Craft Shows

After a week with us, Willow is fitting in nicely and I have no regrets about bringing her home. What can I say? Baby animals are some of my favorite things and kittens probably top that list. Willow and Tiger are often curled up together and Tiger patiently puts up with her "attacking" his tail multiple times each day. Duncan can be a little rough, but he's patient when the kitten explores his food and that is a huge relief. The worst thing I've seen so far was Duncan carrying Willow around by her scruff. Willow didn't seem to mind at all and it was so cute and funny I just wish I'd gotten a picture. I was laughing too hard to effectively yell at the dog to put the cat down. The kitten was not harmed.

One morning I was in bed with giant Tiger lying on my right shoulder and tiny Willow almost on top of him. Both were staring into my eyes and I realized that despite the fact that Tiger is at least ten times bigger than Willow, their ears are nearly the same size. I hope those ears keep growing with her and that she has ridiculously huge ears as an adult, too! Willow is adorable and she makes all of us very happy.

I just realized that in the past month I've been to more craft shows than I've been to in the entire rest of my adult life. Kaylin really enjoys them and I enjoy taking her, but I found that without her along, it's a flashback to my childhood and I don't enjoy them at all. The craft show at the Pumpkin Festival was a novelty. It was in a fairly small area with lots of people, but not so crowded you were brushing arms. It was fun to look at all the stuff and marvel at how many different people make blown glass pumpkins (that all look pretty much identical to my untrained eye) and especially how many people make hair clips for little girls. We went to the Art Guild show on the riverfront and enjoyed it for what it was, but found it WAY too high class for what we would ever buy. Kaylin and I went to a craft show in Chillicothe that one of my zoo coworkers was in charge of and we actually bought a few homemade cards and some stuff from the bake sale. All of these things were enjoyable time spent with my daughter.

My dad picked up the kids for the day Saturday and I had the brilliant idea that Gene and I should check out the Spoon River Drive. I hadn't gone since childhood and figured it could be a fun way to spend a beautiful day. I thought Kaylin might like it, but knew Logan would probably hate it as I'd hated it at his age. Farmington was the closest major entry point so we headed there. We must have passed 100 garage sales on the way! We stopped at a flea market just inside town. It was sort of fun, but we didn't buy anything. We headed on into town and stopped at a craft show in a park. We were starving and got some good pork chop sandwiches, a spiral cut deep fried potato and an apple dumpling. The food was great, but the park was packed with people and the craft tents were not fun. I would have happily ended our experience there, but we followed a line of cars to a large field just outside of town to the GIGANTIC craft sale that nearly killed me. Rows and rows of junk, cheap t-shirts, handbags and crafts of all kinds. Sooooo many people, sooooo much crap. Yes, I remembered why I hated the Spoon River Drive so much as a child. Next year I will happily skip it.

One last thing- I took Duncan to the dog park for the first time and was thrilled with how well he did. Lynne and I met there at first light Saturday morning. Duncan can be so stupid with other dogs I was a little worried about how he'd act around Lynne's two basset hounds. He played and played, especially with Max. Daphne is older and more interested in sniffing everything than playing, but she's very good natured and had no problem with pesky Terrier Boy. Two other dogs showed up before we left and Duncan did well with them, too. The dog park is all the way on the other side of town so I probably won't go regularly, but it was great to find out that I CAN take Duncan if I want.