The Search for Miss Direction: A Saturday Adventure

There were a few moments when I was sure that today was going to be a complete disaster. As we sat in Mother Nature's best attempt at a drizzle, watching the parade we had driven 45 minutes to come to begin and end in a span on five minutes I was sure the Kennedy's, who we'd invited to come with us to the Davisburg Fall Festival, would never hang out with us again.

Little did I know I was the only one feeling that way. All four kids were THRILLED with the parade, mostly because they each hauled in enough candy from the half dozen people throwing it to them that they should all be set until Halloween. (Seriously, they got more candy than they would during an hour long parade anywhere else). They also thought that gathering the stamps for the 'passport' through the festival was just about the neatest thing ever. Ten of eleven stamps later (we missed the pancake breakfast this morning where they kiddos could have gotten the first stamp) they were 'rewarded' with a cookie. This was after all the candy, popcorn and caramel apples loaded with goodies. They also got to play games with some fun prizes (Mikayla snagged ballerina tattoos and Noah got a slinky, all was right with the world.), watch the cow who failed to perform its duties during "Cow Pie Bingo", play on a couple of different playgrounds, snuggle with some puppies, pet a horse, paint pumpkins, make fall necklaces, and I'm sure a bunch of other things I'm forgetting. (Kudos to the town of Davisburg because this entire event was FREE!)

Jen reassured me repeatedly that she was just glad to be outside enjoying the (eventual sunshine) doing something different. And Phil and Grant seemed content taking it all in and supervising. I eventually realized that everyone really was having fun, enjoying each other's company and doing something new and different. Crisis averted. In fact, I'm chalking the whole thing up to a rousing success ;-)

In other news, Happy Banana Festival Day. I have no clue what this means. But we had Overnight Banana French Toast for breakfast this morning. And I FINALLY gave in and bought red bananas to try. Mikayla really enjoyed it, but I don't think the two the boys had were quite ripe enough. They described it as having all their saliva dry up as they chewed. Gross. Maybe we'll give them a go again. I thought that the ones that I chose were 'purple' enough, but apparently not. Whoops. It's also National Pecan Cookie Day. I made some Butter Pecan Cookies that were a huge hit.

When we got home, we had some dinner, Noah and I got in a few games of Uno, Mikayla and I made it through all of the Richard Scary book with Goldbug and managed to find him on EVERY page, and now we're settled in with some homemade kettle corn and watching the Michigan game. And flipping to the Tigers game every so often. I'm off to work on my menus for the week. Ice Cream Cones and a trip to Booth Park (that really cool one with the turf hill) tomorrow. Until then...