Cooper Young Festival

(A quick note- we took no pictures of the kids at the Festival, so I will just post random pics with this entry since I know you don't come here to read my writing.)

Saturday we took the kids to their first Cooper Young Festival. (It was also the first in quite a while for me and Chip.) We considered taking them in the afternoon so that we could see some bands we are interested in, but that would have cut into both naptime and Connor's Saturday evening date with Grammy. Instead we set out at 10:00 am, thinking we might make it there ahead of some of the crowd. Ha!

As we crossed Parkway on Central, I started looking down side streets. "You need to think about parking- the streets are already full!" Chip turned right on Cooper, thinking we might park at Peabody Park. Apparently we were a few hours too late for that idea, so we parked on Cowden and started gathering our stuff. In record time we had Chloe in her sling and Connor and the diaper bag stuffed into the green stroller. And Connor was already eating one of the snacks I brought for him! (I guess he worked up an appetite dancing to JT's new (and somewhat disappointing) CD on the ride there.) As soon as we started down Cooper we spotted Stacey and the rest of "Team Oster" on the other side of the street. "Stacey!" Chip yelled. "Staaaaceeeeyy!" I more impressively hollered in my best former-cheerleader voice. Satchel started looking around suspiciously. "Satchel!" I barked, realizing who our audience really was. He looked right at us, and we waved, and he turned around and kept walking. Eventually we caught up with them, though. Probably because we were a well-oiled stroller machine, while they were actually allowing their kids to get exercise and walk on their own.

We spent about 30 minutes or so exploring the booths with "Stacey and Satchel and Jiro and their daddy!" managing to only spend $1 on a purple balloon, despite the pink and black skirt that repeatedly called my name from over at Mothersville. We stopped to pick up stickers and agree to vote no on 1, then made our way to the "children's area." This was an area with a few makeshift kids' games and two moonbounce-type things. For once, Connor was happy to jump into the moonbounce, and managed to sneak in more time than he paid for. He also played a few games, and came away with a small purple ball from the pathetic selection of toys at the prize table. Chloe and I would have watched him, but the sun was beating down on us something terrible and we decided to take a break in the small patch of shade at the corner of the play area. She and I were sweating through her sling, so we comandeered the stroller. Connor came back to learn an important life lesson- "Shuffle your feet, lose your seat!" I appeased him by handing him snack #2, goldfish, which he proceeded to completely dump on the ground. In order to nip that meltdown in the bud, I said out loud the words we had all been thinking for the previous 30 minutes. "Let's go get ice cream from the Ben and Jerry's stand!" We left Stacey and her brood to explore the rest of the festival, as we headed back towards the ice cream and our car.


It was unspoken that we were headed towards the car, but it was obvious that we were all a little too hot and tired to spend much more time there. We wanted to leave while things (Connor) were still pleasant! So we got back to the magic B&J stand. Lots of good flavors, but I was worried that Connor wouldn't enjoy anything but plain chocolate. "They've got vanilla! And ice cream that tastes like Oreos! And chocolate with brownies in it!" "Um, how about chocolate with nothing in it?" And Chip thinks I project my own pickiness onto Connor. He is worse than I am! We talk him into Cookies n Cream, then soon realize that eating and walking will cause the ice cream to meet the same fate as the goldfish. We hightailed it to Mothersville for some blissfully quiet and air conditioned eating. (Thanks, Andria!) Connor spent more time playing than eating, allowing Chip to eat most of the $4 scoop. After a diaper change for Chloe, we were back in the car and on our way home. It was fun, but next year I think we'll take more money with us and plan to go when we can hear some live music.