Lowell Folk Festival

We went to the Lowell Folk Festival today to check out some traditional Cambodian dance. Weren't their costumes beautiful? (That's not Veronica in the top photo. Just another little girl enjoying the show)
We also got to enjoy some Filipino food. Veronica loved the pancit bihon(noodles), sinangag(fried rice), and inihaw ng manok at karne (bbq chicken and beef). The gigantic lumpia(eggroll) was a bit intimidating, but she did like the turon(plaintain eggroll). It was the festival's 25th anniversary and we'll definitely be going back. There was a woman singing and playing the blues on a piano when we left. She sounded great. The festival lasts 3 days over 6 different stages. Click here for more information. Hopefully we'll be able to stay longer and explore a bit more next year.

Winchester Farmers' Market

Our town has an amazing weekly farmers' market on Saturday mornings. Organic food and other vendors (fruits, veggies, meats, fish, coffee, tea, accessories, prepared food) sell their wares and there is always a live cooking demonstration. An awesome gigantic tree in the middle of the Town Common provides shade for everyone. All the families park their strollers and set up blankets to hang out on. For the kiddies, the local music school hosts a lovely sing-along with instruments and scarves and hoops that the kids can sing and dance with. They bring two giant drums that are the perfect size for the toddlers to go to town on. A live jazz or swing band closes out the market while the kiddies dance to the music. Sounds disgustingly idyllic, yes? Here is a photo of Veronica enjoying the jazz band at last weeks' market:

Get down, get down

These next two photos are from today's Farmers' Market:

So sweet

Veronica likes to hold onto Daddy's ear lobes  for steering purposes

This last photo was taken this past week. T-shirt courtesy of Ninong. Thank you, Ninong! I have it on very good authority that Optimus Prime is a HUGE Hello Kitty fan.

Veronica as Optimus Prime

Winchester Town Day 2011

Our town has an annual Winchester Town Day the first Saturday of June. Along with the En Ka Fair at the end of May, spring is very busy here in Winchester. For Town Day the center of the town is filled with booths of food and goods from the businesses in and around Winchester. And the Town Common has a petting zoo and a pony ride, as well as a Kids Olympics. The kids from one of the local dance companies even did several flash mob dances at different locations, and there is a stage for bands and dance companies to perform on between the library and the pond. There is an annual Rubber Ducky Race run by the Little League, and Town Day is wrapped up with fireworks in the evening. Click this link if you want to know more about Town Day. Here is a photo:

Town Day kicked off on Friday night with a local band playing fun music for the kiddies in front of the fire station. Veronica LOVED IT and loved dancing to the music. She insisted on wearing her Hello Kitty backpack and was so cute wearing it while she danced. Here is a video I took of her dancing:

One of the booths had a bubble machine and she stood there for so long, mesmerized by the bubbles:

There were also a few colorful mats out on a grassy spot so kids could try out their tumbling. The local gymnastics team were showing their talents. (Fun fact: Winchester native Alicia Sacramone was the captain of the silver medal winning USA Team at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.) Veronica was so enamored of the older kids turning cartwheels that she was determined to copy them. I tried to show her how to do one, but I don't think her gross motor skills are quite there yet. She would get ready to cartwheel, but had no idea how to make it happen, so she would just kind of stand in cartwheel-ready position, with one arm and one leg up on one side, waiting for the cartwheel to happen to her:

It didn't quite happen, but I am going to teach her one of these days.

In the afternoon was the Lucky Ducky Race. During Town Day the Little League booth sold rubber duckies. Later that day, all the duckies were dropped from a box over the pond and whichever ducky made it the waterfalls first won the grand prize. I captured the actual ducky drop:

There were so many activities that we didn't make it to all of them before it was nap time. Though Veronica was probably a bit young for the pony ride and Kids Olympics. I'm sure next year she is going to have even more fun. For the rest of the Town Day photos, click here.

En Ka Fair 2011 Redux

Last weekend I posted a couple of photos from my phone of the En Ka Fair. The En Ka Society is basically our local town's version of the Junior League. They are a charitable organization of women that raises tons of money and gives it out to worthy Winchester causes. Their major fundraising event is the En Ka Fair (click on the name for an article about this year's fair), an annual street fair located in the center of town with "rides for both children and adults, games, books, jewelry, a quilt raffle and plenty of food" (clicking on that link will take you to the En Ka website). The fair runs for two days, Friday and Saturday, in late May every year, and it was heaps of fun. Particularly since it had been raining all week and it seemed as if the rain stopped just for the En Ka Fair, then started right back up again. Here is a photo from Friday night:

She played this Lucky Ducky game and picked a prize-winning duck! The video I took of this is hilarious. The water was moving so the ducks were moving FAST. She had quite a time trying to pick one up.

Saturday morning brought the En Ka Parade. I think if you get money from the En Ka ladies, you march in the parade. The En Kas give money to lots of different groups (Girl Scouts, Brownies, Winchester High School marching band, McCall middle school band, to give a few examples), it was impressive and heartwarming to see just how far-reaching their charity is, and the parade let us know exactly where our money was going that we were spending at the fair. Great advertising!

Veronica rode the carousel three times and she (mostly) enjoyed it. I think it moved a bit fast for her. We also rode a dragon ride together as a family. Here are Adrian and Veronica outside our dragon:

And here she is inside. She was excited, but I don't think she realized the dragon was going to start spinning. When it did, it scared her a little bit, she she warmed up to it.

We had lobster rolls (New England fair food!) and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. We tried to get her to taste the lobster roll, but she refused. She had a full morning and fell asleep in her stroller on the walk home:

Then Adrian and I did what we usually do on Saturdays during nap time. I did the laundry and Adrian did some house renovation/yard work. After she woke up we went right back to the fair! The center of town is only a 10 minute walk from our house. I think she had the most fun on this truck ride:

Here she is showing the big boys how it's done!

 And a fair isn't complete without a ride on Daddy's shoulders:

We took several videos, all of which can be found on Veronica's youtube channel by clicking here (scroll down and click "Load More" to see all the videos). Here's a video of her watching a Choo Choo Train ride. She wasn't quite tall enough to ride it (not quite sure why, this ride was much tamer than the truck ride), but she loved watching it and she's totally going to own this ride next year.

So that's what we've been up to. Veronica is becoming more and more verbal and is becoming a total mimic so we really have to watch what we say (especially in the car). She can sing along to the ABCs (and she requests to sing it all the time) and she can count to 10, though she prefers to start at four. She needs to be reminded to start at one. She used to love veggies, then there was a period of time when she refused all veggies. At least she still ate fruit. Now she's slowly bringing veggies back in. Her current favorite song is Wheels on the Bus, and she loves to sing along and do all the hand motions. I have to remember to try to get that on video, it's so adorable. She knows her colors and shapes and her favorite colors are purple and pink, and her favorite shapes are stars and ovals. She's a daycare baby so recently she has learned how NOT to share. Apparently she has a favorite play bottle at daycare that she uses to feed the dolls and her teacher discovered she had put the bottle inside her shirt. When the teacher asked her why she did that, she said, "Veevee bottle. No friends." Looks like we have to work on that sharing thing.

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En Ka Fair: Winchester is FECUND.

En Ka Fair!