Street Fairs and Sunshine

One of my favorite parts about living in suburbia is all the summer activities that happen in our town and the neighboring ones, specifically the street fairs. If you've never enjoyed this aspect of Americana, let me describe it for you. Artists and crafters lined up on main street of a downtown area selling their colorful and occasionally disturbing goods; truck upon truck of various friend foods, as well as other sundry stands of pulled pork, specialty candies and more fried foods, and all said foods accompanying scents; an immense amount of sweaty, sticky people. That pretty much sums it up, and it's a lot of fun. Oddly enough, I only ever make it to these festive occasions when I'm extremely pregnant. We'll have to fix that next year, cuz I have no intentions of being pregnant next summer.

The metalworks frog I got for Kylar's room.

For me, there's nothing more fun than finding a unique piece of art or jewelry from a local seller at the art fairs. I love the different art mediums and ideas that are as numerous as the vendors themselves. It would be incredibly easy for me to spend hundreds of dollars on all the different home decor items available.

 Instead, I limited my purchases to one item per child (plus an adorable caricature of Aria - who could resist those big blue eyes?!)

Aria's caricature

Another favorite part of the street fairs are the bounce houses. Not for me, of course - that would be quite the sight, let me tell you - but Aria really loves them. We first tried them out on Wednesday afternoon, when my mom and I took Aria. She happily bounced until her little legs could hold themselves up on the unsteady plastic floor no more, and came and laid down on the side of the bounce area saying "night-night, mommy." When Josh and I took her on Friday night, her reaction was much the same, although since there were more kids there, she did tend to be a little more tentative....until someone pulled out a ball. Then she was all over that puppy.

Later, Josh and I indulged in some fantastic pulled pork BBQ (for me) and hand-dipped corn dogs (for him.) It's just not a street fair if you're not eating greasy, unhealthy food. :) We soon escaped before the night crowd came in and traumatized Aria :) What are some of your family's favorite traditions in the summertime?