We're having a great week here :)

Thursday we had our Roots & Shoots Earth Day picnic (a week late because of rain) and it was a roaring good time. We had a bunch of activities and then one of the kids found a cool ravine to play in. And there was a playground involved of course. And neither of my kids had a meltdown over anything so that's always nice.

Today we went to the Rutger's Ag(riculture) Field Day. Usually we park at one end and go to the Folk Festival first and then make our way to the Ag Field Day. This year they decided to charge for parking where we normally park. I'm touchy on paying for parking so we kept going to the free parking. The free parking turned out to be in the middle of the Ag Field day so it was the folk festival people who were charging I guess.

Anyway, long story short, it turned out to be so much better that way! The Ag part is always more fun for me than the Folk Festival/craft fair part and this time we actually were at the Ag part first, when everything was still open! Ok, we did get there too late for the remote sensing lab tour (which Bridget and I were bummed about - but we did get a free poster of a satellite image of NJ). But in the same building we went to the Environmental Sciences open house which had a few really cool displays (and enthusiastic students explaining them) including a high power microscope attached to a computer monitor (we got to see bacteria and algae from the pond). Then we saw the farm animals and Bridget pet the baby pigs (for some reason this was the highlight of her day). Funnel cake was in there somewhere (not for me though - do they make gluten-free funnel cake? Hmmmm). Owen jumped in a moon bounce filled with balloons and Bridget slid down a giant, inflated slide. Next it was on to the Marine Biology open house which had some cool activities set up outside and a touch table with sea animals inside. We walked around the pond area and saw the bee exhibit that was such a hit with the kids last year (still a big draw) and eventually made our way to the Rutgers U Outdoors Club fundraiser - Climb the awesome gnarly tree - or something like that. They had climbing equipment set up and a huge, dangling ladder attached really high in this big old tree. So Bridget waited in line and climbed about 1/3 of the way up before coming down (like most of the kids did). She had a great time! While we were waiting for her, Owen and I watched the egg toss going on nearby.

Then we finally made our way to the Folk Festival part. The kids got the cotton candy they had been asking for all day and Robert got a sausage sandwich. I found out that the gyro stand didn't have plates so no, I couldn't have a gyro without the pita. Sigh. We wandered around the craft fair for awhile and then headed home. Exhausted but in very good moods.

Seriously, Ag Field Day is such a great event, everyone who's anywhere near Rutgers should go! And that's even with us missing 3/4 of the stuff going on (I just looked at the website and can't believe all the stuff we didn't even see!).