Actually, it was our third annual visit to the Crusin' for Kids car show at the Kinnick Stadium parking lot, a benefit for Children's Miracle Network. Grandpa likes to see those from his high-school era, including this BMW, a version of which a friend of his owned back in the day. Must have been quite the thing for tooling around Fort Dodge.The boys were eager to see a real "monster truck" which we have lately been successful in explaining was not a truck filled with monsters or a monster in the shape of a truck, but only a very large truck--as big as a monster. They were not disappointed--we saw two. Edward also picked up on the term "muscle car" at this event last year and has had that on his vehicle watch list ever since.
He sometimes thinks any loud car (e.g. broken muffler) is a muscle car, but may be picking up on the subtleties of a souped up car that is intentionally loud.The owner of this car suggested that Daniel honk the horn, but did not warn the boys of its old-fashioned "ah-OOO-ga" sound. They were not amused. However, they quickly recovered and Edward decided he needed to take a crack at it as well.
He was better prepared for the second one (notice the use of the elbow to engage the horn...probably not in the driver's manual.)We were glad our own cars stayed in the shadow of the Kinnick Press Box the whole time we were there. We then headed over to the Iowa City Book Festival, a relatively new event that had beefed up its kids programming for its second year. There was shady grass seating for the kids to watch a clown/puppet show that kept them giggling for about 20 minutes. Then on to the art tent to make book marks and a "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" craft. But what we were really waiting for was the appearance by everyone's favorite monkey, Curious George.
Daniel was so enthralled he just could not walk away.
Even when he moved aside to give other kids a turn, he stayed close and even petted George's leg. (Note: we were all surprised at how tall George was. We wondered how tall the Man with the Yellow Hat would have to be to retain the proportion of the book illustrations...)
We finally managed to drag him away and headed home for naps, but it was a very exciting morning all told. After a nice long nap time, we headed over to the splash pad for some cool, wet fun.
Today's afternoon fun was the new pool I found on clearance at K-Mart this morning. Our first kiddie pool was purchased when Edward was 18 months and was just about perfect for that age, but by last summer it was clear it could no longer contain both growing boys.
While it was a warm afternoon, it was not humid (what??) and there was a nice cooling breeze, so after a while the boys started to get cold in their wet t-shirts. Since the pool was fully in the shade by then, we had them expose their white bellies and they were able to get in some more splashing before drying off and calling it an afternoon.
