Ren Faire and Relatives

Over the weekend, we took our yearly trip to the renaissance festival in Bonner Springs, KS (KC-ish), and visited Grandma Mona.  It would have been nice to have time to see everyone, but we'll be back up at Christmas time.  We did have an awesome mini-vacation though. Saturday morning, we loaded up the car bright (err, well actually it was still dark!) and early, and were on the road by 4:20 am.  We got to KC at about 9:30 and took care of some business there (long story about our van and some crazy paperwork).  By lunchtime we were at the festival, and the kids were super excited! First we went to the big dragon swing.  Willow seemed to be as happy to get on it as Ryvre--until it started moving!  She decided pretty quickly she didn't like it one bit.  Ryvre had a ton of fun though.  After that, we walked around a bit, looking for things to do, but the kids weren't too interested in any of the shows or booths of things to buy.  Oh well, on to the kids' area. I think we spent 3 hours at one slide, which was attached to a pirate-ship-shaped apparatus.  Ryvre ran around the place, talking to all the young "wenches" who were employed to tell the little ones "the ladder is for up, the slide is for down" while Willow explored the little faerie homes.    We finally got the kids away from that place with the promise of souveniers--Robin Hood and Princess hats, to be exact.  Once we found those, they were eager to get going, and show them to Grandma Mona, who lives about an hour north. We got to Grandma's place, and she, of course, made a huge dinner for us; Kelly (my aunt) and Abby (cousin) came over.  Abby is quite a bit older than my kids, but she was so good with them; they all ran around and played together really great.  Sometimes i'm really bummed there aren't any kids closer to their age in my family, so it was really nice that she took such an interest in them.  People better start having babies fast though, before she's a teenager and gets bored of them! Sunday morning we went to Krug Park and fed the ducks; the kids thought that was the coolest!  Willow threw out some bread between bites, haha!  There's a really cool old playground we went to visit there too.  That really got their interest; slides, slides, slides!  When we (the adults) got tired of that, we went to another park with newer equipment, and more kids.  They ran around there until the started to get thirsty--water is in the car kids  and that's how we talked them into leaving. The rest of the day we hung out at Grandma Mona's house again, and said our good-byes the next morning.  We took our time going home, and the kids were really good sports about the insanely (to them at least) long car ride. Hopefully i'll figure out how to post pics soon :)