Renaissance fair and camping

For my mom's birthday, we went to the renaissance fair. Sara Beth started off the day insisting on bringing her rabbit in its own stroller while we pushed Hudson in his stroller. We warned her that we were not going to help her push it, she said she wouldn't need any help. It turns out she was correct. Though the bunny's sweater that was precariously hung from the back of the stroller did fall off at some point during the day.

Sara Beth sat down for a fairy tea time. The kids got to eat cookies and sip tea while listening to some stories. She had a great time, while all the adults stood around waiting almost an hour for the story to end.

Sara Beth also saw some costumed mermaids who lounged around handing out small sea shells. Sara Beth insisted that they were real mermaids, and were one of the favorite memories of the trip. Once we got home, Sara Beth decided that she was going to make party favor bags and give them to the mermaids next time she saw them.

Sara Beth discovered a toad in our backyard that she named Princess Toadstool. She put it in a plastic examination box and carried it around with her all day trying to feed it grass, nuts and worms. At dinner time, we told her to let it go so it could eat dinner with its family. The next day, Sara Beth found Princess Toadstool in a different part of the yard and got to play with it an extra day.

Yes, I do realize that I didn't take any pictures of Hudson while at the Renaissance fair. That is because he was either being carried or sitting in the stroller, and not having many adventures. That changed this past weekend when we went camping in Mineral Wells State Park. We did need to keep a close eye on him since there was a lot of cactus along the trails, but he had a great time walking beside us like a big boy.

Sara Beth had the same plastic critter storage container that she had housed Princess Toadstool. For most of the weekend, it was home to about 20 pill bugs, but she also had crickets and caterpillars in it too. At one point, she tried to add a 2 inch long iridescent beetle, but it gave her thumb a good pinch and ran off. For the rest of the trip, Sara Beth let us know that it must have been a stink beetle since her thumb now "reeked." Neither Heather nor I could smell anything, but Sara Beth was insistent that "reeking" was the correct description for her thumb now.

Here, Sara Beth and Hudson are taking a break from hiking. Sara Beth is checking on her bugs, while Hudson samples the local dirt, checking its flavor.

Hudson, after realizing that dirt doesn't taste good, decided to help Heather prep dinner. He would consistently try pulling items out of our supply bags. He also tried to play with the water spigot we used for cleaning at the edge of our camp site and would constantly abscond with scrubbing sponge in one hand and a big grin on his face, until we chased after him to retrieve it.

Sara Beth loved to help make dinner. We tried cooking corn on the fire. Sara Beth would bring the fresh corn to Heather and then place the prepped corn in her butterfly net.

There was a small sand patch behind our tent that Sara Beth and Hudson liked to play in. And, as you could guess, Sara Beth searched for bugs to collect and Hudson ate the sand.

On Saturday, we went to the Mineral Wells Fossil Park. Initially, we had no idea what we were looking for, but after a couple minutes, we started to realize that there we little fossils all around us. Heather sat down with Sara Beth to help her dig for fossils while Hudson walked around and I split my time between digging and preventing Hudson from injuring himself. I was partially successful.

Saturday afternoon, Heather suggested that we play at the beach. Hudson had a great time wandering back and forth in the water and picking up large handfuls of mud.

Sara Beth found a small rock far out from shore and declared herself to be a mermaid and that she was resting on a mermaid rock.

Back at home, Hudson loves playing with the broom. I think he got the cleaning gene from Heather as he will try to push the broom around the kitchen in a decent imitation of a cleaning action.

Heather sat down with the kids one evening to look at pictures of baby lions.