A Little Explanation

I've had a few questions concerning my hasty decision to sell my kids off on the Internet the other night and am finally in a happy enough place to do a little explaining. It all started on Friday morning when my awesome mom called and said, "I think you and your kids should drop everything you have planned for the day and drive down to Mona with me to the Lavender Festival." Now, at the time, this seemed like a phenomenal idea. I love lavender, the kids love Grandma and we planned to drive down to coincide with nap time, so we thought it only logical that these two little twerps would nap the entire drive down and be happy and refreshed for the festival.



WRONG.



I made the mistake of personally being so excited to attend the festival, that it wore off on my kids. To add to that enthusiasm, we moved their car seats into Grandma's cool new car - which is MUCH more interesting and fun than my boring old Subaru which has never failed to lull them to sleep on a long drive. The kids were so hyped up that they sang and yelled and screamed for a good 30 minutes into the drive. We had gone through all of the books, the toys, the games, the treats, the water...and we still had another hour to go. My mom and I were about ready to call it quits and head back when Isaac started to get sleepy. We sang lullabies and tried to get Abby on board to help him fall asleep. It worked! For 10 minutes, we had blissful quiet. Until Abby said, "Mommy, I wuv my wittle bwrother Isaac. He is so cute when he is asweep. I think I'll wake him up so I can pway wif him some mowr."



Of course, my mom and I did all we could (save pull over onto the side of the road and strangle her) to get her to change her mind. But alas, she is four - and thus has developed a chronic case of "Mindofmyown-itits". Within minutes, she had poked, pulled and begged Isaac back to consciousness. Let's just leave it to say that he was not too pleased about being roused from his slumber and commenced to SCREAM his sweet little head off for THE. ENTIRE. REMAINDER. OF. THE. LONGEST. DRIVE. IN. THE. UNIVERSE!!! Even Abby soon tired of his screaming and decided to add to it by whining (at the top of her lungs) "Make him be quiet! He's too loud! I can't concentrate!" AAAHHHH!!!!



Finally, we made it to Mona. I shrugged off the tension and pulled the kids out of the car. They quickly transformed from the screaming little terrors into happy, excited little kids at a festival and we did have a great time. We started out by attending a "Fairy Princess Tea Party". (Yes, Isaac was the only boy in attendance, you got a problem with that?)



The fairies played games with the children and taught them all about the legends of fairies. Then they invited the kids into a magical tent and read them a story about where fairies come from. Lavender flowers!The girls sat at beautifully decorated tables and dined on lavender cookies and lemonade while the fairies sang and danced and blew fairy dust all around. Abby was enthralled.After the tea party, each little girl took their teacup outside and planted a lavender flower and were promised that if they take really good care of it, a fairy will come and live inside it! (Abby TOTALLY believes this - it's darling.)


We spent the rest of the evening exploring the booths, classes and games - it was AMAZING! Abby and Isaac loved this old-fashioned, man-powered ride and insisted on going around and around and around until Isaac's little face started to turn a little green.
He recovered by the time we reached the tire swing.
We even went on a horse-drawn wagon ride. Now the only problem here was that the driver of the wagon was a bit stern. He insisted that NOBODY on the ride should talk to the horses, because he didn't want them to get confused between passengers' voices and the drivers' voices. Unfortunately, Isaac didn't quite understand this rule and yelled, "HOWRSIE!, HOWRSIE!" the entire ride. We got some pretty nasty looks from the driver - but those horses sure were good at ignoring my little boy. (Now that I think about it, I should have asked them for some pointers on how to tune out the screaming...)

Finally, we had to go try out the huge, inflatable slide. Abby was all over it - she's done these before, but Isaac was not quite sure it was cool. He lingered at the bottom of the ladder for a few minutes, trying to decide if it was worth climbing up all those steps to get so far away from his mommy.
I was amazed that he did it. I thought for sure he'd wimp out. He hesitated at the top - see how tiny he is up there? I heard a few whimpers, and then he just let it fly. He went belly-down and backwards and I was worried he was going to knock some other kid right out of the slide, because he started bouncing half way down and just kept bouncing higher and higher and higher until he looked completely out of control. Unfortunately, I couldn't capture a bounce because I was laughing too hard. This photo was right at a landing point.
He thought it was GREAT! and ran right back to those steps and up the ladder before I could stop him.
By the end of the evening, my kids had worked up quite an appetite. Of course, Isaac had to have some ice cream to cool off. Not exactly sure any of it actually made it into his mouth, but oh well.


You'd think that after no naps and hours of fun in the hot, hot sun, these kids would be pooped. That's what we thought. I was positive that they would sleep in the car on the way home - it was bedtime after all! I assured my mother that the drive home would be much calmer than the drive down. Sorry mom, I was wrong. It was WORSE! Both kids screamed and fought and cried and whined the ENTIRE. DRIVE. HOME. It's a good thing they're cute - because screaming in the car is pretty dang hard to deal with. I almost started screaming myself.

Now, after that explanation, I ask again...Any Takers?

I'll even throw in the car seats for free. We're not driving anywhere for a while...