Cherry Festival 2010

The Cherry Festival was the first week in June this year. The Honor Band was asked to play on the stage at the Cherry Festival, but Ballet Folklorico was asked to be in the parade. Unfortunately, the two overlapped each other so Robert and I had to choose what child to watch.

Robert took Mason to the stage and made sure he got there in time to warm up. I stayed on the parade route and waved to Amanda as she passed by. Once the parade was over, we (Grandpa Schemel, Rainer, and I) hustled over to where we had to pick up Amanda and then we practically ran to the stage to see if we could catch some of Mason's playing. We got to where Robert and Mason were just in time to hear the last two and a half songs that the Honor Band played. Good thing there were at least two of us to make sure each kid got to where they needed to be =).

Afterwards, Grandpa Schemel was kind enough to buy ride bracelets so that Mason and Amanda could go on all of the rides at the carnival.
But poor Rainer, he wasn't tall enough to go on any rides, not even the mild ones meant for little kids. Maybe next time. So while the older two were on some rides, Robert let Rainer do one of the games. He let him play a game of balloon darts and Rainer ended up winning a little toy animal. That made him happy.

At one point, Robert convinced me to go on a ride with Mason and Amanda. But the ride that he wanted us to go on, Amanda didn't want to go on it, so it was just Mason and me. It was kind of an extreme version of the dragon boat ride that you can find at other amusement parks (the one that rocks back and forth until you are so high that if you are sitting on one of the ends you feel like you are going to fall off of the ride) . Well, this ride continued to rock back and forth until eventually you were going completely around. And then to add another layer of fun, it slowed down and switched directions. I wore the wrong shoes for this kind of ride, so I had to sit on my flip flops. I also had enough sense to take my glasses off and secure them in my shirt--I didn't want to chance that they would go flying off. Let me just say, that ride scared the major patooties off of me. I don't know if I screamed the whole ride, but if I didn't, then I probably screamed for a good portion of it. Mason didn't make a peep, but I guess he figured I was making enough noise for the both of us.

I don't know how I let myself get talked into these kinds of things. The scariness of the ride ranks right up there with the Ferris wheel at California Adventures.

Shortly after that, we came home for a bit of a break from the heat and to refuel our bodies. After it had cooled down a little bit, Mason and Amanda went back to the carnival and rode on more rides until it got dark (Robert, Rainer and I got in the pool and swam for a bit).

Even thought the day started out kind of hectic and chaotic, it turned out to be a lot of fun. (Thank you Grandpa Schemel).