Cabin Fever

So, this past week has been very, very long. I and both kids were sick all week. And it didn't help that the weather was horrible. It actually all started off in O'fallon, IL. Last weekend we went to visit Jason's dad and his wife for the weekend. We fully intended to go to a hot air balloon race. The weather didn't cooperate and I and Molly were sick. So we didn't get to go, but to make it up to Jackson, we took him to a fun playground. He's easily amused. While we were there, a wedding party was having their photo's taken at a near by pond. Shortly after they finished, we decided it was a great backdrop for photo's and took a few ourselves. We still managed to have loads of fun over the weekend. By the time we came home on Monday, however, Jackson had joined me and Molly in our illness. And so our long week began.

So, what do you do when you can't leave the house, and you don't have the energy to entertain your kids all day? You break out the finger paint! (I voted against letting Molly finger paint this time). As you can see, it was a fun and wonderful mess! Jackson loved it and I managed to keep my sanity despite the mess I had to clean up. He has finger painted before, but never quite like this. It was EVERYWHERE! In the end, Jason got me a big towel and I wrapped Jackson up and carried him upstairs to the bathtub. Would I do this again? Most definitely!

So, now it's Monday afternoon. The sun is almost shining and it finally isn't raining! Jackson has his voice back (he had lost it for about three whole days!), our coughs are beginning to lessen, but we're all still a little worn out. Especially Molly. :)

Popcorn Fesitval!!!

I finally managed to get everyone out to one of our local festivals. It took some nagging, but, in the end, Jason admitted that it was well worth it. I don't think we were fully prepared for how crazy a popcorn festival could be. One of the main streets in Beavercreek, OH was completely shut down for this festival. There were stands for various foods, churches, crafts, and more! They even had a fantastic kids play area which I will show photo's of shortly.

As Jackson continually pointed out, as we passes stand after stand, that we were there for popcorn and that is all he really cared about.

Finally, we settled on a stand which was selling smaller bags of various flavored popcorn. We picked three bags. Caramel, white cheddar, and s'mores!

Before stopping to snack on some of our popcorn, we came across a tent which had personalized foot stools, coat racks, puzzles, and more. I loved the foot stools because the names were inset in the bench as a puzzle. Much to my delight, they had a "Jackson" and a "Molly" bench. Unfortunately, we weren't prepared to spend the money and stood there for what felt like an hour trying to decide if we were going to get the step-stools or not. So, we moved on to give ourselves more time to think. In the end, we settled on two delightful coat racks for the k

ids.

Jackson got a baseball and Molly got a butterfly. These weren't as expensive so that was our compromise.

It was going to take about 45 min. for the man to make them so went to explore more.

We found some shade and tested out some of our popcorn. We started with the caramel popcorn. It was delicious! The kids enjoyed it as well. Then, Jason took Jackson into the kids area and bought some tickets so Jackson could play games. It was only $1 for 8 tickets and most of the games were only 1 ticket to play. It was great! Jackson even got to jump in a bouncy house and Molly got in on some of the action. Kids were guaranteed a prize at every game. Both kids did great at throwing beanbags through a hole in a board! (Do I smell a future baseball player???) When we finally finished up with the games, we headed back to get our beautiful coat racks for the kids!

To see more photo's, go to www.picasaweb.google.com/themcginthys