The Folklife Festival

The last time Melinda's parents flew into town, Adelaide spent the entire day in agony; "Are they here now? Wahhhhhhhh. How about now? Wahhhhhh...."

We were determined to avoid another round of meltdown madness on Saturday as Adelaide awaited the arrival of her Parker grandparents (who will be out for her birthday). So we convinced our friends the Rahlfs to join us downtown to see the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

This festival was one of our favorite events pre-children. With the kids, it's a lot harder to speak with the people at the booths, read the signs and experience the visiting cultures. However, so far as serving to distract and exhaust our kids, we give it an A+.

Both kids still think riding on the 

metro is exciting and in no way boring.

The Thomas Jefferson Memorial, however... 

Eleanor was totally unimpressed. 

Making cornhusk flowers in the kid's tent

in the Hungarian section. 

 Thumbs up!

Being hat artists in the African American Style area. 

 Magnificent. 

After dancing to dulcimers and bag pipes, stamping lost languages, coloring pisanki eggs and learning that chicken and waffles tastes better with maple syrup - all of the kids were completely exhausted. We headed home to some very solid naps.

And. though we didn't get to learn much about the visiting cultures, we did learn a few things: Eleanor will eat anything from chicken paprikash to Indian curry; Adelaide can spin over two dozen times before falling over; Melinda can still Csárdás with the best of them.

And now, grandparents are in town! We are going to have another awesome week.