Kiddie Park

We made the trek up to Bartlesville to see what we had been missing out on. There is a Kiddie Park with 25-cent rides that several friends have been to and love. We had been wanting to go and some of our sweet friends invited us to join them as they tried it out for the first time too.

It was such a cute place! There were about 15-20 rides and all were sized for preschoolers to about early elementary. Ben could have ridden anything there, but limited himself to the ones that “weren’t as scary”. Elizabeth could have ridden the majority of rides and wanted to. But when it was her turn and we put her in the seat she would freak out that we would actually consider leaving her on this thing. She was able to ride the things sized for adults though like the train and carousel.

Ben was acting weird during our visit, making uncomfortable faces and even got out of the Jupiter Jump early. Mom was sure he was going to be sick and asked him nonstop how he felt. It turns out he was just really tired from the bike races the night before and trying to hide his yawns so we wouldn’t have to go home. Sneaky!

We hope to go again and know that next time we won’t expect much out of E and we’ll also make sure the kids are more well rested. It was a really fun adventure though, and we are so thankful that our friends encouraged us to try it with them!

Tulsa Tough and Fiberworks

The kids enjoy watching the bike races and it has become a tradition that we watch the Blue Dome races on Friday night. Mom and the kids stayed downtown after school/work and waited for Dad to get off work. Grandma was also in town and rode in with Dad. We met up at McNellie’s and the kids did really well at their first downtown restaurant. Thank goodness for cheese quesadillas!

Fiberworks was also downtown at the same time and is an art show that both Grandma Lyn and Grandpa David made it into. Grandma won two prizes and Grandpa sold one of his works – yea! The exhibit was open to the public so we thought it would be an ideal time to take the kids. It also happened to be the same night as a fashion show. Both were in the same space so we stealthily looked at the works in the back of the space and had to take a raincheck on everything close to the runway. The kids did great though as we bribed them with fancy fruit appetizers and showed them Grandma and Grandpa’s names on the wall. Pretty cool!

After that we walked back to where the races were taking place. We ran into several friends and enjoyed wandering the area and cheering as the cyclists raced past. Ben rang our cowbell and cheered for our friend that was racing. After a while it got dark and we urgently had to get home. Ben could tell it was “darker than night”. He could tell a storm was coming and it did start raining as we headed to the car. It was late anyway though and we were able to beat most of the traffic.

We are already planning for next year though and look forward to this fun family tradition!

Mayfest

We headed downtown for Mayfest on Saturday. This year we got to bring along Grandma Elaine and met up with Mickey as well! There is a lot to see and do at Mayfest. One of Ben’s friends had been earlier in the week and had told Ben about the face painting. So that was first on our list as it was very important to Ben to get a Batman face too. He had never had his face painted before and I think he didn’t really care for it that much. He was determined though to look like Batman. The nice artist suggested a modified design that wouldn’t cover his whole eye area since he was a little apprehensive about her touching his face. Mom thought that was a great plan as it would also be less black to wash off. E thought she wanted her face painted until she got in line and then promptly changed her mind.

We looked at a few booths and watched a belly dancing performance for a bit that the kids were very interested in. Ellie liked the music as usual and Ben was very interested in their scarves and why they were playing peekaboo. We decided to get lunch before the lines got long and picked up a variety of super healthy snacks including bacon wrapped meatballs, corndogs and deep fried ravioli. Yum! We enjoyed our choices and then looked at more artists’ booths as we headed to another performance stage. This one had clogging. E again danced to the music and Ben even got caught up in it and tried to do a little jig with Grandma Elaine.

We decided it was treat time and also time to wind our way back to the car to head home for naps. We looked at another row of booths on Main and then hit the Dippin’ Dots cart. Yum! We saw some chalk art competition entries in progress which were pretty cool and got loaded back up finally to get home and rest. The kids did awesome considering it was past both of their nap times and then slept hard once we got home.

It was another fun family adventure and we look forward to many more this summer!