Community Day 2011

Our city has an annual "Community Day" festival in mid-September and it is, hands-down, my favorite local event. We got there really early--it started at 11 and we were there by 9:30--so we let the kids run around on campus for a bit first. That was actually really, really fun. The kids had a blast at the fountain and then climbing on various walls and elements in front of campus buildings.

Then we headed over to the festival itself, which is chock-full of booths advertising events, local businesses, independent sellers, schools, child care facilities, everything. At three separate booths we got free books for the kids! Wahoo!

One of our favorite booths was the one for our local state park, which had a "mystery touch and feel" box where you stuck your hand in and tried to guess what it was. One of them made me scream and it ended up just being fuzzy grass. One was a snakeskin that J tried to get me to feel and actually figure out what it was, but I am so easily skeeved out that I couldn't bring myself to really go at it. The kids LOVED it though! R got to use stamps to decorate a forest scene with all kinds of animal stamps and tracks.

At our local library's booth, we got tickets for a free gift from the library (yippee!), picked up two free books (Magic Treehouse for R and Mem Fox for RUS-- I absolutely love her books) and the kids had a great time decorating these hats. RUS especially really enjoyed sticking the stickers on. I think we are going to implement some more sticker crafts for him very soon :) R got her hat fitted so that it stayed on a little bit better, and you can see that in the bottom picture.

We hadn't intended on buying lunch but it came to be noon and we weren't ready to leave yet, so we went ahead and bought falafel sandwiches from one of the booths, and here's R posing with the Egyptian Princess.

After eating, we walked around to a few more booths. R and I got Raspberry Cheesecake ice cream cones from our local dairy--SO AWESOME, I am not even kidding you. If any of you visit we will buy a pint of this stuff to share with you all. And R really wanted to try a few more "spinning wheels" which was good because she finally won the highlight of her day--a tiny little highlighter from the university radio station.

She brought the highlighter to school today and proudly shared it with her teacher and another friend as they colored before school started.

Community Day 2

Our city has an annual "Community Day" which is totally awesome. There are tons and tons of booths and tables set up and people walk around doing crafts, activities, getting information about all kinds of things. In fact, it was at Community Day that we learned about the dance class we signed R up for (see video below) and R got to decorate a mask and make a mobile and . . . with Grammie, make a scarecrow.

RUS and I just hung out and watched the activity going on.
He had a blast picking up and playing with the straw, and was in a pretty chipper mood because he'd just woken up from this:

Community Day

Today was Community Day in our city. J found this out entirely by accident when he took R out for an early-morning walk and passed by people from our day care setting up a booth, which included a picture of R on a poster! She's a poster-child!

The event didn't officially start until 11 so we waited until after R had had lunch before heading out, and it was totally awesome. Apparently, because our sleepy little hamlet is fairly quiet in the summers until the students come back in the fall, this is a huge festival to welcome the students back and say "hello, community!" There were tons of booths. It was jam-packed! Lots of games and activities for kids, booths with hand-made arts and crafts, mini-store booths, booths from businesses in town, including several day care centers we learned more about, etc. I signed us up for a few things and entered a few raffles. There were also a slew of performances--from local martial arts groups, bands, children's theater, individual singers, etc.

We picked up some take-out from our favorite restaurant and headed home after spending nearly 2.5 hours at this thing just walking among the booths.