Festival Season

After being cooped inside all winter, our whole family has been excited to finally be outdoors again this spring and summer. We've been attending festivals just about every weekend and loving it. The unusually cool May and June has especially helped.

Our first festival was Art on the Square in downtown Belleville. Our kids are a little young to really appreciate fine art (and to corral amongst the throngs, for that matter) so we mainly camped ourselves by a food vendor and enjoyed the festival atmosphere. Here are the girls walking by the reflecting pool in front of the county courthouse.



A few weeks later we had a visit from Grandma June. We drove to East Alton to visit the National Great Rivers Museum where we attended the Great Rivers Festival. While we were there, we toured the small museum and even got to go up to the top of the dam and watch the locks from high above the Mississippi.

Finally, several weekends ago we drove yet again to Alton for a fishing festival. (Yes, Ryan is really trying to get Lilly into fishing!) It was a bit hot, but we enjoyed going around to the different booths. Lilly got to practice casting with a full sized pole, and she and Abby got to try on kids' life vests. Afterwards we cooled off with ice cream from a local place in Grafton.