Renaissance Festival

We went to the Renaissance Festival today with Kurt's cousin Sandy and her husband Marc. It was wet and cold and muddy and cold and muddy and wet. But we had a good time anyway, we are made of sturdy stuff (or maybe we are just nuts). When we walked in the gates we were met by Twig, a woodland fairy. She played a song on her two pipe flute for Autumn, who wasn't really sure what to make of this strange creature. But when Twig gave Autumn a very shiny green rock with fairy dust on it Twig had a friend for life. Autumn is a rock hound, she loves to collect rocks and this one is quite a jewel! From there we wandered until we saw some jugglers, this really held no interest for Autumn but when she spotted the pirate.....this was your average looking pirate: bandanna on head, earring in ear, knee boots with puffy pants.....and then we met a raccoon puppet who wanted to trade for Autumn's rock (she was having no part of this!!). We saw a huge pirate ship where Puke and Snot were entertaining the masses. We moved on to a pony ride where Autumn really started to perk up. She chose to ride Bid Red and kept telling him to go faster. We ate lunch and then while Daddy and Sandy and Marc went to watch Puke and Snot Autumn and I wandered on, she rode a HUGE rocking horse and then a butterfly merry-go-round. Next we watched some Irish country dancers, Autumn liked trying to imitate the dancers and when they started dancing with sticks!!! She wanted to join them, sticks are right up there with rocks in Autumn's estimation. While we were watching the dancers we met a PIRATE. Now this was not a run of the mill swabbie, he was a rear admiral of pirates. He had a rapier with a fancy handle, lots of ostrich plumes coming from a corner of his tri-cornered hat with golden lace trimming the top edges of said hat. He had many earrings and ear cuffs. Autumn's jaw dropped, and in a very awed voice (into a conveniently placed lull in music and noise) Wow, a pirate!!! He looked down at her and smiled. She looked him straight in the eyes and said "ARrrrr matey". He laughed so hard he stumbled then looked at her and said, "Wonderful, a new recruit!" It was so funny. About this time Daddy and the rest caught up with us and we listened to Alan-A-Dale play. He had lots of instruments spread out for kids to pick up and play with him. Autumn played a drum and then fell in love with the triangle. She played and played and we had to drag her away, as we were leaving a woman gave Autumn a dollar tip!! All in all it was a very fun day, next year hopefully we can go on a not so cold and wet and muddy day. Of course our camera picked this day to die a painful death. So we only have a couple of pictures, guess I get to go camera shopping.