Maple Syrup Festival

 We took part of this beautiful day to head out to the little town of Chardon for their annual maple festival.  It was a sunny, lovely day, and a charming, slightly frenetic festival.  We met up with Nana and Papa, some friends of mine from work and later, Nat, Amanda, Jack and Ivy.  We had pancakes, of course, drenched in sticky sweet syrup.  We rode the merry-go-round, as you can see from this pictures snapped by Nana.  Each time Naomi rounded the turn to see Nana and Papa, I could hear her shrieking for joy.  We were the only ones on the ride, so Lillian and I had to be at the exact opposite side.  Lillian seemed to know that this should be fun, and was laughing through her chattering teeth.  Whether that was from fear or the fact that the pole and horse were quite chilly, I don't know.

 After the merry go round, we made our way to Main Street to watch the bathtub races.  The what, you say? They take the old cast iron tubs and soup them up with racing wheels and a steering column.  The driver sits in the tub and the pushers provide the power from behind.  Everyone gathers to cheer on the teams as they race in two-team heats down the street, around a hairpin turn and back up again.  Hysterical.  You can see that Naomi had the best seat in the house, thanks to Papa.  She and Lillian were way too distracted by the balloons to concentrate on the flying bathtubs.  But, I managed to sweet talk some very nice gentlemen into letting us pose our children in their precision racing craft.  Yes, Lillian is wearing a feather boa and a Championship Wrestling belt.  We tried to get Naomi in there, but she wasn't having any of it.

Here's Lillian, trying to convince Papa to take her on the Ferris Wheel.  Seriously.  She tried to talk him into it for about 20 minutes.  Sadly, she's still an inch shy of the height requirement.

We capped off the day with bowls of maple stir, which, sadly, the girls wanted nothing to do with.  Naomi had her 25 cent candy squirt gun that absolutely made her day and Lillian had some goldfish. They were both asleep before we hit the first stoplight on the way home.