Festival Fun

We've had a wonderful day of festival-ing, despite the rainy weather. First stop this morning was UML's Family day, which was relocated to the Rec Center. All the student clubs set up booths around the "Wild West" theme. The marching band played (they were great!) and there were crafts and activities and games. Lucy's favorite type of games are the ones where she wins. Luckily, they had a lot of those. She "won" a lot of things, including silly inflatable things, some various UML-themed items, a Biology Club T-shirt featuring a platypus (awesome! Jake got one, too!), a bandana that she decorated (at the Lit Society table) and an incredible amount of candy. We knew it was going to be a crazy day when, at 10:40 am (after just a couple minutes inside) Lucy was offered "fresh" ice cream. This was created by the geniuses at the Chemistry Club table, who mixed liquid nitrogen into their sugary-creamy-awesomeness to make instant ice cream. It was AMAZING. So basically, she was walking around eating ice cream in the morning, which, as she informed us, is totally breaking the rules. She loves it when we break the rules.

Here she is with Rowdy the Riverhawk mascot:


Oh, and one of the "activities" was a decorate-a-cookie table, where she was given icing and sprinkles to put on a cookie. Wow. What's not to love? She had an amazing time.

In the afternoon, we headed over to Open Studios at Western Ave Studios, one of our favorite places. I managed to get Lucy to pose here:

For comparison, you might want to look at this older post, from the same spot back in May.


She really liked these decorated brooms and actually asked to have her picture taken with one:
(She also has a tasty treat from one of the artists in her hand here.)

We purchased a few lovely things, and Lucy ate a lot of candy and cookies. Oh, and a bit of fruit. We met a lot of dogs that we enjoyed petting, and Lucy saw at least one of her classmates from school. And we ran into tons of people we know, which is extra nice. Open Studios continues tomorrow, all over Lowell. Go! It's awesome.

All this art had Lucy wanting to do some of her own (not unusual):

Someone kindly left paper and colored pencils out a table in one of the hallways. She was delighted to show her art to the artists in their studios.

Tomorrow she and I will likely tackle some art projects. It's supposed to be rainy and cold, so thought we'd love to watch Jake race, it doesn't seem like it would be too pleasant. Sigh. So we'll hang here while Jake's off racing 'round the Grand Prix.