Applesolutely!

Okay... so today's plan includes making and canning apple sauce and apple butter. Right after church and Grant's Farm! Never mind that Chris gets to cut the grass too! oooh and football....

Yesterday we took the kids to Forest Park for Arthur's picnic in the park. A PBS sponsored event that brings out people in droves to pick up free stuff. Free stuff means face painting and balloon animals (admittedly that's fun, but not if you have to wait in line for over an hour for a "dinosaur" that is nothing more than the standard dog with a squiggly mouth drawn on or a horse that is a wienie dog with a mane drawn on by a black sharpie!) ... but I digress... free stuff also means that a huge dental insurance company gives out cheapie toothbrushes and squishy squeeze teeth with their name printed on them... or plastic hard hats with a company logo (okay... these were fun too) or a bagillion bookmarks, cool stickers and pieces of paper with local programming printed on them. FREE. sigh. (we did like the plastic finger puppets and little plastic horses! they made it worth the waits for the kiddos) Caitlyn mostly waited in the free stuff lines and was thrilled to just get stuff. Kids are cool!

There was the opportunity to stand in line for over an hour (in your choice of many lines) to hug or shake hands with your favorite PBS character (read: really large, so large it is scary for small children, very cheaply costumed as your favorite character teen) maybe even pose for a two second photo taken by your parent. Matthan preferred to peek at them from the front of the tent and then move on. He saw Elmo and Curious George among others...

I mean... that is scary to any little kid.
"Ruff Ruffman" from Fetch... kinda yuk.

Mr. McFeelywas there from Mr. Rodgers Neighborhood... that was cool but how old is that guy? He was having fun on stage with Purple Panda. (whom Matthan thought looked big and scary and we were half a soccer field away!) Scary Delivery! oh yeah... why was Purple Panda from another planet? wierd.

Finally you could stand in another of your choice of lines for your turn on one of the many free bounce houses... again, we passed on that... Matthan will not bounce on any, won't even climb up... after all his surgeries and casts, can we blame him?! Caitlyn is getting too big to climb on those things (my opinion of course... it just isn't at all young ladylike to bounce around with limbs flailing wildly, shirt flying up just basically looking like a crazy person!)

Oh yes... let's not forget the food lines, which we, of course, skipped because who had two million dollars for an overcooked hot dog and crumpledly bag of chippies?! Not us... we frugally packed our waters and healthy food and ate it in the car while driving about trying to find the best place to park... really driving about trying to get even a close spot to park. We parked in front of the muny and walked around and up behind it to the main fields across the way... it was a nice day for a good walk in the park!