We Have a Green Winner!

Thank you to each and every one of my follower's who entered my giveaway! I appreciate all of my followers and have loved meeting all of you! Thank you very much for your support! Random.org helped me pick a winner, drum roll please...and the winner is Sheila from Pieces of Me!

Sheila wrote that she helps the environment by: I'm a total treehugger! I'm fanatical about recycling, and not just about plastic, glass, aluminum, paper, etc. I recently had a tea kettle which I wanted to replace. I just didn't have the heart to throw it away knowing it would sit in a landfill for hundreds of years. After many phone calls, I finally tracked down a recycling center that would accept it! I was so happy!!!!

I've contacted Sheila on her blog, but if you didn't see that Sheila, please email me your mailing address. You can use the box in the lefthand column to get my email address, congratulations!

The Tulip Festival

It's tulip time indeed! Saturday's big outing to the tulip festival did not disappoint! Tulips lined the streets, were in planters all over downtown, and in the flower beds everywhere! We left bright and early at 6 AM in the morning and got there as the Art & Crafts Fair was beginning in Centennial Park. We had just enough time to browse the booths before we had go meet Katie and her family before the Klompen dance performance. You can see part of Katie's performance here.

It was really neat to see all the groups lined up in the street each wearing a costume that is handmade by local seamstresses and patterned after the traditional dress of the Dutch provinces. There are over 1,100 Klompen dancers, including 675 alumni and community dancers that dance in the various performances put on throughout the day.

After we walked around downtown with Katie and her family for a little bit, we went to Kinderplatts and found this area with large tulip beds near by it also in Window on the Waterfront Park. The colors were lovely and of course we had to stop and do the touristy thing and take a ton of pictures.This is the look ER got on her face when I told her we were almost done and could go play in the inflatable bounce houses she could see from the hill we were on. Guess she was more excited to play than look at flowers, what a surprise!So I didn't get my dream picture of ER in front of fields and fields of tulips that stretch as far as the eye can see, but I'll settle for these! It was tough getting her to hold still for even a second, she wanted to run up and down and all around the tulips. She kept telling us that they were all her flowers.

Kinderplatts was so much fun and a great bargain for a ton of family fun! It was only $5.50 for ER to get in and do all the activities, that's so much nicer than having to buy tickets for each and every thing. There was so much to do there...

She enjoyed the two petting zoo areas, especially the little ponies. She is all about ponies and horses. There were also dogs she could've visited with but it was too close to the bounce houses and once she saw those nothing could hold her back!

This one had cow print all over it. She told me today that she liked bouncing in the cow the best. Unfortunately, some of the inflatables were too big for our little one to climb up on her own. She was pretty upset that she couldn't go down the huge slide, as parents weren't allowed on them. But then we found something to distract her...

All I can say is that it's a good thing my camera has a good zoom on it, as I kept pretty far back! Brad says the snake was surprisingly heavy. ER wasn't too crazy about it, she did eventually pet it a little. I didn't get any pictures of her looking up at me, her eyes were on the snake the whole time.

She also went in another bounce house and in this inflatable maze. Then Brad got in line for the clown who was making balloon animals. It was a long and very slow line, so we went and...

Made this very fun hat! All you do to make it is lay a large sheet of paper over a foam hat shape. Then ER held the paper in place, while the volunteer put masking tape around it at the widest part. ER got to pick out a pipe cleaner and a paper die cut. She picked out an orange star, because, "I orange today."

The line to the clown was still very long so we went and dug in the dirt for awhile. ER got to plant a seed to take home. Then we went and got a balloon but we did NOT go near the Curious George or the Pig from the book If You Give a Pig a Pancake, no siree. She's still very afraid of dressed up characters.

