NG N SG +3: Community Celebration in Charlotte

Today we attended the "Community Celebration" in Uptown Charlotte sponsored by Wells Fargo. Our plan was to go to the Discovery Place museum that Gavin loves and then walk around and check out the street events/vendors. I had received an email that said kids could wear costumes so I dressed Gavin up and he was confused. He kept saying "It's Halloween" and so we had to explain to him that he was just wearing the costume and we couldn't go trick or treating for 2 more days.
In this one you can see the new haircut...

Ready to race!

And Liam also had his Halloween outfit...

Admission was free today for all the museums, the orchestra, theater, and other cultural venues. However you had to reserve your ticket in advance for most places. We found out too late that the orchestra was only open early in the morning since they have other events going on throughout the day so we didn't get the chance to take Gavin. Although later in the day we did stop at the stage where a Jazz band was playing and he was excited to see a real life Bass.
The plan didn't work out as we thought--turns out that Discovery Place was only open to the people with free tickets so even though we are annual members we still needed the free tickets. The staff person said "honestly, you don't want to come in today. Come back any other day" so we took her advice and decided to explore the other stuff. It turned out to be a pretty good day full of freebies and free fun.
Out first stop was a Wells Fargo booth for free hot chocolate and apple cider. It was chilly today so it was nice they were giving these out free.
On our walk, we found Elmo (good idea from Fifth Third Bank to attract people since everything else was sponsored by Wells Fargo!)

This is a real life stage coach although in the picture it looks like it's painted on the trailer. Families could ride the coach but the line was too long. Gavin didn't seem too interested so we skipped it.

Below is an African Dance performance-- the music was so contagious. Gavin was clapping along but became disinterested when the man stopped to explain the history and reasons for the different dances. It was very interesting but both kids were getting antsy so we had to keep moving along.

We needed respite from the cold so we went inside one of the Wells Fargo towers and to our surprise it was the one that had a little museum inside. Very cool displays that Gavin loved.
We did get a ride on a stage coach after all (a mini-"toy" version)---you can't really see them but inside the stage coach there are tv screens and they were showing scenery as we "moved" through the trail (the coach is on springs and a WF employee swings the stagecoach back and forth while we sat inside- his arm must be killing him tonight from doing that all day).

ANOTHER mini stagecoach....

The pony pictured, named Lightning, was another freebie. He now joins the "zoo" in Gavin's crib. The zoo started with a freebie from the children's fair in Orlando where Gavin received a Winn Dixie dog, which he aptly named Doggie. Who would have thought that the FREE Doggie would turn out to be his most beloved stuffed animal? He now sleeps with him every night. Then "Kitty" and another dog which Gavin named "Top Top" joined the gang. In our recent Orlando trip, he picked up "Puppy" which was my mom's substitute for Doggie if we were to forget him back home--now he's a permanent member of the gang and now Lightning the horse is the newest member. Pretty soon he'll need a full size bed to accommodate all of his "friends" as he calls them.

"Learning" Morse code....

We came home tired from all the walking, we just wanted to lounge a bit. Nick turned on the TV to watch some college football. Liam seemed really interested on the TV. I wanted to see if he would be OK on the floor watching it and sure enough he stayed calm and fixated on the TV for a long, long time. Typically, Liam does not like to sit like this on the Boppy. He cries as soon as you put him on it so he must really like football!