Kalona Fall Festival

I love the Kalona Fall Festival. I love going to all of the tents of crafts. I love looking at antiques, pumpkins, and the museum. I love eating baked goods and food that is bad for me. I also love the whole farming community and the Amish and Mennonites. There is just nothing bad about Kalona.

Aria and I struck out right after her gymnastics class. You know you hit Kalona when the horse and buggies show up alongside the roads. We also have to drive through Riverside to get there-the future home of Captain Kirk.

The first stop was the corn bin, which is exactly what it says-a huge bin of corn with beach toys so that kids could play. We went there twice. The first time Aria was by herself. The second time was with a bunch of older kids. They were taking turns burying each other in the corn. I got to kick back on a bench and play Scrabble Blast on my phone. I got a 70 point word and Aria got corn in her hair. It was win-win.

Grrr. Dinosaur eat corn!

They had the Wahl House yard open this time. Last time they didn't. Aria sat on the benches in the garden.

Inside the house is a small museum. The front room is a book store and you have to pay to see the rest of the mansion. This is why I have never seen it. They also don't really want children in there. Another reason I've never seen it.
They did have the shed set up with all kinds of old timey washing stuff. They left a broom lying about so Aria helped by sweeping for them.

I'm helping sweep!

nom nom cotton candy.

We went into the old Kalona Train Depot, which is cool because it looks like the depots you see on Thomas the Train. It has a huge stove right in the middle and benches all the way around. There are no railroad tracks anywhere.

But the trains are always on time!

The Mennonite historical museum had a little marble toy that was cool. Aria sat and played with it while I looked at all of the Amish books.

We sat at the bench and ate our corn dog and grape tomatoes while listening to a church group sing Christian songs. It was horrifying for me, but Aria clapped because she doesn't recognize truly bad music yet.

Or maybe she was clapping because this bag of tomatoes was only $1.

You know you are in Kalona because this is just sitting in the parking lot. The grass parking lot.

Aria wanted to pet the horsey. I don't blame her, I wanted to as well. We didn't, though.

It's a Blah Kinda Day

Sometimes you just have those days when it is cold outside, it's rainy, and nothing seems like fun to you. Today was one of those days. I didn't want to watch anything, go anywhere, or do anything. That is especially difficult when you have an almost 4 year old in the house with you.

Aria, I believe, was the same way. She didn't want to watch her normal shows. She kept going from one thing to another to another as if not satisfied with any one thing today. I suppose that it also didn't help that Mama wasn't playing her games correctly, such as saying the correct things when she announces which Backyardigan I get to be today. (Today I'm Uniqua.)

I am getting better at this party planning stuff. It used to completely and totally stress me out. It doesn't so much anymore. I no longer take full responsibility of the entertainment of all of my guests and I no longer stress over things being perfect. I do what I do and if you don't like it, well, I can't entertain everyone. All that matters is that birthday girl is satisfied.

She's pretty excited. We got the Scooby Doo decorations in the mail. The bowling alley has us on the calendars. All that's left is to send out invitations, and that's a modge podge. The list keeps getting bigger because Aria wants to invite certain people to her party, but I only have two lanes reserved.

Oh well, some people will bowl and some won't.

I'm so blah that I can't even make an unblah blog post.

Blah.