Whatever's French for "Huzzah!"

Last weekend we took the boys to the last day of the St. Louis Renaissance Faire, which was our first time back in a long time and their first time ever to a Ren Faire. The St. Louis fair is smaller than some, but overall it was pretty good. Their setup is modeled after a French Renaissance village instead of the typical English one, but in essence it's the same as any other Ren Faire.

The boys were both a little wiped out, but they hung in their long enough to listen to a storyteller and see the joust, an acrobat, a pirate show and a surprisingly excellent whipcracker. Logan pursued the King's Quest, which involves kids going around to various village denizens and getting stamps on their quest parchment. There were a few things that we passed on - the archery, the "warhorse" pony rides, things like that. Maybe once they get a feel for how a Ren Faire works.

The joust was a little tame compared to what I've seen in the past, and I was a little disappointed that there wasn't any sort of sword-fighting or melee combat demonstration. Those are usually big crowd draws, but they must not have had a group to perform.

The shows we saw ranged from the so-so pirate show (A for effort, but a little lacking) to the amazing Moonie the acrobat, who looked entertaining but we only caught the very end of his show, to the surprise of the day - Adam 'Crack', the whipcracker. He started with basic bullwhip cracks, then went on to double-whip cracks, including a hilarious musical number, and ended with the Whip of Fire (see photos below). Ended up being a great act, and if you have the chance to see him (he tours all over the country) do so.

Our side of the tourney field was cheering for Sir Duncan, aka Sir "Cheat to Win".

Adam Winrich, aka Adam Crack, and the Whip of Fire

Okay - Mom, Logan, and I will jump OUT of the rabbit...

Logan's completed Quest

It's Officially Summer

We had the great fortune to actually be at home this weekend (that's been a rare occurrence lately) and were able to host Jan and Kathy for a quick visit on their way home from Milwaukee. They were only able to stay a night, but they made the most of it and treated us to a Cardinals home game down at the new Busch Stadium. (Thanks again!!) Despite the fact that it's been awhile since the new stadium opened, it was our first time there.


Jill took this picture at least four times, I don't think Liam looked at the camera for any of them.

We were up in the field boxes, but frankly there's not really a bad seat in the stadium. We had a great view of the field, and the only thing that would have made the evening better was if the Cards had won. It was a pretty close game until the seventh inning, which I believe lasted 6 hours and during which the opposing team (the Colorado Rockies) scored 115 runs.

Ha ha, no, I kid. They only scored 9 runs that inning. At one point it was 8-1 and I turned to Jill and asked if it was time to go. Her reply was "No, I'd like to stay until the end if we can." A moment later she relented with "If the Rockies get to double digits, then we'll go."

Three minutes later (I'm not kidding) Colorado hit a 3-run homer to make it 11-1.

We all still had a good time. The boys got pretzels and cotton candy and lemonade and everyone enjoyed themselves. The weather was perfect.

I tried everything I could in Paint Shop Pro, but I can't improve the image quality of this ugly lump.

That's much better.

Our view of the action.

I have no idea why Logan looks so startled here.

It took a minute for Liam to get over the fact that he was supposed to eat "the soft part".

Overall, a great evening. Hopefully we'll get back to the stadium before too long this summer. Maybe the next time Logan and Liam will actually realize there's a baseball game going on. You know, in between snacks.

Memorial Day Camping Trip 2009

The camera batteries were nearly out of juice, so we weren't able to take as many pictures as we would have liked. Here's a small sampling of some our our camping fun!