Try, try again

 

What could all of this mess be out on the driveway?

 Steve and the girls decided this weekend to take the training wheels off of their bikes!

Clara and Elena were so excited to have their bikes look like ours, and they did a great job learning to balance.  Each of them was able to coast for a few feet without us, but we're nowhere near having them ride on their own yet.

We'll just keep trying.

We were also excited this weekend because two local festivals were taking place - the Darby Strawberry Festival and the Polson Cherry Festival.  We chose the Darby festival for Saturday, and took what usually is an hour drive down there.  Unfortunately there was quite a bit of road construction, and it took half an hour longer than usual, but we did get there!  When we arrived we needed a pit stop, and we didn't see where the festival was, so we stopped at a shop to check in.

It was a candy shop, to the delight of two little people!  That was the good news.  The bad news was that it turns out that the Strawberry Festival is a secondary type of festival in town - and also apparently run by the fire department, because that volunteer league was all out on a call for a fire we passed on our way driving down, and no one was sure if the festival would even still take place!

Luckily, the girls were happy with their candy, and we walked down the street to the other festival taking place in town that day - Logger Days!

Logger Days takes the whole weekend, and showcases many different logging skills in competition format.  We could hear it all the way down the street as we walked towards it.

When we got there, it turned out that the entrance fee was $15 a person.  We value the logging arts and all, but really, we were with girls with limited attention spans and we had truly come to get strawberries instead, and we just couldn't bring ourselves to spend that much.

Again, luckily the girls were mostly happy with their candy.  They did want to go in to the Logger Days area, but we think it was mostly because there was a Windy Guy (large windsock advertising guy) and they just love those.

So, we got in the car to drive back, hoping to hit some Farmer's Markets on the drive back to get some of those strawberries we wanted.  Despite our efforts, the markets had closed by the time we drove back through that road construction again.  Argh!!

We got home and Clara asked if we could get all the fruit we did have out to eat.  We had gotten a pint of strawberries in our CSA share, we pulled out the blueberries and cherries we'd gotten at the store, and the raspberries we'd picked at a friend's house.  Then we went out in the sun to sit on a blanket and paint strawberries and cherries on our toenails and watch the bumblebees in the clover.  Ah - much nicer!

A big thunderstorm came through, and so we went inside and made strawberry daiquiris (for adults) and lemonade (for kids) and Kerrie (who is in town visiting) and Christina taught the girls to play Snap! while Steve cooked us homemade kale chips and potato chips.  That was a little bit of heaven.

Turns out the girls are quite into cards!  That was a great realization, and we foresee lots of fun with that ahead.

What we thought would be fun wasn't necessarily enjoyable right away - but we learned this weekend that there is a lot of value in bucking up and trying again.