Festival Of Trees

I desperately hate large crowds of any kind. It makes me irritable and anxious having to be smooshed in a room, no matter the size, with so many people. So when we decided to hit up the Festival of Trees this year, I thought I had really lost my mind. 

Then we arrived in the vicinity of the Expo center... and I wanted to turn back. The whole area was jam packed with cars, people, and congestion. I started to sweat a little.

Second bad choice of the evening, was going to Village Inn for dinner. Even worse, I for some reason, decided to get the turkey dinner... 'nuff said, it was terrible. 

I tried to get the holiday french silk pie to make up for it, but that was terrible too! I was so disappointed. I get so bummed out when I eat bad food, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth, literally!

After eating we headed to the Expo Center, and parked in the 7-Eleven parking lot even though it said parking was for patrons only... okay, so I broke the rules a little... but we did buy our Rockstars there before leaving, so technically we DIDN'T break the rules, ha!

The place was packed, so much so that I was overwhelmed and didn't even know where to start walking around. They did have a "Kids Korner" where we took Emma first to see if there was anything she could do. They had a face painting station, that I mistakingly thought would be fun for Emma. We watched a few kids get their faces painted, and when I asked her if she wanted to do it, she said "yeah! yeah!". So off we went for tickets. We stood in line for about 10 mins, and when it was our turn, Emma would absolutely not let the woman touch her. Not her face, not her hand, not her arm, and most definitely NOT her leg. We tried everything to coax her into letting a stranger paint on her, but she had made up her mind. She DID however, want to play with the strange lady's brushes, paint, and glitter.  I think she wanted to paint on herself. 

So in classic Mommy fashion, I had the woman paint something on my face to show Emma how fun it would be if she did it too. She watched her paint my face, but still wouldn't let her face be touched. We left the station, and went on to look at the trees, but anytime Emma saw my face, she would point to hers and say, "paint?" as if she wanted hers painted. I told Matty that if she kept asking, I'd take her back before we left and try again.

We tried again, and this was the result:

Momma walked away with two paintings at the end of the night. I should have known better, but was certain that Emma would see the paints and think it was cool to let someone paint her face! Little did I know, that she did love the paint, but wanted to do it herself. Matty told me she wouldn't do it, and he was right! Way to go Dad.

Here are the rest of the pictures from our evening, there aren't much variety because I forgot our camera AND the large crowds didn't make for great pictures. Not sure if I would go again, maybe when the girls are older and can enjoy the kid stuff! 

The only tree picture we got...