Festival Season Kicks Off

So over a month ago I noticed someone showing "interest" on Facebook in an event called Bear on the Square which takes place up toward the mountains in Dahlonega. I thought it looked kind of cute so I made note of it too, hoping maybe we could go. We love festivals, always have even in the BEFORE KIDS TIME and I'm hoping we really get back to them this year more often.

It's a challenge to take two severely autistic kids out to festivals. First of all there's the diapers - changing diapers in a port-a-potty is almost always impossible as you have to take off their shoes and I think we all know that standing barefoot or in socked feet in a port-a-potty is one of the circles of hell. Plus I think you'll get smallpox doing that, or something like smallpox. We're vaccinated but who wants to risk it?

I didn't know there WAS a bear to meet but we ran right into him when we got there. The kids all thought that was great.

The festival was a pretty damn good one. There were TONS of stringed instruments for sales, and folk crafts - (REAL crafts not stuff done with glue guns made at Michaels). Officially it was an Appalachian Art and Music Festival and it didn't disappoint at all. I kind of wanted to pick up this stringed instrument called a panjo, I am totally going to next time I see one. I have no idea why but it was pretty cool. Next time!

I usually pick up a piece of jewelry at these kind of festivals, and Julia was excited to get to pick up a ring as a souvenir. It's fun to have pieces that not everyone else has. The ring she picked up has the quality of being "purple" in my opinion. She was pretty excited however, so WIN for the almost 6 year old.

Now see this? This is $32 worth of root beer floats.

Festival food is always a crap shoot. Sometimes it's over priced, sometimes it's really reasonable. Sometimes it's amazing and OH WOW SO GOOD and sometimes it's like holy hell what did we just buy and why? Unfortunately this day we chose all the wrong food. ALL the wrong food. These root beer floats were possibly the WORST root beer I have EVER had, flat and warm with cheap ice cream in it. UGH not good. Oh yay we had free refills. We left the mugs behind because we didn't want reminders of this travesty of wasted money in our home.

That was possibly the only real low point however. There was the MOST immaculate port-a-potty in Christendom and I was able to change both twins without fear of plague and flesh eating bacteria being present. So that particular piece of Special Needs Parenting was actually pretty easy yesterday.

While my kids might identify their new balloon animal friends as the best part of their day, I have to say I think it was the music.

The entire place was like the O' Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack on fantastic repeat. If you like that sort of thing (which I do) it was pretty amazing. Every few feet there was another small group of either bluegrass or old timey musicians, playing and singing and it was just lovely. You didn't have to go find a spot at a main stage to hear the music, it was a few feet away while you bought soaps, rings, jellies, etc.

If you don't know the difference between Old Timey music and Bluegress the festival's website has some helpful information for you.

Ok it's funny, you should read it.

Home Depot had a booth set up for kids to do crafts, so our three little guys all made little wagons. It was evident Miles has been to Home Depot frequently with his class, as he grabbed the hammer immediately and went to work. He knew exactly what to do. Charlie wasn't quite as interested and needed a little more help but I think they all liked this part and now various princesses and Tigger have "a sick new ride" according to my oldest.

I'm going to have to have a better DIAPER plan for the summer festivals. Sometimes we just change in the van (not ideal for poop lemme tell you) so I'm going to be thinking on that a lot. I'm not going to let their diapers hold us back from all of the experiences out there for us. They loved the music, and they got new toys to play with and it was an all around great day.

Miles managed not to flip out over dogs, and we left with lots of handcrafted goodies to enjoy. Those two things alone were completely worth the day.

It was a perfect family day out. We need more of these.

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Festival Season Kicks Off

So over a month ago I noticed someone showing "interest" on Facebook in an event called Bear on the Square which takes place up toward the mountains in Dahlonega. I thought it looked kind of cute so I made note of it too, hoping maybe we could go. We love festivals, always have even in the BEFORE KIDS TIME and I'm hoping we really get back to them this year more often.

It's a challenge to take two severely autistic kids out to festivals. First of all there's the diapers - changing diapers in a port-a-potty is almost always impossible as you have to take off their shoes and I think we all know that standing barefoot or in socked feet in a port-a-potty is one of the circles of hell. Plus I think you'll get smallpox doing that, or something like smallpox. We're vaccinated but who wants to risk it?

I didn't know there WAS a bear to meet but we ran right into him when we got there. The kids all thought that was great.

The festival was a pretty damn good one. There were TONS of stringed instruments for sales, and folk crafts - (REAL crafts not stuff done with glue guns made at Michaels). Officially it was an Appalachian Art and Music Festival and it didn't disappoint at all. I kind of wanted to pick up this stringed instrument called a panjo, I am totally going to next time I see one. I have no idea why but it was pretty cool. Next time!

I usually pick up a piece of jewelry at these kind of festivals, and Julia was excited to get to pick up a ring as a souvenir. It's fun to have pieces that not everyone else has. The ring she picked up has the quality of being "purple" in my opinion. She was pretty excited however, so WIN for the almost 6 year old.

Now see this? This is $32 worth of root beer floats.

Festival food is always a crap shoot. Sometimes it's over priced, sometimes it's really reasonable. Sometimes it's amazing and OH WOW SO GOOD and sometimes it's like holy hell what did we just buy and why? Unfortunately this day we chose all the wrong food. ALL the wrong food. These root beer floats were possibly the WORST root beer I have EVER had, flat and warm with cheap ice cream in it. UGH not good. Oh yay we had free refills. We left the mugs behind because we didn't want reminders of this travesty of wasted money in our home.

That was possibly the only real low point however. There was the MOST immaculate port-a-potty in Christendom and I was able to change both twins without fear of plague and flesh eating bacteria being present. So that particular piece of Special Needs Parenting was actually pretty easy yesterday.

While my kids might identify their new balloon animal friends as the best part of their day, I have to say I think it was the music.

The entire place was like the O' Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack on fantastic repeat. If you like that sort of thing (which I do) it was pretty amazing. Every few feet there was another small group of either bluegrass or old timey musicians, playing and singing and it was just lovely. You didn't have to go find a spot at a main stage to hear the music, it was a few feet away while you bought soaps, rings, jellies, etc.

If you don't know the difference between Old Timey music and Bluegress the festival's website has some helpful information for you.

Ok it's funny, you should read it.

Home Depot had a booth set up for kids to do crafts, so our three little guys all made little wagons. It was evident Miles has been to Home Depot frequently with his class, as he grabbed the hammer immediately and went to work. He knew exactly what to do. Charlie wasn't quite as interested and needed a little more help but I think they all liked this part and now various princesses and Tigger have "a sick new ride" according to my oldest.

I'm going to have to have a better DIAPER plan for the summer festivals. Sometimes we just change in the van (not ideal for poop lemme tell you) so I'm going to be thinking on that a lot. I'm not going to let their diapers hold us back from all of the experiences out there for us. They loved the music, and they got new toys to play with and it was an all around great day.

Miles managed not to flip out over dogs, and we left with lots of handcrafted goodies to enjoy. Those two things alone were completely worth the day.

It was a perfect family day out. We need more of these.

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She's In The Middle Of A Big Bike Race: THE FAIR PART ONE

Ok, I have tons of awesome fair pics and things to share but before I do all that, I have to get this out of my brain before I forget it all. It's about our dinner at the fair yesterday. It was NOT to be missed.

At dinner time, we wandered over to the booth where we normally eat was, and notice the only table that was really free had a girl sitting at one end not eating. The husband asked her if she minded if we shared her table, and she smiled and said no so we all piled into that table. The husband left to go fetch food, leaving me alone with the baby, the twins....and this girl.

"Your children sure are beautiful." she says.

Ok well that's a nice thing to say, so I engage her. Well, I say thank you, and she tells me then that she works at this booth. She starts explaining how she has to leave school every day at noon during the fair to come work at the booth and everyone is completely jealous of her.

It's at this point that she doesn't stop talking.

EVER.

She's only 14. She loves the fair. She knows everything about the fair. She then leans over and does a wolfe whistle at a man in his 30s at the booth next to us roasting corn. She informs me she's been "messing" with him all day while he works and he's funny. From what I can tell he looks faintly horrified, honestly.

She informs me that working at the fair is much easier than her normal Saturday job. I say "Oh really? What's that?"

"I have to lift goats all day."

Me: "Oh."

Her: " Yeah and I can lift more goats than the men at my work. And I just tell them they better get to work because I'm not there to lift all their goats for them."

Me: "Yeah I can see that."

She then gives another holla over to the guy making corn. The husband then returns, and I smile and leave to go fetch corn with the oldest boy. The guy she's been harassing waits on me. He looks completely mortified.

When I get back to the table, the look of death the husband gives me tells me he's been enjoying her company too.

She told me that LAST year she got sent home from the fair because her boyfriend came to the fair and punched her in the face and so she punched HIM in the face (presumeably she is VERY strong because of all this goat lifting) and anyway she got sent home from the fair for an entire day and she didn't think this was fair AT ALL.

She goes back to the goat lifting, apparently there is also GOAT CAGE lifting. She then asks me if I know where some town in Georgia is - trying to impress on me how far she has to go. I say "No I'm not from here is that south of Atlanta?" and as though I haven't spoken she starts naming towns.

Do you know this town? NO. Do you know this town? NO. Do you know this town? NO. Do you know this county? NO. Well you go through this town and this town and this town and you come to this town with a town center and you have to go around the town square and that always confuses me I always get lost because their town square is really hard to figure out...(methinks because it's a SQUARE).

I ponder at this point HOW she is getting to this far off-unknown to me town,at the tender age of 14. She looks about 16 or 17 but extremely dorky, kinda chubby and immature.

At that point, she got up and wandered over to the roasting corn booth and DIRECLTY bothered the guy working there. To his credit he worked faster and just kept trying to keep moving, nodding and stuff not to be rude but trying to just keep working AROUND her.

It was exactly like what talking to GAVIN in real life would be.

I swear.

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She's In The Middle Of A Big Bike Race: THE FAIR PART ONE

Ok, I have tons of awesome fair pics and things to share but before I do all that, I have to get this out of my brain before I forget it all. It's about our dinner at the fair yesterday. It was NOT to be missed.

At dinner time, we wandered over to the booth where we normally eat was, and notice the only table that was really free had a girl sitting at one end not eating. The husband asked her if she minded if we shared her table, and she smiled and said no so we all piled into that table. The husband left to go fetch food, leaving me alone with the baby, the twins....and this girl.

"Your children sure are beautiful." she says.

Ok well that's a nice thing to say, so I engage her. Well, I say thank you, and she tells me then that she works at this booth. She starts explaining how she has to leave school every day at noon during the fair to come work at the booth and everyone is completely jealous of her.

It's at this point that she doesn't stop talking.

EVER.

She's only 14. She loves the fair. She knows everything about the fair. She then leans over and does a wolfe whistle at a man in his 30s at the booth next to us roasting corn. She informs me she's been "messing" with him all day while he works and he's funny. From what I can tell he looks faintly horrified, honestly.

She informs me that working at the fair is much easier than her normal Saturday job. I say "Oh really? What's that?"

"I have to lift goats all day."

Me: "Oh."

Her: " Yeah and I can lift more goats than the men at my work. And I just tell them they better get to work because I'm not there to lift all their goats for them."

Me: "Yeah I can see that."

She then gives another holla over to the guy making corn. The husband then returns, and I smile and leave to go fetch corn with the oldest boy. The guy she's been harassing waits on me. He looks completely mortified.

When I get back to the table, the look of death the husband gives me tells me he's been enjoying her company too.

