Children's Festival

The Virginia Children's Festival

On Saturday, I made a last minute decision to take the kids downtown to the Virginia Children's Festival.  This is an annual event that looked really promising in the entertainment department - plus, it was only a $3/person admission so it was cheap too!  So, we ate an early lunch in order to wait out a passing rain shower and then I packed everyone up and headed down to the waterfront park where the festival was taking place.  Unfortunately, once we arrived downtown we quickly discovered that there was NO WHERE to park.  We finally found a parking garage (many, many blocks from our destination) that still had spots and, of course, they only took cash....and do you think I had cash?  Of course NOT.  Thus, we made a speedy exit out of the garage in a frantic search for an ATM so that we had some hope of making it to the festival before the next rain shower hit.  Finally, I located an ATM and made it back to the parking garage so we could actually start our adventure!  After walking what seemed like about 10 blocks, we were approaching the entrance when, as luck would have it, a man with his son gave us re-admittance wrist bands that they did not use - score two free passes to the festival!!  Yay for us!  A good thing too because the weather was looking ever threatening as the afternoon waned.  It was worth all the trouble, though, because the festival was fantastic!  They had tents with all sorts of fun activities for youngsters (from cooking, to painting, to building, etc.).  Jack had a blast and we managed to meander around for about an hour and a half (with spotty rain most of the time) before the rain became too much and we headed back to the car.  The twins were good sports the whole time too despite being restricted to the stroller and enduring the wind and wet toes.  :-)

Jack standing in front of the "toddler zone" which will be perfect for the twins....next year.  :-)

Play-doh everywhere!!

Jack really loved all the physics experiments (part of a display by the ODU Physics Dept).

And magnets are always a hit!