The Search for Miss Direction: Street Festival Fun in Birmingham

Mother Nature decided to play along with our plans this morning and gave us an absolutely beautiful morning to go explore the Birmingham Day on the Town this morning. I know I sometimes sound like a broken record, but I adore living here. I love all the fun little street fests and fairs and the things to go and explore that always give us something new to see, try and do. We had so much fun at the Founder's Day fest here in Farmington and then the Kite Festival in South Lyon last weekend. And if just a few more weeks are a few more of my favorites - the Dream Cruise Parade and the Howell Melon Festival. This morning the city of Birmingham (where we were yesterday about 25 minutes from the house) actually shuts down a few of its main roads and then businesses set up their goods in the streets. There was also a vintage car show, tons of entertainment, food and rumored bounce houses though the one we saw wasn't inflated. No biggie, there was plenty of other things to keep the kiddos involved. We had a ton of fun checking out this really cool toy store (definitely going back closer to Christmas. Grant said he wanted to spend a whole paycheck there), the kids got some awesome face painting done, got to build sand art and snagged some really cool balloon animals (all free, btw). It was a great way to spend a sunshiny morning.

When we got home, we told the kiddos we were impressed at how well they had behaved and how they had been behaving (for the most part) lately and if they would put in an hour cleaning the playroom, ate their lunch like champs and laid down for a little bit of a down time, Grant would take them to Castaway Play for the evening. They have been asking for months (I really don't think they've made a trip in 2014 honestly) so they were so excited. They kept up their end of the bargain so they departed around 3:30 this afternoon. Bonus Dad points to Grant who willing suggested the idea the other night to give me a few hours of quiet to catch up on some odds and ends and start to get us organized for this week and for us to leave on Friday. At the moment I'm finishing up here, pulling these awesome banana muffins (I know it looks like a weird recipe but my family ADORES them. I told them I had 3 over ripe bananas and was trying to decide what to do with them and everyone instantly asked for these) out of the oven and then starting to look ahead to New Jersey week. Since we're leaving on Friday and Jersey will kind of be getting the short end of the stick, I think we're going to put up the wall and start to talk about some of Jersey's highlights tomorrow. But don't look for my big blog on it until Monday, when we'll officially 'kick off' the state sometimes known as "The Medicine Chest of the World" (interested now? I'll explain Monday!) So I'm off to get in as much as I can before the crew descends again. Not sure what tomorrow looks like, again we're waiting to see what the weather ends up dealing us. Can't wait! Until then...

New Hampshire Fun Fact of the Day: Daniel Webster was a politician and statesman, born at Franklin in 1782. He was known in his day as a mighty orator, a reputation preserved in the Stephen Vincent Benet story The Devil and Daniel Webster, in which he beats the original lawyer, Lucifer, in a contract case over a man's soul. (The story is also the basis for one of my favorite episodes of The Monkees. No, this isn't at all relevant, but hey, it's my blog :D )