Festival

Every year, on the first Saturday of October, the city of Madison, Alabama hosts the Madison Street Festival.  I had never been, even when I lived in Madison, but this year I heard that Madison Hospital had decided to sponsor all the kid activities, and therefore all the facepainting, pony rides, bounce houses, and crafts would be free.  Also, one of my friends had a booth on Artist's Alley and I felt like we should go and show our support.

It took a little bit of convincing where Todd was concerned, but Saturday morning, despite the chilly, wet weather, we left our house at 8:30 and drove to Madison.  We didn't know what to expect, but at least we were doing something different!

First, we stopped by Jessica's booth to say hi.  Then Todd left with Aerin (and my phone and all my money) to get Jessica some coffee and ended up in the slowest coffee line ever.  So Micah and I had a good thirty-five minutes to hang out with Jessica and examine her jewelry.

While we were waiting, Micah got to see two trains go by up close. I managed to get back over to the tracks in time to see the engine on the second one, so he got to wave at (and be waved at by) the engineer.

When Todd finally showed back up (with some hot chocolate for me, which offset my anger at not being able to get in touch with him to find out when or if he was ever coming back), we decided to wander over to the Kids Pavilion. Micah was a little overwhelmed at first, but he really got into it when we started seeing his a bunch of his daycare friends running around. He got to pet a turtle, get his hair colored, and have his face painted. When he and Kaya (a super sweet little girl from his Preschool class) met up at the bounce house, he really had a blast. After that, he got to pet a pig, two goats, and some chickens.  Aerin was stuck in the stroller the whole time, but she at least was having fun watching everything going on all around.

After all that, it was time for pizza and cookies.  While we were eating, a couple of Ghostbusters walked by. We tried to explain to Micah why they were so cool, and ended up promising that one day he'd get to see the movie and then he'd understand.

When we left, Micah was so tired that he rode in the stroller while Aerin walked.

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I am so glad we went. It turned out to be a really fun event, and it was definitely better than being cooped up in the house getting increasingly irritated with each other.  It also gave us the courage to take both kids out to dinner that evening, something we haven't done since Aerin developed her 100-decibel pterodactyl screech and learned to haul full margarita mugs off the table. I like to think maybe we're finally turning that corner where we can once again go out in public and not come home exhausted and covered in splatters of baby-launched cheese sauce.

But if not, still, Saturday was a banner day.