Ye Celebration of the Turkey Leg

This weekend we made the 2 hour trek to "Ye Big City" to go to the Renaissance Festival. In preparation for this event, I attempted to educate my kids on the Renaissance period. This educating kind of stalled when we stumbled upon a picture of the statue of David. They giggled that he didn't have any underwear.  Dude. This isn't productive. 

We have kind of found a gold mine of timing convenience when it comes to traveling with the kids this summer. We are fortunate enough to have friends that live in the cities and have discovered that heading out late the night before our planned activity and spending the night leads to a peaceful car ride there and less exhaustion melt downs during whatever activity we decide to do. Winning.

 I'm one of those small town idjits that even calls the suburbs the "cities". Basically anything within 45 minutes of St. Paul or Minneapolis is going to be lumped into my big city generalization. I know it irritates some of my friends, so I'll keep doing it. 

We arrived at our friends' house late Friday evening and brought two sleeping children in the house to put them to bed. It was a little tricky getting through the chaotic meet and greets of our dog and the four other dogs that were staying at the house. I was mistakenly sniffed in unwelcome places, and I almost dropped my kid, but we made it through the pack of wild dogs and back to the bedroom fairly unscathed.

Perfect. Two sleeping children. Parents are relaxed because we didn't have to listen to bickering, whining, and the infamous "Are we there yet?" monologue.

The next morning, in their usual "I bet I can get up before the sun does" fashion, the kids were up incredibly early. Much like the morning of our ValleyFair trip, they sniffed out the doughnuts like cadaver dogs and shoved the entire bag of doughnuts except for 2 in their little bellies before I had any indication that my little angels were awake and ruling the house of sleeping adults. You would think we would learn to put chocolate covered anything up higher than four feet. When I stumbled out to the living room with my pre-coffee sleep scowl still on my face, I noticed the trail of crumbs and chocolate on their faces. I asked them how many they ate. Sassy Girl responded with, "How many can we have?" I told her two was plenty. She exchanged glances with Little Dude and then told me that they had two. Whatever. 

One by one the adults awoke to the stomping and excited giggling of my sugared up monsters and we were ready to set off to the Celebration of the Turkey Leg. Or the Renaissance Festival as most call it. Potato/Potahto. 

We parked in a field in the designated 1940 row. I remember this because I kept chanting 1940 over and over so I would engrave that number in my memory. Then, we began walking back through time until we reached the gates of the Renaissance Festival. I kept remarking that it was such a cool gimmick to walk into the past. It doesn't take a whole lot to impress me...

When we entered, the first thing I spotted was the pickle vendors. I was warned by friends that they can be a bit vulgar. So, immediately I saw the pickle sign and promptly turned a bright shade of red while my awesome friends loudly asked if I wanted a pickle. I did want a pickle. But that's beside the point. I averted my eyes and hid behind my husband as we walked past his stand. 


My senses, and I would imagine my kids' senses were on complete overload. We were completely under-dressed, seeing as though my chest wasn't hanging out and my husband wasn't carrying a sword. The shouting of vendors and entertainers, the animal smells, the wind storm that kicked dust up into every orifice you can imagine. Still blowing dirt out of my nose. Shudder. It was all a very cool experience, but it left me just kind of wandering in awe checking things out. Once I found a bathroom to use, which when I asked about one I was rudely reminded to call it a "privy", I was on a mission to find food. Because at these events, this is my main goal. To eat until I am sick. I am an American through and through. 

After stuffing ourselves on course one, I get stuck waiting in line for a half an hour to make a "wand" with the kids. It was a straw with ribbon. Sweet. Little dude fell off a bench and hit his nose while we were waiting. While I was consoling him, an actor did check to see if he was okay, which was nice. However, he didn't break character, which started to annoy the crap out of me. "Oh my lady, is the young sire alright?" Yes. Shut up now please. Thanks.

We spent the rest of our time distracting the kids from the little traps that cost extra money. No honey. We can't ride the ponies/elephants/camels. We might get the pony-phant-el flu. We caved in at the face painting station and dumped a good 20 bucks on some sweet face art for the kids. It was peeling off today and started looking like an awkward flaking bruise, so I had to painfully wash all that money away at bath time tonight. I could have ate more food with that money.

After face painting, we decided to check out an act called, "Puke and Snot." I realized a few minutes in that this was not a child friendly act. Kind of took me a long time, since the name of the act probably should have raised a red flag in my mom mind, eh? Most of the colorful jokes went over their head, but I still kept glancing around to see if I was the only terrible parent that brought her children to such an act. I was not the only terrible parent in the room. I know. I counted several. Fortunately, the kids were distracted by my attempts to put an end to Little Dude swinging his wand dangerously close to guy in blue face paint next to us. Blue? I don't get what that has to do with anything. But some of you are really intense about this role playing thing so I will leave it be. 

The last thing we did before leaving? Took a picture of our kids' faces in a cut out picture of a horse butt.

Because we rock at parenting.