Highland Fest

Off to St. Paul to climb the water tower and go to the neighborhood festival.

The kids, especially Ada, are fond of pointing out water towers, so I thought that climbing one would be fun for them. So I parked at the Highland Park water tower, and I ask the kids if they want to climb one of the two newer ones. Well, they thought that I was ridiculous. So I turned them around and showed them the older water tower, which they couldn’t figure out what it even was.

They started running up the stairs immediately when we walked in, me carrying Ada because I thought that it might be too much for her, but the other two made it up easily. When I told them that it was another water tower they were excited, and they could see the tank, so they were convinced. They played at the top for awhile, pointing out other water towers and the two downtowns.  Liam pointed out that one of the houses that he saw wasn’t the same color as the photograph at the top of the tower.

Helena was a little cold because of the wind, so she wanted to go back down. She wanted to know how tall it was and how many steps there were, so I told her that at the bottom we could find out. On the way down, some overweight kid was walking up with his father, who was forcing him up. The kid tried to sit on a chair that was on a landing, but dad said, “No.”. Then the kid asked if he could stop at the next bench. As soon as we passed them, Helena starts laughing. I told her that is why you shouldn’t eat too many cookies and not enough vegetables. Anyway, we got some free candy at the bottom (and stickers) anyway (because eating candy is bad, but not free candy) but then Ada and Liam wanted to go back up again. This time Ada walked up by herself.

After the water tower, we went to the festival. When the kids saw it, Ada starts yelling “Miam, Miam” and grabs him. He put his arm around her and I tried to get the picture, but missed. Really cute. $22 on ride tickets was spent very quickly, but the kids had fun. Then I let them play a game, get some cotton candy, and watched some Iron Man contest, which the kids actually liked watching.

Then we played on the playground, went to Dairy Queen to clean themselves up because of the cotton candy, then went to the art fair, where Liam picked up a stuffed frog and Helena and Ada got dragons, which they had “traded” no more than ten minutes later (upon Ada’s request).

We dropped off Helena at Zoe’s on the way home (who then came over for a sleepover later), and Ada and Liam played with their new animals for an hour, before we made the Rainbow run, where Ada and Liam were very excited to see Salami Man in another part of the store.

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