Brad was STILL near the end of the line for the balloon animals so we went and sat in the extended taxi cab. I think it had three or four sets of doors and for some reason ER was crazy over it. We had to go back and sit in it four or five times. Isn't it funny what kids end up liking, I'd have skipped that one all together if she hadn't gotten so excited over it. All she did was climb in, shut the door, put on the seat belt, and then roll up and down the manual window over and over. She'd still be sitting there if we'd let her. That's Brad with her at the very end after we'd finally given up on the balloon animals. He'd only moved up a third of the line or so, and once ER announced she did NOT want to see the clown we got out of line.

We also got a caricature of ER drawn, blew some bubbles, and got ER a fitted for a bike helmet where all the police, fire trucks, and other civic organizations were set up. We'd been looking and looking for one small enough for her without luck, who knew we'd find it at the Tulip Festival of all places! The last thing we did at Kinderplatts was let ER ride the horse and buggy ride. There weren't too many carnival rides there, as there is complete carnival area elsewhere but this one was just perfect for her to go on all by herself. She loved shaking the bells and got the biggest grin on her face when it started going.

Are you tired yet? There was just enough time for a leisurely lunch at Subs-N-More in downtown, where I gobbled up a huge plate of nachos, before we had to head back to the car to drive an hour south to a first birthday party. We left a lot undone, there were a bunch of fun shops and a Dutch marktplatt to poke around, Windmill Island I'd have liked to seen, a tulip farm I must see, and even a whole Dutch village attraction! We'll be back, one day was just not enough time!

The Katies Meet!

So the big day was yesterday, when I got to meet Katie from A Listmaker's Life and my partner at ABC & 123: A Learning Cooperative! Here we are, Katie "Squared"! If you're wondering, she's in her traditional Dutch dancing outfit. She'd just performed around Centennial Park, you can see part of her performance here.

Speaking of her performance...here are some of the pictures I snapped of her after I finished taking a short clip of the first dance and yes they really are all wearing wooden shoes.

Doesn't she look like she's got some sassy attitude in this one?

They do not mess around at the Tulip Festival, each dancer has to be inspected before they can perform and two ladies in Katie's group had to go remove their earring prior to dancing. They weren't part of the traditional outfits. Each province in the Netherlands has to be represented in each dancing group; that's why there are different kinds of outfits worn by the group.

A very informative description was given about each type of outfit; you'd think as a former teacher I'd have attempted to pay more attention to it. Truthfully, it went on and on and I couldn't hear anyway. It sounded like the adults from a Charlie Brown Peanuts cartoon, and I guess that would make me a naughty student who was day dreaming through it.

The whole dancing group in an action shot. I have no idea if there is a formal name for this dance or this move but it looks cool, note the gal on the end I got in mid jump.

High kick it girl! This part is where I'd have fallen flat on my face. Okay who are we kidding, I wouldn't have made it this far in the first place. I have two left feet, with or without wooden shoes.

Oh yes, and since this was the tulip festival after all, here we are with the tulips! The tulips were everywhere, any place tulips could be, they were. They were even lining the streets along the curbside. We walked a ways through downtown together, and Katie got a lot of passerbys asking questions, I guess wearing the Dutch garb automatically makes you part tour guide. I was thinking after we took our pictures, I probably looked like just another visitor taking advantage of a photo-op and getting my photo with one of the costumed dancers☺

If you were wondering, how we ended up being partners without ever meeting face to face, I found Katie through a question she asked that was featured on a post by Tip Junkie, this post to be specific. I clicked on the link to her blog and started reading and commenting. We began emailing back and forth and then I had the idea for ABC & 123. We must really think alike because when I mentioned it to her, she told me she'd been playing with the same idea. We ended up jumping into it with both feet!

It's been great to have a partner, because as you all know blogging can take up a lot of your time, and it's takes up even more when you're trying to maintain two. This way we both have someone to share the load with and bounce ideas off of. We've gotten to know each other a lot better through phone calls and a ton of emails. We live two and a half hours away from each other, and she just happens to live in a town that puts on a yearly Tulip Festival that I've always wanted to go to. It seemed like the perfect time to go, and I'm so glad we did.

BTW: Tomorrow will be tulip overload as I will be sharing the pictures from the rest of the day trip.