Balloon Festival

Yesterday the kids and I explored the hot air balloon and craft festival. It was woefully lacking in the hot air balloon department as you had to go to a separate location in the evening to see them. The kids did get to explore the inside of a half inflated balloon. Chloe said she felt this was her favorite part.

There were these really neat kid's archery sets a lady was selling that we tried out. We are trying to figure out how we can make some as they had a lot of fun with them.

Alexa wanted her face painted.

They prepared for the high seas.

There was a music petting zoo that, while noisy, was a really neat idea.

We are going to see if we can hit the balloon portion of the festival tonight.

To the Farm We Go

Today was an absolutely gorgeous day. The high temperature only reached about 70 degrees. So we figured it was the perfect day to go to the farm. The kids had a great time and we even walked on some of the trails behind the farm down to the lake. Of course, I had to buy cookies from the bakery and bribe them down the trail with them, but we got there!

When we first arrived the goat kids were out in the yard playing. This one was very excited to get lunch.

Alexa loves bunnies. This one is named Zippy. He doesn't look too Zippy here.

And there are always the chickens aren't there? But I digress....

They loved the piglets, and they are pretty darn cute aren't they?

Alexa loves the donkeys. We couldn't see them at first until we started walking up the trail. They were in the upper pasture.

A little look up from our walk on the trail.

See we made it to the lake? My camera seems to be over exposing these shots. Not sure what the issue was.

Here they are relaxing and munching on cookies before the walk back.

Alexa took this one of me with the lake behind me, but it is so oddly exposed it look funny. I tell you there is a big drop off to the lake behind me! It was really windy so the waves were fantastic.

Chloe took a bunch of pictures on our way back.

The view from the top of the hill looking down on the barn.

After we got back to the barn they visited the animals some more before we left. That is Alexa scratching the goat. She did that for about 15 minutes. They both were quite enjoying each other.

A Hiking We will Go

Last week at the grocery store Chloe wanted me to buy her trail mix. 'Will you be hiking on a trail?" I asked her. "Otherwise trail mix is just an M and M delivery device." She said she would, so today I decided to take her up on her word. It has been raining so often we are starting to grow gills. This morning the sun was shining. Although it is suppose to rain this afternoon, tomorrow, Saturday, Sunday... you get the idea. So I took the kids over to a small hiking area owned by the Diocese of Burlington. It is free to go and walk on their trails and all they ask is that you register with them for the season before you go. The trails are shady and largely flat with some nice overlooks to the lake. There is also a bridge that crosses the bike path that we ride under a lot so the kids were excited to see it from the top.

Since it had been so rainy I had them wear their rain boots. This turned out to a a pretty good plan as a lot of the trails were very mucky.

They came across some animal tracks they wanted to document.

They are thinking raccoon.

As you can see operation bait them with trail mix worked pretty well.

Alexa found herself a walking stick of sorts, although it was a bit short.

We had to walk across some boards that the water literally came up around your feet as you stepped on them. They thought this was a lot of fun. It was all going pretty well until Chloe started to get a blister from her boots. She was pretty grumpy about the whole thing. In fact she told me she was falling behind and would be eaten by the wolves. I was unaware that this was a big threat in Vermont, however I told her that I would take her picture to have documentation to show people what she looked like before the wolves carried her off.

This went over well as you might be able to tell  from the facial expression.

To the Beach...

This is one of those posts that soon my sister will start to hate me for. So before I start I want to remind everyone today is SUNDAY. Some where last summer my sister threatened my person if I posted one more day at the beach while she was working. But it is OK today was a weekend. It was our first trip to Leddy Beach this summer. It was a bit of a risk since it was 85 but forcasting scattered thunderstorms for the afternoon. There were some too, but we got in a few hours of water before we had to leave.

At first we had some pretty good waves for the lake. The kids were enjoying them.

There was Alexa the mermaid...

 

Chloe's sand drawings...

And I loved this, how many floaties can you wear in a foot of water?