Noah making a duct tape flower pencil at the craft tent.
Jeff and Mary Faith working on a paper chain animal craft at the craft tent. This picture looks shocking like me at that age! (That is to say, the picture of Mary Faith looks like me at that age. I was neither 6 feet tall or sporting a goatee as a young child. Or now. Or ever.)
Noah getting his face painted and telling the lady that he is six years old. He charmed her socks off and ended up getting both cheeks and both arms painted - he chose a spider on one cheek, cross on the other, balloons on one arm and a snake on the other.
The newly paint-enhanced Noah doing veggie stamp painting. He is very, very interested in using all of his senses to explore food and thought painting with it was an awesome plan!!
Mary Faith with a cute little unicorn on her cheek enjoyed the veggie painting as well.
This was my favorite part. There was a Farm to Table activity for the children with all sorts of scrumptious locally grown produce for them to sample. There were peaches, salad-on-a-stick, and fruit kabobs. Like I said, recently Noah has been very interested in using his senses to explore food. He can't eat it but wants to feel it and (sometimes) smell it. Now and then he will ask to lick something but almost always retches and is upset by the taste. He asked to lick a piece of cantaloupe and while he didn't really love it, he was willing to give it a few licks. Then he asked about the strawberries and just went nuts! I kept taking little bites out of the stawberries so the juicy part was exposed then he would lick it like a popsicle. I can't even tell you how awesome it was to see him with fruit juice running down his cheek like all of the other children. He talked about this for the rest of the morning. He kept telling me that he is really brave because he's not scared to try new things. :-) I couldn't agree more!
Since he's now only willing to sip apple juice or let a tiny piece of chocolate dissolve in his mouth, it was so nice to see him enjoying something else that is easy for me to provide at home. I think I might try blending some and freezing them in popsicle molds to see if he'd enjoy that - I know the other children would gobble them up.
Mary Faith would gladly be a vegetarian and thought the produce area was the cat's meow! I think she packed away 2 or three huge fruit kabobs. :-)
The very first topiary we passed was a T-Rex - how perfect is that?!
David, Mary Faith, Sarah, and Noah in front a turtle and duck topiary display. We have a little pet turtle and they all thought the turtle topiaries looked just like him. :-) Noah was still working on that strawberry LOL.
William and the lion.
I love this shot of Noah and the lion too.
What's not to love about a topairy dolphin that sprays water?
How did Noah and Mary Faith get up in that tree??!!
Noah pretending to be terrified by King Kong LOL. This was so cute - he didn't know who King Kong was so he was very worried that some child had lost his airplane. Once we explained, he insisted on a "crazy picture!"
Noah and Matthew in front of the mommy elephant. There was a baby elephant spraying water right beside her. The back of the topairy wasn't quite finished which is why everyone else was behind it - it was really neat to see the worker adding the plugs of flowers, greens, and moss to the other side.
The breeze blew mist from the fountain which Noah thought was terrific. I was so thankful for the nice weather. It was honestly warmer than it should have been for Noah but between his cooling towel, lots of drinks of very cold water, and plenty of fountain mist, he did just fine. It was definitely a good thing we went early because he was just starting to wilt and get really too hot right as we were leaving.
Sarah enjoyed the mist as well. I think she'd have jumped in if I'd let her!
I didn't realize until just now that I didn't get any good pictures of Timothy - just him walking behind the elephant. He and the other older boys really enjoyed prowling the car show. Hannah Grace was the only one not to join us as she was at a ladies outing for our church. I really debated whether to go out with my friends or do this with the children and I'm glad I chose this. :-) We try so hard to expose Noah to as many different activities as possible and he and everyone else had a truly wonderful morning. I think if I'd gone out with the ladies I would have felt miserable knowing I was depriving him of the chance to get out and explore, but I'm glad that Hannah went out and had fun of her own today!
There will be another big children's event at the main Festival weekend in two weeks and we are looking forward to bringing the children to the train museum, Greenwood Museum, animal show, and air show. Please pray that he feels as well for that weekend as he did today. If you live in the Greenwood area at all, it's really worth a drive to see the topiaries. I only took pictures of a very few of them. There is a huge calendar of events, most of which are free, that you can see here. If any of you decide to come check it out, feel free to email me - we're just minutes away from Uptown and would love to meet you.
Blessings,
Kate
