A love bigger than the heart: Festivals

We were busy lately celebrating fall. With lots and lots of festivals around us, opportunities abounded and took advantage of all.

Catalina takes ballet classes at an Ukrainian center and they advertised an Ukrainian festival with lots of good food, games, music. Ukraine borders Romania, so I was hoping to be a very good event, to transport me at least for a couple of hours to my home beautiful home country. That it did. It also transported me in time, in a communist era when nothing worked properly, everything was ridiculously expensive, bad quality and over advertised. The festival had 2 games, a single dish (sausage with cabbage) and 5 rides. The rides were ridiculously dangerous, you could hear the metal on metal screeching. There was a "fun" house that was shaking so hard and made terrible noises that Catalina started screaming and asked to leave. The other "attraction" Catalina dared to try (only if I joined as well) was a ball pit/net climbing area. The problem was that half of the balls were broken, so jumping into the ball pit was dangerous. The really scary part came when we had to climb out of the ball pit on a net that was really rotten. I encouraged Catalina to go first, thinking that if the net breaks with me at least she is safe. She was so scared that I had to go with her. Till the last second I thought we'll both fall and break our legs (It was a >10 feet high net). We survived, but after that I told Catalina we'll only try games and popcorn. That pleased her immensely.

Before we knew what lays ahead of us....

Sorry baby, mommy was scared too!

Leaving the ball pit/dangerous net assembly on a metal slide....

one of the screeching rides

Finally!!! I can enjoy this :)

Oh well...we went home and did not say anything about our experience. We just packed more courage for the next festival.

A neighboring community has a nice Harvest Festival. Most activities are free, there are some local businesses that give out cute freebies to kids. We enjoyed this event several times since Catalina was born. With daddy in school on Saturdays, mommy took Catalina and one of her friends from work. It was cold, and rainy so the events started late. It took a while till Catalina wanted to join in the fun.

There is a small little train at this festival. Kids and parents can hope on, and Catalina always loved trains. 2 years back she cried so hard that she does not want to ride it, that we were asked to step off tha train. This year our experience started the same. Luckily, she's older so she doesn't scream anymore, just whines :). Well, once the train started she had fun!

As the events were only starting to be put together, we wondered around for a while. There was a girl trying hard to attract kids. She sang, made jokes and tried to capture the kids' attention. Catalina visited her for a while then she got bored. I think even the singing girl understood.

And then, the fun began! Painting a pumpkin proved to be what broke the ice for Catalina. Mommy was happy to avoid the mess at home. Catalina made a smiley pumpkin and was happy to take it home.

With a pumpkin in the basket and our spirits up, we continued our celebration of a rainy fall. There were some "scary" exhibits and Catalina loved visiting and talking to each. She ran and ran and ran.

When she got tired we went to the hay pile to look for treats. Catalina was VERY happy to find a small plastic goat among all the other candy she picked. She was so proud of that toy, she kept showing it to everyone. Mommy smiled a lot inside her heart seeing her silly girl so happy

It was getting late, we had visited most of the events, Catalina was DONE celebrating in the rain. So we hoped in the car and Catalina demanded to have dinner at Panera Bread. It was warm and toasty inside, Catalina had hot soup and mommy had hot tea. It was lovely to share a meal with this beautiful daughter of mine.

Just when Catalina thought she can't have any more festivals and farm visits, we took her again to one. She was NOT happy to leave her dolls. Guess what though, she was happy enough to meet her old friend Alex. They had lots of fun telling each other stories and smelling each other's feet. Yes, kids are weird :)

No complaining about having her picture taken, this time....

When we say "plum", you go daddy. When we say "pumpkin" you stop daddy. The instructions led to many giggles :)

To top off the fun we had, we went on a farm trip organized by Catalina's daycare. Last year mommy almost cried with emotion when all the kids hopped on the school bus for the first time. We anticipated a fun trip. And plenty of fun it was!
We had a warm, sunny day. We started with big smiles on our faces!