Children's Festival of the Arts

Today was our town's annual Children's Festival of the Arts. We actually didn't hear about it at all the past 2 years we've been here, so I was super excited to find out about it this year! It's a free event downtown where there are tons of booths set up for kids to make all sorts of art/craft projects. They had painting, pottery, "junk art", sidewalk chalk, you name it, they had it! We spent most of the day today down there crafting to our heart's content!

First they made hand puppets! The girls made cats, and Asher made a snake.

Next up was the "junk art" booth. They had a couple of long tables that were FULL of "junk" -- random scraps of ribbon, paper, beads, tons of glitter, fabric scraps, anything you can imagine. Kyrie decided to make something for her friend Savannah, which turned out so cute! Then Asher and Bri both wanted their names done, too. Asher just wanted his done simply with glitter, and Bri got a bit more creative with hers.

After that, it was time for a quick stop to get slushies. All that crafting is hard work, you know! ;-)

After that, we headed over to do some painting. They spent quite a bit of time here. Note the red and blue circles on Kyrie's painting. Those are peace signs, which she has recently become obsessed with. I have no idea why, but it's pretty funny. She draws them ALL over her homework, on random pieces of paper, etc. Asher's painting is Optimus Prime. He's so funny because he LOVES to write now, but we can't seem to make him understand that you write from left to right. He says he LIKES to write backward and that he only needs to write "forward" at school. :-) Bri did hers all by herself, until the very end when she asked Kyrie to write her name on it.

As she was painting, Kyrie saw a boy from her Primary class there with his parents. She has her first real crush on this cute little guy, and it was so adorable to see her get all flushed when she saw him walk by. Then the look on her face when I asked her if she'd just seen Henson was priceless! :-) The cutest thing was that this boy was Harry Potter for Halloween (Kyrie was Hermoine). So, according to her 8 year old logic, they are "meant to be!" I asked her to try her best to wait just a few more years before she springs boyfriends and/or marriage proposals on us. ;-)

They did some cool sketch art thing. I forget what they called it, but they had these black pieces of paper, and when you draw on them with something pointy, the black comes off and reveals a cool design underneath. Notice that Kyrie's not only has peace signs but also has "hippie" written on it. Too funny! Again, I have no clue where she's picking this stuff up, but it cracks me up!

Our last stop of the day was the beading booth where the kids each made their own necklaces.

We really hope we're not still living here next year, but if we are, we can't wait to go back to the Festival of the Arts! ;-) In all seriousness, it was super fun. So much thought and effort was put into it by different volunteers around Yuma, and it was such a blast for the kids. I was very impressed, and we all had a very fun day!