The Festival of Trees Kinda Sucked

Do you ever have an idea in your head at how amazingly awesome something is going to be, only to be left disappointed when it doesn’t live up to your expectations? Well, that pretty much describes the Festival of the Trees in a nutshell.

I had heard for years how awesome the event is – lots of kid activities, a huge train, tons of decorated Christmas trees that you can bid on – but the reality was pretty underwhelming.

Travis wasn’t feeling well on Saturday (he has strep, poor guy), so I decided that Jack and I would go to the event to get us out of the house for a while. The festival was only for the long weekend, so I knew it would probably be a bit crowded. What I wasn’t expecting was that it would take us an hour to go the last mile into the event. I came close to turning around and going home a half dozen times, but I had already driven for an hour and we really had nothing else to do that day.

So we waited. Mostly patiently.
I turned up the Christmas music and we bopped along … waiting, waiting…

When we finally got into the fairgrounds to park, I’m pretty sure we got one of the very last spaces in the entire place. Jack hopped in his umbrella stroller and we made the long, freezing walk to the venue.

And OH MY GOSH, if I thought the parking lot was crowded it was NOTHING compared to inside the place. It was so crowded and packed with people that it was hard for us to just walk around. Further complicating things was that I was trying to handle two bulky coats, a folded umbrella stroller, my big ol’ purse and Jack at the same time… in a sea of people. There were some crafty booths, but there were so many people that I could hardly sneak my way into any of them.

I got a few cute pictures though…

Jack not only tried to sit on the ice, he also attempted to grab ice blocks and throw them at random people.

Jack LOVED this “Up” house and kept trying to steal the little stuffed bird off the front porch. I kind of wanted to steal the whole darn thing to put it in our living room.

Oh, so funny story — we were sitting down by the train and Jack was very contently watching it go around and around. Other kids — older and younger than him — kept ignoring their parent’s warnings and touching the train as it went by. This went on for probably 10 minutes with a parent saying, “NO don’t touch that!” and then the kid touching it anyways. I was sitting there quite smug because my kid was behaving. Well, apparently I was a bit too smug. Because for absolutely no reason, Jack turned around calmly and licked the wheel of his stroller. Sigh.

Anyways, we probably only spent about an hour total at the festival, which seems like such a waste considering how long it took us to get there. Jack had a good time though, which makes it all worth it.

And I learned a lesson. No matter how excited I am for the start of the Christmas season, I’m NEVER doing that again!