Oktoberfest 2010

B and the traveling musicians

J conquers the Dragon Coaster

Posing for a photo while waiting in line for the rides

J is a comedian! He won this hammer and then gave it to his friend!

B on the big slide

This is a "book walk" instead of a cake walk, although we have one of those, too!

We LOVE our little town's Oktoberfest celebration! You can see above that we have a lot of fun!  We try to go to as much of it as we can each year for the three days that the downtown streets close and all kinds of foods and crafts are sold.  The children spend time riding carnival rides with friends and we eat lots of yummy stuff that we don't normally keep around the kitchen!  This year we got to stop and talk with the walking accordian musicians.  They play real, Italian-made accordians and wear authentic German costumes.  We played some games, the kids colored pictures for the coloring contest and made placemats and painted a rock.  We bought little marionette puppets that looks like the red pandas that they enjoyed at the zoo a few weeks ago.  I enjoy eating the "walking taco" (tacos in a Fritos bag) and an apple dumpling with vanilla ice cream.  My son devoured the walking tacos this year and my daughter discovered the sati babi (grilled pork on a stick).

It is a fun time to see lots of friends from around the community and many people who are home visiting for the weekend.  We had two, beautiful and warm sunny afternoons for Thursday and Friday.  Then, it got cloudy and the temperature dropped at least 20 degrees and it started raining on Saturday just about the time that the big parade began.  We haven't had rain since June, so it is very needed, but just not the greatest timing.  However, we put on warm raincoats and sat under umbrellas and stayed for the whole parade!  What fun we had this year and we will look forward to doing it all over again next time!