knives up there!)

Ella "read" the map and tried to tell us which way to go

Ella loves Lauren and Marcus, the kids of a couple in our life group (even though her face doesn't show it in this picture!)

Ella also loves Karen, the leader of our small group

Ella fell in love with the baby bear statue

Chris using his juggling skills

Dave giving Chris W. a lesson

Keith and Jen looking cute :-) They have an especially adorable little baby and I can't believe I didn't get a picture of him this time!

Our Life Group! We love these guys!

And now, the highlight of the day....




Ella got to ride an elephant!

A little closer look at Chris, Ella, and Aday up on the Elephant. Because of her name, Ella has an affinity for elephants so this was quite an exciting thing :-) We really had a great time and Ella was super well-behaved (including sitting through 3 30min shows!) The fair still runs for another month or so-go check it out!