We Went to the Children's Fair....

This past Saturday, Mandy, the children and I all went down to Bellefonte for the Children's Fair held every year there to raise monies for the Bellefonte Parks. It's a nice little event with lots of fun, age-relevant games for children.

We went there last year too and Kurtis spent the day in his stroller although Maya had a fairly good time with some of the amusement features -like a Moonwalk and something else along those lines.

This year, we didn't even go near the Moonwalk as there was always a very large line awaiting their turn and Kurtis is not near patient enough to do waiting in lines of even a small variety, plus he was too frightened of the Moonwalk to begin with.

Mandy had him on a leash-yeah, the little guy had a "monkey on his back" with is a nifty little gadget, like a backpack, which gives a child a bit of freedom to walk, run about a little but keeps them in check too with the leash that someone in charge controls to keep them from separating from you, from getting lost, from getting into things where they could easily get injured too.

We tried this leash once on Maya when we went to a local Labor Day picnic about two years ago but it didn't work to well with her as she kept getting tangled up and tripping in it and she also had a couple meltdowns with it too which really upset her and Mandy.

Kurtis, on the other hand, once he realized he could only reach so far reacted very well to it so with him, it was a nifty tool.
Here's Mandy with Maya and Kurtis as we set off towards the streets blocked off for the fair.
This is a mountain laurel bush in a front yard along our route to the fair. See how beautiful the blossoms on it are and how many have fallen off already too. Bellefonte is only about 32 miles from our home but it is just that much further ahead of us with respect to the growing season there. The Mountain Laurel bush at the front corner of my house hasn't even begun to bud or just barely, at the very least.
Here's some of the other flowers blooming at the same house where the Mountain Laurel was in full blossom. Isn't this just ever so pretty though?
This is my older daughter, Carrie, seated at the candy table that she and her fiance, Robert, were in charge of managing at the fair. Carrie has been volunteering to help at this event for several years now at least since her son, my grandson, Alex, was in kindergarten and possibly before that when he was in preschool.
Here's Mandy with Kurt and Maya, in line for Maya to go "fishing" at the little booth being run by her cousin, Alexander -my grandson! Alex, like his Mom, has often helped out at the fair too and this year, his volunteer work would count for him towards the community service hours he will eventually need for graduation! He will be 12 in August and WOW, how incredible is it that he is able to start collecting community service hours now for his graduation requirements?
Here's Maya, still at Alexander's fishing booth, with Mandy and Kurtis loking on. Here you can see the "monkey" on Kurt's back.
Here's Maya with the cute little "hand painted" banner she made. The kids had a choice of colors for their banner -Maya chose the Navy/Black, and then they selected a color of paint to stick their one hand in and get it all soaked up with the paint. Maya chose lavender and really slapped her hand down hard and firm with the paint so it turned out quite nice. Unfortunately, it got placed in Aunt Carrie's bag at her table and went home with her instead of us but that's okay, Maya can get it the next time she goes to spend the night with Aunt Carrie.
This is the booth run by the National Philatelic Association (located between State College and Bellefonte, by the way) and the children were each given a little packet along with a slotted envelope in which they could place any of the hundreds of stamps they had to choose from. A really neat and fun way to try to introduce kids to the fun of stamp collecting. Plus, this booth was also a freebie -an extra nice gesture on the part of the Association, don't you agree?
Here's Maya doing the "marble" painting -where the kids were given a special paper which was placed in a plastic pan and then, they could choose three paint colors which were squirted in the center of the paper. A sort of marble-type item was then dropped into the paint and the kid received a little stick -kind of like the kind for eating ice cream out of the little cups -and they pushed the marble around and through the paint til they got a design they liked. The paintings then were laid out under a tree to dry and the child could then come by later to retrieve their painting (each had the child's name on the bottom corner). However, don't you know, when we left, we forgot to go pick up Maya's art work but I did get a picture of it.
The one in the center-front is Maya's artwork. Figures that the colors she chose would be the purple, red and blue -so she got even more purple that way, huh?


Here's a video too of the Irish Step Dancers who performed again this year at the fair. I really enjoy seeing these kids and watching how well they do this intricate dance. We joke that maybe Maya should take up that dancing because often, when she runs, she's on her tip-toes and also, she does it in a sort of skipping, sideways gait. Although when I showed this video earlier today to our neighbor and Maya tried to imitate these kids, I decided maybe she is lacking a good bit too much in the rhythm department to make it as a dancer.



And here we were back to the first table we encountered when we arrived -with my daughter and fiance -Carrie and Robert -and it was time to head over the mountain and go home!

But it sure was a nice, fun day and the kids enjoyed themselves a lot!