Ok, this is it: Mom's visit, part four: The Weekend

I'm going to finish this if it kills me. Sitting here and writing it all out has made me realize how much we squeezed into six very short days. Holy cow man.

So Friday brought us Show and Tell, lunch at Google, and fun and awesome pictures of the kids in Hood River. I think we wrapped things up pretty early that night because we knew that Saturday would be busy - it was Cherry Fest Day.

The Cherry Festival is honestly a heck of a lot of fun. Busy and crowded and chaotic and fun. This year Skippy was even able to join us for the parade and we sat with some other Goog friends so that was a blast.



The parade is looooong. There's floats for every business in town, rodeo queens, one group of drag queens (no, seriously), churches and organizations and politicians and you name it - it takes about two hours. And before it starts, there is a motorcycle rally type ride where all of the bikers donate a stuffed animal to local hospitals and children's organizations and then ride the parade route - this year there was almost 2000 bikes! Talk about noise! Pretty dang cool though.

Mom and Jack seemed to enjoy the parade - mostly I think they enjoyed watching it with the kids. Even the Chunk was into it - the girls had more fun waving at everyone and scavenging for the thrown candy in search of tootsie rolls for daddy, but it was still a blast.

After the parade we decided to attack the street fair. There's food and crafts and kids' stuff - you name it, it's down there. Skippy had to work the Google booth later in the afternoon, so we just hit a few things before we decided to head up the hill for a break and a nap before coming back down. First we made a mad dash to find Chunk a bike helmet - the hospital gives them out for free every year but they go fast. We did find one - it's pink, but it fits his little Chunker noggin so now I'm hoping to get his bike seat mounted on my bike so we can start cruising around town.



Then each of the girls got to do one thing. So while Skippy and Banana waited in line, I took K to shoot the fire hose. Is she cute or what?













When she was done and happy, (which took all of five minutes, my Kbear is easy to please) we went in search of Banana and Daddy over at the rock climbing wall.


Yup. *sigh* The rock climbing wall.


Here she is getting ready to go






Fearless little monkey isn't she?
















Once Banana's feet were safely back on the ground (where I myself prefer them to be) we left Mom and Jack (who I think were in need of a break) and trekked up the hill and homeward for short naps and a break from the sun.



Around three, we hit the fair hard again. Skippy was hard at work signing people up for gmail and picasa, showing them google maps (god I love me some google maps) and generally being at one with his geek-ness. Mom and Jack and the kids and I strolled the fair for a little while longer and along the way, Mom talked me into letting the girls get their faces painted. I had been avoiding the booth because well....it's expensive as hell for a bit of paint.

But come on, it was Nana's treat and you can't tell me that THIS wasn't worth it. (that was taken later at the carnival, but I'm getting to that.)














After all that, we were honestly pretty street faired out. It was time to say good-bye to Cherry Fest and go in search of some dinner. Unfortunately Skippy was still up to his elbows in old people who wanted to know about that "new fangled Google thing" so he couldn't get away quite as quickly as we would have liked. So instead we went for a drive. I was in search of Rowena Crest Viewpoint - I had tried to find it earlier in the week without success but thanks to a phone call to my friend AmyM, this time we got lucky. Rowena Crest is pretty cool - it's just a few miles out of town and you can see all of our little city, along with a gorgeous view of the Gorge and the river. It was sunny and beautiful and well worth the fifteen minute trip up. I even got this cool picture of an old barn.


FINALLY, Skippy was done playing Google-instructor and we all went out for pizza. We were hot and sweaty and slightly sunburned. And tired. And just plain old tuckered out. So what did we do?

We went to the carnival of course!

The carnival was a hoot. And expensive hoot (rides are three bucks a piece now, what is up with THAT?) but still a hoot. We did come to the realization that Banana is pretty much officially too big for the kid rides now - as soon as we arrived she started squealing "THE TORNADO! DADDY! I WANT TO RIDE THE TORNADO!" and she wasn't having anything to do with the "baby rides" after that. Kbear and I rode some insane tilt-a-whirl like ride that seriously made me question my parenting skills - her little body was slipping all over the dang seat and I was seriously afraid she was going to go flying right now, despite her screams of pure joy and the fact that she was yelling "MAMA! I'm not scared see??? I'm LAUGHING! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

I on the other hand, was scared shitless. Watching them on the merry go round was a welcome respite after that adventure. I took so many cute pictures at the carnival, and props to Jack for attempting to get pictures of us on the rides - I know it's not easy! But finally we were out of tickets and now we were even more tired, hot, sweaty and plumb tuckered out than before so we said our good-nights and dropped Mom and Jack off and did baths and bedtime stories all around. It was a good Cherry Fest. And it was hard to believe that the next day it would be time to say goodbye!

(I'll finish tonight. If I have to stay up and chug a Red Bull, I'll finish tonight!)