She told me that LAST year she got sent home from the fair because her boyfriend came to the fair and punched her in the face and so she punched HIM in the face (presumeably she is VERY strong because of all this goat lifting) and anyway she got sent home from the fair for an entire day and she didn't think this was fair AT ALL.

She goes back to the goat lifting, apparently there is also GOAT CAGE lifting. She then asks me if I know where some town in Georgia is - trying to impress on me how far she has to go. I say "No I'm not from here is that south of Atlanta?" and as though I haven't spoken she starts naming towns.

Do you know this town? NO. Do you know this town? NO. Do you know this town? NO. Do you know this county? NO. Well you go through this town and this town and this town and you come to this town with a town center and you have to go around the town square and that always confuses me I always get lost because their town square is really hard to figure out...(methinks because it's a SQUARE).

I ponder at this point HOW she is getting to this far off-unknown to me town,at the tender age of 14. She looks about 16 or 17 but extremely dorky, kinda chubby and immature.

At that point, she got up and wandered over to the roasting corn booth and DIRECLTY bothered the guy working there. To his credit he worked faster and just kept trying to keep moving, nodding and stuff not to be rude but trying to just keep working AROUND her.

It was exactly like what talking to GAVIN in real life would be.

I swear.

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We Got Head at the Cherry Blossom Festival

No Really. We did. See?

ANYHOO, it was supposed to be 71 and sunny and wouldn't ya know it, it was colder than flippin hell? I mean it was freeze your nads off "oh my god why are we outside we're going to die here" cold.

Ok it was like 47.

But that's COLD here dammit.

We ran the gauntlet of the little shops snapping up those must have items such as the concrete head above (ooooo, baby, it's really really hard.......hahahaha sorry cracking myself up).

And we picked up the requisite festival silly stuff, such as fudge and nick-nacks. You gotta have them, and where else would we GET these things if not for festivals?

Ok I seriously love the welded metal snail. It rocks. It came with it's own real spider. I'm not sure if they are friends or what's up with those two. The fudge however, was complete shite and it's difficult for me to convey HOW messed up it was. It just wasn't proper fudge, in any way shape or form. Rather it was squares of flavored candy product.

We ate the requisite foods on sticks, and other random festival foods. How cold was it? See those nachos? That cheese was ice cold before we sat down. ICK. Also it was cheddar cheese food - NOT even proper fake nacho cheese. Double ick.

You know it's nasty when the kid says "I don't want any more" after a few bites.

But despite the gloom of the day and the nard freezing weather.........it was a fun kick off to FESTIVAL SEASON! I can't wait! A full summer of buying pots of jam and crafts made by fine christian women.

I'm ready, Georgia.

Bring it!

We Got Head at the Cherry Blossom Festival

No Really. We did. See?

ANYHOO, it was supposed to be 71 and sunny and wouldn't ya know it, it was colder than flippin hell? I mean it was freeze your nads off "oh my god why are we outside we're going to die here" cold.

Ok it was like 47.

But that's COLD here dammit.

We ran the gauntlet of the little shops snapping up those must have items such as the concrete head above (ooooo, baby, it's really really hard.......hahahaha sorry cracking myself up).

And we picked up the requisite festival silly stuff, such as fudge and nick-nacks. You gotta have them, and where else would we GET these things if not for festivals?

Ok I seriously love the welded metal snail. It rocks. It came with it's own real spider. I'm not sure if they are friends or what's up with those two. The fudge however, was complete shite and it's difficult for me to convey HOW messed up it was. It just wasn't proper fudge, in any way shape or form. Rather it was squares of flavored candy product.

We ate the requisite foods on sticks, and other random festival foods. How cold was it? See those nachos? That cheese was ice cold before we sat down. ICK. Also it was cheddar cheese food - NOT even proper fake nacho cheese. Double ick.

You know it's nasty when the kid says "I don't want any more" after a few bites.

But despite the gloom of the day and the nard freezing weather.........it was a fun kick off to FESTIVAL SEASON! I can't wait! A full summer of buying pots of jam and crafts made by fine christian women.

I'm ready, Georgia.

Bring it!