Strawberry-full weekend

On Saturday, we headed to the Fort Mill Strawberry Festival.  This is one of the most popular, if not the most, festivals in the area.  It's a huge event and what sucks is that it only goes on Friday night and Saturday until 4pm.  We considered going on Friday evening but then decided that it would not be worth the hassle of messing with the kids' bedtimes so we waited until Saturday.  On Saturday, we had to attend USCL's graduation ceremony at 1:30pm so we only had a small window to partake in the festival's festivities.  But we were there by 9:30am and the kids, especially Gavin really enjoyed it.  

The highlight of this festival for Gavin was riding the ferris wheel.  I posted on Facebook how terrified I was of riding it with him but we made it through.  We drive by the park where the festival takes place every day on his way to school so he had seen this ferris wheel being put together for a couple of days.  He kept talking about wanting to ride it and I didn't think much about it because it didn't seem that high (from far away).  We waited 35 minutes in line for this ferris wheel ride but the smile was all worth it.  

Gavin was beyond excited.  He almost didn't make the cutoff height requirement (42 inches).  The guy almost asked me to send him back to the ruler at the gate to measure him again but I interrupted and said, "he is 42 inches exactly and trust me I wouldn't put him on if he wasn't."  The truth is that Gavin is 41 inches and at that point we had waited 35 minutes and the kid was too excited for me to let him down by telling him he was an inch too short to ride.  I looked at the seatbelts and knew we'd be fine if I tightened it all the way. 

We were the first ones to be loaded on which meant that we got an "extra" round at the ride because it had to go all the way around for everyone else to be loaded.  Because of this we were slowly moving one seat at a time.  It was fine for the first 2-3 seats but then we were past the midway point and Gavin (and I) started feeling really nervous about it.  He freaked out a little bit and asked me if he could get off the ride.  I talked him down and by the time we made our way all the way around he was fine and excited again.  I could tell he felt super proud of himself for not getting off the ride.

Strawberry donuts...they're delish!

On Sunday we thought we'd pack for our Florida trip and the two trips within that trip.  Yeah-- Nick and I have two trips planned while we're in FL.  We actually have a trip outside of Florida for every weekend we are down in FL which is a bit overwhelming at the moment.  The silver lining is these are child-free trips so we'll have time to decompress before coming back home.  Anyhow-- our Sunday plans quickly changed when the A/C in our new minivan broke yesterday on the way home from the festival.  Fixing the A/C became priority #1 since we're going to FL on Thursday and going to FL without A/C is NOT AN OPTION! We dropped off the car at shop #1 first thing in the morning, came home for lunch and some bike riding, got a call from said car shop and was given an outrageous quote for the repairs so we picked up the van and dropped off at car shop #2 which quoted us about $300 less for the same repairs.  Ridiculous.  On our way to car shop #2 I saw the sign for a strawberry farm down the street and thought we should check if it's open on Sundays and stop by on the way back.  We stopped and not only were they open, they were hopping!  This was the place to be on this beautiful, sunny Sunday in Charlotte.  We can't believe that this little farm that we drive by so often was as kid-friendly as it is and we'd been missing out all this time.  This farm trip rescued our crappy Sunday plans and while we didn't get any packing done, we created good family memories! 

Here are the pics: