Sugar Creek Arts Festival

Our former downtown Normal area has been remodeled and is now known as "Uptown Normal." We went to the Sugar Creek Arts festival, which is a yearly tradition in the summer. There are lots of booths featuring local artists, crafts, foods, and al kinds of other items. Holden really enjoyed the kid area set up by the Children's Discovery Museum. He got his face painted by the Zoo Lady, made a caterpillar bookmark, and created stepping stones for himself and Hunter. As has been the theme this summer, it was soooo hot. I was dripping in sweat the first 10 minutes we were there. Lovely! It is a testament to the Zoo Lady's skills that H's face paint was not running. The one silver lining is that it was so hot that food didn't even sound good, so I kept a few pounds off by not eating the usual huge sampling of yummy, fatty foods from the booths! ;) We mainly did the kid area and then went into the Discovery Museum to play in the air conditioning.

Hunter has spent the majority of his outdoors time this summer in the shade with a parent or grandparent in an attempt to keep him halfway comfortable and to prevent sunburn. Mom and I took turns with him under an awning for awhile, and he also took a snooze in the stroller. Love the picture with my parents! Dad is notorious for pulling his hat off his head to cover a baby's face. We have pictures of him doing this with Holden when he was a baby, too!

Some pictures with Grammy. She and Holden were singing along to tunes in the Discovery Museum truck. The picture on the right makes me laugh. My dad gave Holden money for a balloon creation. We waited in line directly in the sun for a good 15 minutes, and Holden chose the biggest creation there was, this lovely octopus. Then he cried whenever we made him carry it. Love how Mom is strolling along behind him, smile in place, carrying Hunter because he did not want to be in the stroller, and pushing the stroller with all of our stuff in it. She is a trooper!

After the festival, we drove to nearby Hudson to see the coolest train set that a man has created in his backyard. He was having an open house and Dad thought Holden would enjoy it. Did he ever! The pictures below don't do it justice. The set was massive! I loved looking at all of the little miniature details.

There were so many different things to see. Several trains were running at the same time. The pond had lily pads and little miniature boats with tiny people in them. So cute!

Holden was fascinated with everything! We spent a good hour there and he was still upset when we had to leave. He asked if we could set up a "choo choo" in our backyard. :)